Suchergebnisse

In an effort to overcome the US Senate's continued resistance to ratification of the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Representative Lynn Woolsey & a group of other women brought a copy of a supportive letter signed by 100+ representatives to the offices of Senator Jesse Helms. Helm's refusal to meet with the women legislators & admonition to them to "act like ladies" as they were thrown from his office is viewed here as yet another example of "miscommunication" between men & women; examples of other instances of gendered miscommunication in US history are reviewed. This episode also demonstrates the perpetuation of a prejudicial distinction between the public & the private spheres in terms of what men & women are allowed to discuss & in what settings. The gendered nature of the public-private distinction made in several leading international human rights documents is elucidated, & a similar dichotomization between the public/male & private/female is identified in the literary form of the 18th-century epistolary novel. The designation of letter writing as an "appropriate" female activity, so long as such private missives were never made public, is described, & the disturbances to the social order thought to result from violations of this code are revealed in epistolary fiction by more modern women writers, including Helena Araujo, Tsitsi Dangarembga, & Janette Turner Hospital. 12 References. K. Hyatt Stewart

The philosophic correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, stretching over thirty years, sheds some helpful light on each of the thinkers' philosophic positions. To be sure, only a few of the letters seem truly significant, and it would of course be a mistake to allow the rather informal and ad hoc remarks in any of the letters to eclipse either theorist's considered and matured published reflections. Moreover, the correspondence peters out in the mid-fifties, after which each thinker arguably made important modifications in his respective outlook. But the letters, or at least the most significant, do not seem careless; the principal issues addressed go to the very heart of things; and if the letters are interpreted with careful attention to the contemporary published, as well as some unpublished, writings, then, it seems to me, the engagement between the two theorists does indeed clarify some of the more obscure but weighty premises and implications of the two philosophic positions.

The epistolary friendships of Constance de Salm--a feminist and femme
philosophe (woman philosopher) prominent in her own time but virtually
forgotten today--provide a counterpoint to feminist scholarship that
has tended to idealize relationships among women. Salm's little-known,
unpublished correspondence from the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries reveals that competition and political expediency excluded from
her circle those female intellectuals most like herself. Her closest
relationships with women, while characterized by intense attachment,
often flourished in the context of radical difference in wealth,
status, or celebrity. They were also far more conflict ridden and
volatile than were her relationships with men. The relational world of
Constance de Salm promises to open up a new history of friendship, and
sheds light upon the ways in which friendships among both men and women
contributed to the emergence of a female literary sphere in the early
nineteenth century. Studying the relations among gender, epistolarity,
and intimacy yields a more nuanced understanding of gendered spheres,
and suggests the complexity and public significance of the bonds
of womanhood in late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe.