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1. Unlikely Feminist Coalitions: Islamist and Secularist Women’s Organizing in Tunisia

   https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxab020  

   Youssef, Maro (October 2021, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society)

   Abstract Following the 2010–2011 revolution, Islamist and secularist political parties and women’s rights organizations formed coalitions in Tunisia. Nothing of the sort had happened before in Tunisian history. This article considers the conditions that led feminists with different ideological beliefs to create what I call an “unlikely feminist coalition” in Tunisia. I argue that Islamists and secularists can form unlikely feminist coalitions when facing similar threats, working on similar tasks prior to formation of the coalition, the experience of common grievances, and a shared feminist identity. Drawing on the gender politics and social movement literature on coalitions, I suggest that more needs to be understood about unlikely feminist coalitions, especially in the Middle East. 

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2. Affectual intensities: Writing with resonance as feminist methodology

   Militz, E. (January 2019, Area)

   This paper advances current debates about feminist methodologies in geography by attending to affectual intensities and their resonance. Affectual intensities emerge through encounters between different bodies and objects, and are deeply power‐laden, enabling, disabling, transforming, and restricting geographic research. We attend to three moments of resonance that surfaced in Elisabeth Militz's field research on nationalism in Azerbaijan. In each, we show how attending to affectual intensities reveals much about the work of power in nationalism and in the constitution of geographic knowledge about it. The paper calls for an affectual methodology, a process of critical writing, reflection, and rewriting about moments of resonance between different bodies and objects in the field, and as we analyse, present, and write up our data. This is a layered, dialogic, and collaborative writing strategy that, we argue, enables us to write through and with affect. In particular, our work contributes a nuanced and multi‐layered approach to uncover often‐neglected power structures of predominantly white and heteronormative geographic research practice. 

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3. Solidarity as Resistance: Feminist Administrators in U.S. Academia

   https://doi.org/10.1177/23294965231221788  

   De_Welde, K; Ollilainen, M; Solomon, C R (December 2023, Social Currents)

   This study examines how feminist academic administrators engender solidarity and practice feminist principles as leaders in United States higher education institutions. We draw from qualitative interview data with 27 self-identified feminist academic leaders about how they carry out this work, what obstacles they face, and the ways that their work disrupts—and is disrupted by—the intensifying neoliberal, managerial tendencies in higher education. Respondents shared experiences of promoting solidarity through their leadership and strove to create inclusive and equitable environments to benefit students, staff, and faculty, and especially minoritized individuals within these groups. Our analysis reveals how these feminist administrators applied a feminist ethic, engendered solidarity in their work, and were often keenly aware of—and willing to contest—the neoliberal context of their institutions and higher education more broadly. Our findings contribute to the sociological and cross-disciplinary literature on feminist leaders in academic institutions and the resistance against neoliberalism and managerialism practices from within academia. 

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4. Living a callejera methodology: Grounding María Lugones’ streetwalker theorizing in feminist decolonial praxis

   https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2022.2081133  

   Baumann, Megan Dwyer (November 2022, Gender, Place & Culture)

   This intervention considers how the writings of María Lugones, a philosopher of feminist decolonial theory, might shape a callejera [streetwalker] feminist decolonial methodology and what such a methodology might look like in practice. I describe how a callejera methodology foments deeper relationality by highlighting as methodological tools three of Lugones’ concepts: resisting ↔ oppressing, the collective and tantear en la oscuridad. To ground the theory and illustrate possibilities of deeper relationality offered by a callejera methodology, I reflect on on-going research with Colombian collectives actively negotiating experiences of indigeneity and womanhood in relation to histories of colonial and more recent armed violence, as well as ongoing state disinvestment. I make three contributions. First, I suggest that integrating an intersectional analytic of ‘both/and’ with the complex fluidity between Lugones’ concept of resisting ↔ oppressing permits scholars to better understand the negotiation of multiple, intermeshed identities and oppressions, social inequality and power relations in relation to colonial histories and presents. Second, I encourage geographers to embrace a decolonial lens attentive to the relationality between and among collectives, from which many acts of resistance begin. Finally, I consider how a callejera methodology considers coalitional work as central to the research process. Such work embraces difficulty, discomfort and messy relationality often negotiated as if walking blindly through the dark (tantear). I conclude by arguing that geographers’ relationally-based research can strengthen feminist decolonial thought in our attention to spatial and temporal scalar differences of place and our commitment to understanding contextually differentiated navigations of identity. 

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5. A Feminist Utopian Perspective on the Practice and Promise of Making

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445126  

   Okerlund, Johanna; Wilson, David; Latulipe, Celine (May 2021, CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)

   null (Ed.)

   While makerspaces are often discussed in terms of a utopian vision of democratization and empowerment, many have shown how these narratives are problematic. There remains optimism for the future of makerspaces, but there is a gap in knowledge of how to articulate their promise and how to pursue it. We present a reflexive and critical reflection of our efforts as leaders of a university makerspace to articulate a vision, as well as our experience running a maker fashion show that aimed to address some specific critiques. We analyze interviews of participants from the fashion show using feminist utopianism as a lens to help us understand an alternate utopian narrative for making. Our contributions include insights about how a particular making context embodies feminist utopianism, insights about the applicability of feminist utopianism to makerspace research and visioning efforts, and a discussion about how our results can guide makerspace leaders and HCI researchers. 

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