When I was in ninth grade, a boy grabbed me, pulled me into a dark doorway, pushed me against the wall, pushed himself against me, and made me kiss him. He shoved his tongue into my mouth and it tasted like Dr. Pepper. I didn't drink Dr. Pepper for 20 years after that. That was... Continue Reading →
“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what it’s for.” –Laurel Clark (astronaut killed in Columbia accident) I marched with a group of 200 men and women on Saturday in one of the sister marches to the Women’s March on Washington. I know there are many who did not think this was “appropriate”... Continue Reading →
I just realized that I may not live to see a female president in the United States. I just realized that the America I live in is not the America I thought I lived in. I’m part of a religious community that often laments the state of “the world.” I often hear peple say... Continue Reading →
The Beautiful and the Damned: Life in the New India (2011) by Siddhartha Deb enlightened me in terms of the research Breeanne and I conducted in India on female practitioners in technical communication. The book highlights the economic changes that have occurred over the last decade or so because of the technology sector and the... Continue Reading →
A disobedient wife, in the context of contemporary Tajikistan, is a wife who wants autonomy and acts on it. The Disobedient Wife (2015), beautifully written if somewhat disjointed in the transitions through time, is a strong statement of what women need and want in order to exercise their agency. We see this theme through the... Continue Reading →
I recently heard that I was living a "feminist lifestyle." I'm not sure what that means. The comment wasn't meant to be derogatory, but it came off that way, given that my "feminist lifestyle" is something that had to be approved of. I would like to think that most women in the United States these... Continue Reading →
I’ve frequently mentioned Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2009) by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn here on my blog, but I haven’t ever given it a thorough review. This is because the first time I read it, I listened to it in my car, and I didn’t take notes,... Continue Reading →
I read a total of 72 books this year. That’s a low for me (I usually read over 100), but because I spend most of my reading with research articles now for Ph.D. research, books have taken a backseat. While I usually write about every book I read, this year I didn’t. And there are... Continue Reading →
While researching for my dissertation proposal, I came across an academic study called The Rhetoric of Pregnancy (2014) by Marika Seigel. I read it eagerly, for information about women’s experiences with pregnancy and work and as a representative sample of a dissertation turned book. From what I gathered, this project was Seigel’s dissertation in my... Continue Reading →
I began reading Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women (2013) with the impression that I was going to learn about how Jesus was a feminist. After all, my own feminist leanings began because of how well the feminist theory I was studying as a master’s student seemed to line up... Continue Reading →
The Bookshelf of Emily J. 