Open Access Publications

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https://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/31034

Open access publications by faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students in the Department of Women & Gender Studies.

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Now showing 1 - 13 of 13

What Is a Girl Worth?: Gender-Based Violence and Accountability in SportsWorld
(Sociology of Sport Journal, 2024-05-25) Kiss, Marissa; Foltz, Katelyn E.; Hattery, Angela; Mirance, Katie; Smith, Earl
Despite having clear policies that address athlete misconduct, including gender-based violence, at the collegiate and professional levels, members of SportsWorld—athletes, coaches, and staff—are rarely, if ever, held accountable. And, even when they face a penalty, more than 80% are allowed to either remain on the team or transfer and continue playing. In this paper, we explore the impact of this lack of accountability, including the “positive” benefits to players that include the opportunity to play in national playoffs and secure lucrative contracts as well as the negative impacts on victims and communities, most disturbingly the impact of serial abusers like Larry Nassar whose unfettered access to athletes resulted in hundreds of victimized individuals.
Class and Classrooms: Teaching Jane Eyre with Adele Grace and Celine
(Victorian Review, 2024-04-23) Stetz, Margaret D.
In an influential 2019 essay, Carolyn Betensky calls on teachers of Victorian fiction to address seriously the racism in these texts—not only the examples of it that are pervasive and central to the narratives but also “racist references” that are fleeting and seemingly offhand (723). “Casual racism” of this sort, she writes, “abounds in Victorian novels,” but this is no reason to treat it casually in our pedagogy (724). Especially for students of colour, who are subjected to being “treated as a racial other” in their daily lives, seeing “casual Victorian racism” accepted in the classroom “as merely routine without further discussion amounts here to an act of aggression” (736). At the same time, such a lack of attention signals to white students that merely noting the presence of historical racism is sufficient, without considering its relevance to their own lives and its continuing power in shaping current-day attitudes.
Ella Erskine, Elkin Mathews, and the “Long Aesthetic Century”
(Women's Writing, 2024-04-23) Stetz, Margaret D.
Scholars have used terms such as the “long nineteenth century” to convey the fact that the characteristics, principles, and artistic debates of the Victorian era did not suddenly vanish in 1900, but continued to inform British literature throughout the Edwardian era and into the start of the First World War. From work written by women, in particular, during the first decade of the twentieth century, it is obvious that one of the most significant developments of late-Victorian literature – i.e. the Aesthetic Movement – continued to enjoy an active life. This chapter uses a 1909 volume of prose poems, Shadow-shapes by Ella Erskine, to make that point, while demonstrating the important role played by Elkin Mathews, her publisher, in keeping Aestheticism before the public.
Betrayed by the Blue: Intimate Partner Violence and Institutional Betrayal by the Criminal Legal System
(Sociology Mind, 2023-10-07) Blewitt, Bailey; Hattery, Angela; Smith, Earl
Survivors of intimate partner violence engage in a multitude of help-seeking behaviors; most commonly they engage in the criminal legal system (CLS). Thus, when this institution betrays the trust of those dependent on them by being negligent or prosecutory, this is called institutional betrayal. We strive to elucidate and describe the types of institutional betrayal that victims/survivors of IPV experience when they report their abuse to the CLS. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 11 women impacted by intimate partner violence who sought help from the CLS. Four themes emerged: 1) indifference by criminal legal system actors; 2) being criminalized by criminal legal system actors; 3) The benefits of “insider status”; 4) Having to be “in the system” to use the system. It is crucial that we recognize the inconsistencies and mistreatment within our current criminal legal system in order to better protect and support victims and survivors of IPV equally and effectively.
Help or Harm? Criminalizing Intimate Partner Violence and Feminist Abolitionist Frames
(Violence Against Women, 2024-02-26) Derr, Katelyn; Hattery, Angela J.; Smith, Earl
After decades of work by feminists to criminalize domestic violence, more recently feminist abolitionists have identified the harm that the carceral state has on all impacted by it, including victims/survivors. Based on interviews with a diverse sample of 22 women and men who were system impacted, we find evidence of cases in which the criminal legal system both helped and harmed the victim/survivor. We identify policy interventions that promote alternative methods to intervening in intimate partner violence relationships that center the victim/survivor, create safety, and reduce the increased surveillance and overall impact of the criminal legal system.
‘I’m Scared to Death to Try It on My Own’: I-Poems and the complexities of religious housing support for people on the US sex offender registry
(Anti-Trafficking Review, 2023-04-26) Leon, Chrysanthi S.; Buckridge, Maggie; Herdoíza, Michaela
In the US, street-based sex workers and people convicted of sex offences are both ‘special populations’, often with additional conditions of community supervision. People convicted of sex offences experience a complicated mix of assistance and surveillance as they re-enter society post-conviction, including numerous restrictions on housing and employment. As a result, they are especially likely to experience homelessness upon release. This article uses I-Poems drawn from interviews with volunteers and professionals who navigate the obstacles to re-entry that govern people on the sex offender registry. We focus on people with religious affiliations (n=38) who provide urgent support during the re-entry process. I-poems are a feminist technique for analysing qualitative data that forefronts the voices of people not often heard and distils complex experiences into accessible narratives. While few in our study overtly exploited re-entering persons on the registry, most support was problematic in subtler ways: we found that re-entering registrants are asked to accept constrained choices involving labour, religious participation, and romantic and other personal relationships in order to receive assistance. Given the secondary stigma attached to work with people convicted of sex offences, and the obscurity within in which many of these religiously-affiliated programmes operate, I-Poems both humanise and reveal the complexities of coercion, religious calling, and supportive housing.
Inter-Generational Transmission of Violence in Latino Families: The Role of Mothers in Navigating the Cycle of Abuse
(Sociology between the Gaps: Forgotten and Neglected Topics, 2023-09-26) Quiroga, Zarah Zurita
Latino children and youth are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the United States. They are also unique in the sense that they experience mixed-status families in which one, or more, of their family members lack the proper authorization to live and work in the United States. Because of this mixed status, they face a distinctive form of family violence in which fear of deportation silences victims. This article explores the roles of mothers in experiencing and interrupting the inter-generational transmission of violence in Latino families in the United States. Based on interviews with eleven Latina women, the author discusses cases in which the roles of mothers either interrupt or contribute to the continuation of the inter-generational transmission of the cycle of violence. This piece explores the tensions between personal experiences with witnessing violence and the actions Latina mothers took in order to stop cycles of abuse and its outcomes for their own children. The author concludes with suggestions for future research that centers on the experiences of Latinos in order to reduce inter-generational trauma and transmission of violence in Latino communities.
Re-Conceptualizing Kaepernick’s Kneeling Protests and His Banishment From the NFL as an Infringement on His “Right to Work”
(Journal of Black Studies, 2023-06-06) Smith, Earl; Hattery, Angela J.; Kiss, Marissa; Foltz, Katelyn E.
A nascent literature is emerging that analyzes the case of Colin Kaepernick who was “locked out” of the National Football League (NFL) beginning in 2017 because he chose to protest police brutality, systemic racism, and white supremacy. Using status expectations states theory and prototypicality theory, our research re-conceptualizes Kaepernick’s lock-out as an infringement on his right to work. First, we utilize a modified case-study approach comparing his experiences to those of six other Black male athletes who were “locked out.” Second, we utilize data and “matched cases” to demonstrate empirically that Kaepernick was locked out of the league while quarterbacks who were less qualified (based on specific performance measures) were allowed to continue working. Our analysis demonstrates that Kaepernick was denied his “right to work” because he, like other Black male athletes before him, challenged structural racism and white supremacy.
Miss-Taken Identities: The Comedy of Misrecognition in New Woman Short Stories
(Cahiers Victoriens et Édouardiens, 2022-10-01) Stetz, Margaret D.
This essay will illuminate a surprisingly common trope in British New Woman comic short stories from the late-1880s through the end of the nineteenth century—that is, the social misrecognition of women (almost always young women) by men. Often, this misidentification takes a class-based turn, with men of the upper classes assuming that the girls they encounter in socially ambiguous spaces belong to a class lower than their own and are, therefore, undeserving of the usual forms of respectful courtesy, or are even appropriate targets for sexual predation. These same men often display pre-existing prejudices against women who are smart, talented, and independent. In the course of the narratives that follow, the misidentified female protagonists offer comic correction, re-educating not only the erring men, but also the reader beyond the text. Such stories use the structure of a joke to reshape the understanding of both the diegetic masculine figures within the story and the extradiegetic audience and to advance the cause of the “New Woman” in general by representing this controversial social type as clever, wise, competent, appealing, and even funny. The essay focuses on a number of examples of this phenomenon, including stories by Mabel E. Wotton, Beatrice Harraden, Sarah Grand, and Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler.
Feminist Lecture: (Re) Imagining Gender-Based Violence as a Strategy for Enforcing Institutional Segregation and Reproducing Structural Inequalities
(Gender & Society, 2022-10-14) Hattery, Angela J.
In this article, I develop a framework for re-imagining gender-based violence not as an outgrowth of patriarchy but as a response to the threat of gender integration and the inversion of the gendered hierarchy. I argue that this reconceptualization is critical to re-envisioning not just research but also prevention and intervention strategies. I begin by identifying two reasons for the stalled revolution in reducing rates of gender-based violence: (1) the focus on intimate partner violence and sexual violence as distinct rather than as similar tools that are simply deployed in different spaces, and (2) the de-centering of Black feminist voices and the obscuring of the similarities between gender-based violence and racialized violence. Finally, I conclude with recommendations to transform policies and hegemonic ideologies that limit the impact of gender-based violence—including by holding perpetrators accountable—and render it socially unacceptable, thus creating the foundation for building social institutions that are diverse, inclusive, and equitable.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Research Teams: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
(Race and Justice, 2022-04-05) Hattery, Angela J.; Smith, Earl; Magnuson, Shannon; Monterrosa, Allison; Kafonek, Katherine; Shaw, Cameron; Mhonde, Rochelle Davidson; Kanewske, L. Cait
Since the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and the racial justice protests that followed, many institutions, including the academy, pledged their support for policies and practices that combat on-going racial injustice. Social justice and anti-racism initiatives abound on college campuses, including programming, hosting speakers, and proposing required ‘diversity’ classes for all students. For all this rhetoric, college and university administrators have remained silent when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion practices as they relate to research. And yet, extant research documents the ways in which racial and gender biases have consistently shaped every level of research from the development of the research question, to the diversity (or not) of the sample, the availability of funding, and the probability of publishing. In this paper we focus on one aspect of the research process: the assembling (or not) of diverse research teams. We explore the benefits that diversity in research teams brings to the integrity of the data as well as the obstacles to both assembling a diverse research team and managing it successfully. Specifically, this paper focuses on the myriad ways in which diversity in research teams is treated as a set of boxes to check, rather than an epistemology that underscores positionality and power. We present a series of case examples that highlight the ways in which diversity, equity, and inclusion are successfully and unsuccessfully achieved in research teams, both in terms of outcomes and experiences. These case examples focus specifically on power relations along all forms of diversity, including race and gender as well as rank. The case examples also serve to unpack the ways in which research teams can rely on positionality as a tool for addressing power at three distinct levels: in conducting social science research generally, between the researcher and the “researched,” and among the research team itself.
Mapping Coercive Violence
(Violence Against Women, 2022-10-06) Monterrosa, Allison E.; Hattery, Angela J.
We conceptualize a new and distinct form of intimate partner violence: coercive violence. Coercive violence is a form of intimate partner violence in which the abuser intentionally engages in acts that expose his partner to state surveillance and violence at the behest of institutions or the state, including the child welfare system and the criminal legal system. Because the violence is perpetrated by an institution rather than an individual, it is difficult for the victim/survivor to seek justice or retribution. We conclude with suggestions for future research that interrogates coercive violence, its impacts on victims/survivors, and strategies for preventing it.
The Age of Decadence
(Victorian Literature and Culture, 2022-05-25) Stetz, Margaret D.
What does “decadence” mean? Does it mean anything at all? Is it sinister or irresistibly appealing? Regardless of the ambiguity that surrounds the word “decadence” (often with a small “d”), no one can deny that decadence (frequently with a capital “D,” especially when it alludes to the late nineteenth-century European cultural movement) has been sweeping the world of academic publishing. Seen from the perspective of 2022, the past few years appear to have been, at least among scholars, a decade of decadence. Joseph Bristow opens his chapter on “Female Decadence” for the 2016 volume The History of British Women's Writing, 1880–1920 by saying, “There is no question that by the mid-1890s one word had come to define avant-garde art and literature in Britain,” and that word was decadence. Judging by the recent proliferation of books and art exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic, history appears to be repeating itself and on a broader scale. Decadence is now defining, or at least preoccupying, many of us.

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