Description
Book SynopsisIn the global south, women have and continue to resist multiple forms of structural violence. The atrocities committed against Yazidi women by ISIS have been recognized internationally, and the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nadia Murad in 2018 was a tribute to honor women whose bodies have been battered in the name of race, nationality, war, and religion.
In the Crossfire of History:Women's War Resistance Discourse in the Global South is an edited collection that incorporates literary works, testimonies, autobiographies, women’s resistance movements, and films that add to the conversation on the resilience of women in the global south. The collection focuses on Palestine, Kashmir, Syria, Kurdistan, Congo, Argentina, Central America, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. The essays question historical accuracy and politics of representation that usually undermine women’s role during conflict, and they reevaluate how women participated, challenged, sacrificed, and vehemently opposed war discourses that erase women’s role in shaping resistance movements.
The transformative mode of these examples expands the definition of heroism and defiance. To prevent these types of heroism from slipping into the abyss of history, this collection brings forth and celebrates women’s fortitude in conflict zones.
In the Crossfire of History shines a light on
women across the globe who are resisting the sociopolitical and economic injustices in their nation-states.
Trade Review“This is a timely intervention in women’s resistance from the Global South that maps the complex labyrinth of women’s opposition, agency, advocacy through various forms of art, literature, and activism. Removed from the 'strait-jacket' of organized resistance, it is a must-read for scholars, students, activists interested in women’s voices and actions from the South as they defy and negotiate with micro and macro political structures of power.”
-- Swapna M. Banerjee * Professor of History, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York *
"This powerful set of essays refuses conventional tropes of female agency in the liberal tradition; instead, the authors theorize a politics and poetics of “resistance” that is context-specific, place based and plural. The volume, which takes the reader to geographical spaces that are often marginalized in feminist analyses, is a welcome addition to the emerging field of decolonial feminist scholarship." -- Dina M. Siddiqi * Executive Committee, American Institute of Bangladesh Studies (AIBS) *
“This is a timely intervention in women’s resistance from the Global South that maps the complex labyrinth of women’s opposition, agency, advocacy through various forms of art, literature, and activism. Removed from the 'strait-jacket' of organized resistance, it is a must-read for scholars, students, activists interested in women’s voices and actions from the South as they defy and negotiate with micro and macro political structures of power.”
-- Swapna M. Banerjee * Professor of History, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York *
"This powerful set of essays refuses conventional tropes of female agency in the liberal tradition; instead, the authors theorize a politics and poetics of “resistance” that is context-specific, place based and plural. The volume, which takes the reader to geographical spaces that are often marginalized in feminist analyses, is a welcome addition to the emerging field of decolonial feminist scholarship." -- Dina M. Siddiqi * Executive Committee, American Institute of Bangladesh Studies (AIBS) *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Portraits of Resistances
Part I: Representation of Resistance in Art and Media
Chapter 1: Syrian Women’s Prison Art: Toward a Poetics of Creative Insurgency
Stefanie Sevcik
Chapter 2: Moving beyond Victimhood: Female Agency in Bangladeshi War Movies
Farzana Akhter
Chapter 3: Structuring Jinelogy within Global Feminism: Representations of Kurdish Women Fighters in Western Media
Lava Asaad
Part II: Literature and Resistance
Chapter 4: All the Female Bodies: Female Resistance and Political Consciousness in Testimonies of the Dirty War in Argentina
Lucía García-Santana
Chapter 5:
The Woman from Tantoura: An Autotheoretical Reading in the Art of Resistance
Doaa Omran
Chapter 6: South Asian Women and Hybrid Identities: Narratives of Abduction and Displacement in Partition Literature
Margaret Hageman
Chapter 7: Writing Solidarity: Women in Bapsi Sidhwa’s
Cracking IndiaCarolyn Ownbey
Chapter 8: Sri Lankan Postcolonial Inversion and a “Thousand Mirrors” of Resistance
Moumin Quazi
Part III: Advocacy / Activism
Chapter 9: Kashmiri Women Activists in the Aftermath of the Partition of India
Nyla Ali Khan
Chapter 10: Teaching Narratives of Rape Survivors of the Bangladesh War in a Classroom: A Study on University Students
Shafinur Nahar
Chapter 11: They Fear Us Because We are Fearless: Women-Led Global Environmental Advocacy and its Adversaries
Matthew Spencer
Conclusion: Detangling Resistance
Notes on Contributors
Index
