feminism

Hey, Shorty!: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets

mandy — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 09:00:00 +0000

By Meghan Huppuch, Mandy Van Deven, Joanne N. Smith

Difficulties concentrating in school, shame, depression, guilt, fear, low self-esteem, poor body image, and powerlessness are just some of the repercussions that victims of sexual harassment at school experience, according to research conducted by Girls for Gender Equity (GGE). This Brooklyn-based nonprofit organization works to “improve gender and race relations and socioeconomic conditions for [the] most vulnerable youth and communities of color.” Joanne N. Smith, Mandy Van Deven, and Megan Huppuch of GGE have collaboratively written Hey, Shorty!, which tells GGE’s story, while providing a model for teens to teach their peers what constitutes sexual harassment and how to prevent it. The book also gives activists, educators, parents and students a hands-on guide to combat sexual harassment and violence in their schools and neighborhoods.

In September 2001, just a few months after GGE had started meeting to play basketball, an 8-year-old girl was raped on her way to school in the area. In response to the victim blaming that GGE founder Joanne Smith heard, she decided to discuss gender stereotypes and discrimination with the girls in the league. This evolved into Gender Respect Workshops, developed and facilitated by Mandy Van Deven with male and female students in the classroom. She discovered that sexual harassment was a major issue in the lives of the students, particularly girls and LGBTQ youth. Soon after, the Sisters in Strength program was born, and today it has become a paid year-long internship for teen girls of color to advocate for the enforcement of sexual harassment policies in New York City public schools through workshops and direct action.

Sisters in Strength’s first task was to raise awareness about the problem in the community, which led to their making Hey... Shorty!, a short film that later won Best Youth Documentary at the Roxbury Film Festival. They screened their film at the Street Harassment Summit, where they shared what they had learned with other members of the community.

A second Sisters in Strength project involved hands-on participatory action research. The teen interns collected information through surveys, focus groups, and slam books, or notebooks with written prompts that students can respond to anonymously. After compiling their data, they concluded that sexual harassment was rampant and normalized. Their research results were presented at GGE's Gender Equality Festival to other community organizations. Under Meghan Huppuch’s leadership, GGE went on to form the Coalition for Gender Equity in Schools with more than twenty other area organizations.

The work of GGE may well have given us the solution to bullying that we have so desperately sought. When we are sexually harassed, we believe we are alone and somehow deserve this treatment. In other words, we internalize our pain and suffer in silence. But from GGE’s research and community action, we see that this pervasive problem lies not within the person being harassed, but with the external forces that perpetuate and enable sexual harassment to exist in our schools and on our streets.

GGE is an empowering initiative for teens, our future leaders, and Hey, Shorty! is an essential resource for parents, teachers and community leaders who want to take action against bullying and sexual harassment in their communities. Chock full of capacity-building activities and ideas, Hey, Shorty! is indispensable for anyone who wants to create an environment where everyone thrives.

Written by: Heather Leighton, April 30th 2011

Herizons Magazine (Winter 2011)

beth — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Penni Mitchell

When I first moved to Canada, Herizons was virtually the only magazine I came across that dealt with feminism and issues concerning women. My understanding of the women’s movement before that point was primarily focused on within the U.S., and it’s not exactly the same. The laws are different in Canada. Thus, they affect women in a different way and Herizons helped me understand that.

There are several things that non-Canadian readers might discover in this issue. To name a few: there are over 500 cases of missing Aboriginal women within the nation; the Ontario Court of Appeal now allows Muslim women who file sexual assault complaints to wear the niqab, if they choose to; Ottawa will hold a global women’s conference this summer; and a Quebec bill proposes that Muslim women be prohibited from receiving or delivering public services while wearing a niqab. These are issues that are addressed articulately in this issue through the contributing writers of Herizons.

The only problem is that these facts aren’t necessarily recent news, not for people living in Canada at least. These are topics that any Canadian resident might know if they follow the national news. Such is the trouble with distributing a quarterly magazine. By the time it’s out on print, the topics feel very backdated. Issues such as Muslim women in Canada having certain rights while wearing the niqab have been out since last year and as someone who regularly follows women’s news in the country, I was already well-read on the various opinions and attitudes that come with it.

However, there were some parts of Herizons' winter issue that educated me. Did you know that a young woman in her twenties recently started the first women’s magazine in Afghanistan? I certainly didn’t. Not until now. It’s called Negah-e-Zan, meaning "A Vision of Women," and is committed to women’s empowerment. There’s also a great, lengthy Q & A piece with Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us, and performance artist S. Bear Bergman. Bornstein and Bergman have put together an “anthology of new transgender voices” called Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. In the interview by Mandy Van Deven, they discuss the obliteration of the gender binary and what feminism can learn from trans politics.

Herizons is undoubtedly packed with great content about feminist views. But I would say that this issue works better on the international scale. It would probably be more interesting to a non-Canadian who is interested in learning more about how the women’s movement is perceived and enacted in another country.

Written by: Fadi Gabir, April 24th 2011

Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism

mandy — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Jessica Yee

Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives

Jessica Yee and I have a lot in common, personally and politically. For one, last year we were both curating collective published works that simultaneously construct and deconstruct contemporary feminist theory while broadening the scope of who is seen as legitimate enough to be a theory-maker. I wasn't aware of her work, and so far as I know, she wasn't aware of mine either. Despite being topically similar, the results of both projects are strikingly different. And I have a few theories about why.

Feminism FOR REAL brings together twenty written works, both poetry and prose, penned by a variety of radical activists. While the authors are diverse in their backgrounds, they converge on one belief: academia, boo! This is a pretty common refrain among activists, one I've sung over and over myself. But it's also one that now feels a little off key to me for its wholesale exclusivity and apparent lack of understanding of the ways activism and and academic are necessarily interdependent. For that reason, I found myself having to put forth some effort to read many of these pieces where they're at, instead of with condescension.

I want to be clear about a couple of things: 1) although it is a frequent accusation tossed my way, I am not an academic and 2) I claim the sentiment in the paragraph above as a part of my own personal struggle and processing, not a failing of this anthology. Too many times we patronizingly press our lips together, just waiting to inform the young'ins that they'll see things differently one day. And even though they might, that's no excuse for bolstering one's sense of superiority at another's expense, nor choosing not to interrogate the things that contribute to our own self-righteous point of view. In fact, it's just this kind of ageist trope that Yee and crew (rightfully!) rail against in Feminism FOR REAL.

So every piece in this book didn't speak to me—so what?! The ones that did were exciting to read and filled me with validation. Megan Lee's "Maybe I'm Not Class-Mobile; Maybe I'm Class Queer" is an excellent examination of the complex conflicts held by those of us who have been able to 'escape' our families' poverty while maintaining the desire to embrace our working class identity and advocate for us and for them. Andrea Plaid discusses the unintentional delegitimizing of Ann Marie Rios, and therefore all nontraditionally educated sex workers, by professional (read: degreed) sexologist Bianca Laureano in "No, I Would Follow the Porn Star's Advice." And ending with Kate Klein's "On Learning How Not to Be An Asshole Academic Feminist" (re)assured me that Yee and I are probably on the same page with our personal and political intentionality.

Pick up Feminism FOR REAL if you're looking to gain an worthwhile education, and perhaps a bit of critical self-awareness too.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, April 23rd 2011

The Scholar and Feminist Online, Issue 8.3 (Polyphonic Feminisms: Acting in Concert)

brittany — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Edited by Mandy Van Deven, Julie Kubala

Barnard Center for Research on Women

In hindsight, I probably should have waited to read all of the articles in this issue of Barnard Center for Research on Women’s The Scholar and Feminist Online journal, “Polyphonic Feminisms: Acting in Concert,” before emailing out sections that resonated with me and the work I’m interested in doing. Instead, I enthusiastically exploded the email inboxes of family, co-workers, friends, and even professors with links, starting with the thorough but concise introduction by guest editors Julie Kubala and (Elevate Difference founding editor) Mandy Van Deven, followed by lists of extensive blog and print resources, key thought-provoking and productive articles, strategic quotes, inspiring photography, and other creative projects.

On a visual level, I was first attracted to the gorgeous photographs, intriguing title (what does the musical term polyphony have to do with feminism?), and black/red/white aesthetic that is simultaneously academic, professional, creative, and approachable. There are also a variety of writing styles (poetry, conversational prose, mixed media, and theory) and a diversity of contributors (artists, healers, authors, activists, survivors, educators, students, and performers).

Regarding the theoretical content, what resonated with my own passions and work was the exploration of how the once radical idea of intersectionality has become institutionalized and conceptualized as “a remedy for exclusivity and hegemony.” Jennifer Nash (“On Difficultly: Intersectionality as Feminist Labor”) argues (echoing the thoughts of other contributors) that, “While naming difference certainly allows feminists to bear witness to power's operations, it does little to analyze the mechanisms by which these systems of exclusion are replicated and re-created.” Instead, she calls for intersectionality to be understood as “a metaphor, as one illustration of how structures of domination might cooperate to maintain their power.” A lot of what the journal addresses is about is “how to encourage dissent within communities” in order to continue challenging the forms of resistance; who is speaking, visible and accessing the circulation of radical ideas; and focusing on the possibilities and “what next?”

As the editors explain, “Polyphony, with its focus on non-hierarchical multiplicity, [is] a way to address” these issues, and I would recommend this online journal to anyone interested in joining, or at least reading about, the continual conversations about theory, activism, and the plurality of feminisms.

Written by: Abigail Chance, April 5th 2011

Correspondence Course: An Epistolary History of Carolee Schneemann and Her Circle

beth — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Edited by Kristine Stiles

Duke University Press

A giant hot pink book filled with nearly 500 pages of letters, emails, and images, when merely considered as an object, Kristine Stiles’s compilation of of artist Carolee Schneemann’s correspondence is intimidating, impressive, and a little bit sexy. The material is no less overwhelming.

Carolee Schneemann is an artist whose art played with the boundaries of bodies and embodiment, and of taboo and the abject. She produced physical and performance art, and used her own (often nude) body in the production of her art. She has been claimed as a feminist artistic icon (and acknowledges this herself) despite mixed reactions from feminists to her work.

Kristine Stiles offers a wonderfully clear and helpful preface in which she describes the principles she used when editing and annotating Schneemann’s letters so that they could be presented in book form. Although editing would be necessary even if Schneemann had written the most regular and conventional of letters, Stiles explains her commitment to preserving the irregularities within Schneemann’s letters. Such irregularities include those of spelling and misspelling, word and sentence spacing, and the use of columns and marginalia. Stiles makes a great effort to preserve for the reader as much of the aesthetic experience of reading letters and notes written by a prolific artist as can be preserved in book format.

The letters themselves are an education. They are an education in art, in second-wave feminism, in the changes in epistolary conventions. I confess, I haven’t read them all. It seems too cruel to have done so: dipping in and out of them, starting at the beginning, working through in order while also opening up at random and reading anything that catches my eye is so satisfying I can’t make myself speed read to the end. And I don’t want it to end. As long as there are letters to read, then it seems as though she—as the character I am coming to know, and not as the still-alive woman I will never meet—is still vibrant and alive and working and loving and creating. I am inspired to send real paper letters to my friends, hundreds of letters, so that they can experience me (and I them) through the medium of letter writing. Schneemann has a variety of artistic media at her disposal and letter writing is only one of them. This book is no less a work of art than her other artistic endeavors.

A perfect gift for art lovers, feminist artists, and art historians, this book has appeal for for those interested in seeing the way a life unfolds in the compilation of more than forty years of letters.

Written by: kristina grob, March 29th 2011

Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen

beth — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Kathleen Rowe Karlyn

University of Texas Press

Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen by Kathleen Rowe Karlyn is a fascinating look into the movies and television I watched as a kid. As a woman in my mid-twenties, I can safely say that my age group, for the most part, was the target audience when the films and television shows mentioned in the book were being produced. Or, at least, one of the target audiences. Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers is a companion volume to Unruly Women, published in 1995 by the same author. (I have not read Unruly Women, so some of my thoughts about Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers may have responses in the earlier work.)

According to the back cover and introduction, Karlyn’s purpose in writing this companion volume is to “ask whether today’s seemingly materialistic and apolitical girls, inspired by such real and fictional characters as the Spice Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, have turned their backs on the feminism of their mothers or are redefining unruliness for a new age.” The book is more than 250 pages long, plus twenty pages of endnotes, eighteen pages for the Works Cited, and an index for ease in looking up specific information. It’s clear in reading that Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers is an academic work, but the author thankfully did a good job of keeping my attention with her writing style, relevance of the subjects, and accompanying photographs.

The book is split into an introduction, an afterward, and eight chapters which comprise the bulk of her argument. The first few chapters delve into the worlds of Clueless, Titanic, American Beauty, the Scream trilogy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mean Girls, and The Devil Wears Prada. It really helps to have seen the aforementioned movies (and the others Karlyn discusses later) or some of the series in the case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For example, I could really engage in the parts about Titanic, American Beauty, Buffy, and The Devil Wears Prada because I’d seen those multiple times, remembered details, and could grapple with Karlyn’s assertions about each piece. (She says American Beauty has a strong incest motif, and since I’d seen the movie multiple times I was able to disagree at first and then maybe see where she was coming from.) But for the others I mentioned—especially the Scream trilogy, which I’ve never seen—it was much harder to understand what she was even talking about; I had to take her at her word that one character did something and then another did something else, etc. It wouldn’t be unthinkable, I suppose, to sit down and watch (at least some of) the pieces mentioned in Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers to have a basic understanding of the author’s starting point, but until I have time to do that, I can’t fully engage with some of the text. I suspect other readers will have similar issues.

Nonetheless, the movies and characters with which I was familiar provided me with plenty of brain fodder. There’s an entire chapter on Reese Witherspoon’s ability to “walk the line” between feminine and feminist in her film portrayals, and in real life, a chapter about teen melodrama that focuses on My So-Called Life and Thirteen, and a chapter about girls and women of color in film. I’m not sure how I feel about having only one chapter about girls and women of color; I don’t know if Karlyn could only work with the movies she had and most of them just leave out people of color (i.e., the entertainment industry is racist) or if she picked and chose the films that fit her thesis and the ones that most easily fit didn’t include people of color in important roles, or some combination thereof. (I suspect it’s the third option.) That said, someone could write an entire book about just girls and women of color on screen, so I’m not sure how I’d have written it differently in this book.

Overall, I’d say that Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers is a great reference text; it has a lot of relevant, useful information for Third Wave feminists (and parents of said), and it may open up someone’s eyes when they ascribe to feminist beliefs that begin with, “I’m not a feminist, but…”

Written by: Viannah Duncan, March 29th 2011

No Excuses: Nine Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power

beth — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 09:00:00 +0000

By Gloria Feldt

Seal Press

When I heard Gloria Feldt being interviewed on NPR, I thought I might have some problems with No Excuses, so I asked to review it and follow up with a telephone interview of Feldt. When I read the book, my first impression was confirmed. After an hour interview with Feldt, who I had met previously in Arizona, she seemed such a nice, genuine person concerned for women that I was torn about what to do with the review. I reread the book and got upset all over again. Feminism, like quarks, comes in many colors. My working class background and grassroots perspective has colored my response.

Feldt’s main theme is that the women’s movement is stuck, and it’s our own fault because we resist using the power we have. She argues that all formal laws and barriers have fallen and only social norms and self-limitation hold us back. She insists that because of the economic collapse, now is the time, because women will be tapped to clean up the mess made by men. But rather than charging forward, we are stepping back yet again.

In the interview, Feldt supported her belief that the world wants women by pointing out that management studies from Ernst and Young have found that companies with a higher percentage of women in management function more efficiently and have a higher return in the market. The World Bank analyzed the results of parliaments that have 30% or more of women and found that they make better decisions. But in counterpoint, the number of people in slavery, many of them women and many in the U.S., is higher now than it was at the height of the Black slave trade. The U.S. now has the largest gap between the rich and the poor. Poor women are driven into prostitution, domestic work, or sweatshops to feed their children.

While Feldt is clear that she is only talking about the U.S., international trends also do not support her conclusions. The just released report, The Authoritarian Challenge to Democracy: Selected Data from Freedom House’s Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties, found that in 2010, twenty-five countries exhibited declines in freedom and only eleven showed gains. Both Mexico and Ukraine dropped from Free to Partly Free. The number of countries designated as Free dropped from eighty-nine to eighty-seven, the number of electoral democracies dropped from 116 to 115, the worst since 1995. In 2005, the number was 123. The Middle East and North Africa regions that have been the focus of democratic reform declined even further from an already low democratic baseline.

The author encourages women to make one last push for equality to get us over the finish line. But in discussion, she admitted that one final push will not solve every problem and cannot create complete equality. The 2010 election that was to be yet another “year of the woman” resulted in fewer and more conservative women in Congress. But she believes a final push will lead to greater equality and that will be a profound shift in human rights and justice.

She wrote the book because political changes and society transformations are complicated, and people do not make the connection between theory and action, laws and reality. Those dots have to be connected over and over again, so the “push” does not mean an end, but a beginning starting from a different place. The “push” does not include quotas that have been credited the world over with creating more gender balanced governing bodies. She believes that the politics are such in the U.S. that it would be an unlikely fight to win today. Since she believes that almost all of the legal barriers and many of the policy barriers have been eliminated, if women decided to seek parity, and took action, they could achieve it in ten to twenty years.

Certainly, Feldt is correct that women should redefine the use of power in a non-abusive way. Models of that approach are outlined in the book. The problems of co-optation and internal barriers are discussed. The essentials necessary to embrace her philosophy—money and control over our own bodies—are however, both in short supply. The “power tools” she sprinkles throughout the book read a bit “New Agey” until the end of the book where they are given more in-depth analysis. Many of her slogans are old wine in new bottles without attribution to earlier feminists whose shoulders she stands on. Practical methods are not mentioned such as union organizing or fighting for quotas in political parties. In the “tool section,” she encourages women to smile, but in fact, smiling is counter-indicated. In December 2010, Stanford business school professor Deborah Gruenfeld recommended that women stop all the smiling. “Women give away power all the time, by smiling or looking away when they are saying something authoritative.” In the finale, Feldt argues that to re-ignite the movement, we should be courageous sisters and support other women.

“Equal rights for the sexes will be achieved when mediocre women occupy high positions,” said Francoise Giroud (1916-2003), as quoted in the 2006 SheSource article, “The Glass Ceiling in Media: Think the glass ceiling is gone—or just an outdated metaphor? Think again” by Tekla Szymanski. Women have to perform to be promoted; men only have to have potential and connections. The article outlines the dismal state of women in commercial media. Even in media that focus mainly on “women’s issues,” only 28% of the publishers and 50% of the executive and senior editors are female.

In that article, Feldt is quoted, “One reason the glass ceiling remains strong in broadcast and newspapers is media consolidation, which squeezes out positions at the top and in mid-management, where women might have been in the pipeline to advance...When resources are scarce, the old boys' network closes ranks and chooses leaders it feels most comfortable with—those most like themselves.” This statement is counter to her argument in the book that there is no glass ceiling, only a sticky floor.

Gail Evans, CNN’s first female executive vice president is quoted in the same article saying that women need to learn to play the game, and that we buy into the same stereotypes: “Women take care—and men take charge. Women have to start supporting each other. Their success is connected. Women think it’s all about “I can do it.” They think that, “if I try hard, it’ll change.” We have to go from “I can do it,” which gives isolated success to, “We can do it.””

I’m left confused. On the one hand, we are told (and Feldt says in the book) that women need to stop putting everyone else first. On the other hand, we are told that women tend to go it alone and should support their sisters. On one hand, we are told that women managers do better because we are more collaborative, but on the other hand, we are told that women think in terms of I not we. Which is it?

While I certainly agree with Feldt that women need to re-think their attitude toward power, no reason except the economic collapse explains why now is the time for women. The same people who caused the crash are still at the top in Obama’s government, at Harvard, and at Goldman Sachs. The CEO of GM that went bankrupt is now in charge of a job creation committee. The massive grassroots movement in support of Elizabeth Warren was not enough to have her appointed to the new consumer watchdog agency. Those in charge have no intention of turning over the reins. A woman warned us of the financial collapse. They didn’t listen. A woman warned us about 9/11. They didn’t listen. They may send in women to clean up their mess, but then they will send them back home again. The vicious attacks on Hillary Clinton during the primary should remind us of the fear of women that still lurks in the hearts of men.

As a lawyer, I cannot understand the claim that no laws or barriers exist. The book itself gives many examples of the laws and barriers, the facts and the acts, that still stand in our way. She acknowledges that the hardest barriers are the ones inside our head, describes her own struggles to escape the negative messages and admits that it took her well into her adult life to free herself, but yet she chastises young women as if she expects them to know so much more than we did at that age. She repeatedly disproves her own statements and doesn’t seem to notice.

As a long-time advocate for battered women, I was especially troubled by a description of the domineering, coercive, and controlling behavior by Claire Bloom’s husband Philip Roth that resulted in Bloom sending her daughter away. Feldt characterizes this as voluntary, which is a failure to understand the dynamics of domestic violence and coercive control. I asked about this in the interview and she answered that Claire Bloom was not a woman who needed to opt for the man over the child because she had means, talent, and networks. Coercive control happens to women who are rich and famous as much, or in some studies even more, than to women who are poor and unknown. The means, talents, or networks of women do not insulate them from male violence and control. In fact, it often means they have more to lose if they escape and keeps them locked in.

If the book is written for a specific group of women, “…for those of us who count ourselves among the lucky ones, the time for excuses is over…” I concur, because I too have little sympathy for women with money and power who turn their backs on other women. But if she meant it for all women, then I have a problem with the blaming and shaming that lies behind the words. The focus on the lucky ones should have been made clear from the beginning, otherwise the book reads a lot like blaming the victim.

Feldt both agreed and disagreed with my analysis. She agreed that the privileged women are the ones who have been able to be the leading edge in a formal way and have been able to get their message to the public. While that is commonly said, the new movie Made in Dagenham reminiscent of Norma Rae shows the tremendous impact made by working class women.

The author did have certain expectations that the book would resonate with our generation (we are about the same age) and the young feminists, but did not expect it to resonate as well as it has with the entrepreneurs who often don’t belong to any formal groups and wouldn’t call themselves feminists or with the young women who are the first in their family to graduate from high school or college. In the first six months since the release of the book, she believes it has resonated with the lower SES group and the acceptance of the message has been a great joy to her. One thing is clear, women need to be leaders. The leader, according to Feldt, is not necessarily the CEO but the person who gets things done.

The author had planned to write another book about women’s relationship with sex, but the unexpected success of this book has derailed that for a while. The book has taken on an unanticipated life. It’s being used in women’s studies, seminars, and she’s been asked to do a webinar. So for the short term, she’ll be working with the themes of the book perhaps putting her nine power tools into specific workshop formats to concretize them, which would be useful. On her bucket list, she has many more books to write and steps to take into women’s future of equality.

Written by: Dianne Post, February 22nd 2011

Twenty-first Century Motherhood: Experience, Identity, Policy, Agency

barbara — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Andrea O'Reilly

Columbia University Press

Motherhood is often a topic of confusion or contention among feminists. The process of birthing demonstrates just how awesome and powerful women’s bodies are. However, the institution of motherhood is constructed in ways that oppress women and privilege certain classes, races, and sexualities. In Of Woman Born Adrienne Rich writes, “We do not think of the power stolen from us and the power withheld from us in the name of the institution of motherhood.”

Taking their cue from Rich, writers of the new volume Twenty-first Century Motherhood: Experience, Identity, Policy, Agency look to reclaim some of this stolen and withheld power. This volume, which explores current issues in the burgeoning field of motherhood studies, shows how women have begun deconstructing motherhood through the practice of “empowered mothering” that has transformed this institution. Editor Andrea O’Reilly’s introduction to the volume gives readers a clear and succinct foundation of feminist theories surrounding motherhood studies including Sara Ruddick’s revolutionary idea that mothering is a practice and therefore a verb as opposed to a noun.

While O’Reilly’s introduction is much needed for motherhood studies amateurs such as myself, the essays in Twenty-first Century Motherhood range much further than a mere introduction to this exciting field. This volume, true to its title, explores how recent changes have altered forever the experience of mothering for women everywhere. The essays are divided into four sections— experience, identity, policy, and agency—and cover a huge range of topics which seem to particularly affect mothers in the Global North. The articles range, quite incredibly, from Chicana mothering and GBLTQ parenting to the role that the internet and biotechnology play in familial relations.

I was pleasantly caught off guard by Ana Villalobos’ thought-provoking essay, “Mothering in Fear: How Living in an Insecure-Feeling World Affects Parenting.” Villalobos does an excellent job exploring the question: what mothering strategies do parents use in reaction to today’s perceived fear and risk-abundant environment? Villalobos shows that while some mothers have become overly protective, others have developed inoculating parenting behaviors—exposing their children to the risks of the world. While these parents have often been criticized as lacking an intense love and care for their children, Villalobos shows that just the opposite is true. These inoculating parents believe that by exposing their children to moderate, but manageable, risks they are better caring for their children by allowing them to learn how to navigate such a complex and dangerous world.

In “Brown Bodies, White Eggs,” Harrison touches on some very pertinent issues surrounding race and labor in matters of cross-racial gestational surrogacy, when the surrogate female giving birth is of a different race than the child she is carrying. In her essay, Harrison proposes that while the inter-relations of people of different races in this process of birthing may seem to efface racialized gender hierarchies they actually do much more to enforce them.

Lastly, I was quite impressed with Rachel Epstien’s essay, “Queer Parenting in the New Millennium.” Toward the end of her essay, Epstien poignantly comes to the difficult question: how do queer parents obtain both the public recognition they desire as lovers and parents while at the same time persist in resisting the norm and questioning that which society sees as recognizable? In answer to this question, Epstien writes, “let our children learn that “sexuality and gender are varied, fluid, complex, messy, exciting, scary, fun and always changing.” Epstien here makes an excellent point. At the end of Twenty-first Century Motherhood however, it is easy to see that along with sexuality and gender, motherhood should also be taught as “varied, fluid, complex, messy, exciting, scary, fun, and always changing.”

Written by: Colleen S. Kenny, January 30th 2011

Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power

mandy — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Laura Amazzone

Hamilton Books

Author Laura Amazzone offers her own intimate experiences (including the most painful ones) and personal growth in a book that is richly dense with information and observation. Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power encompasses spirituality, mythology, feminism, history, travel, and philosophy. Nearly every paragraph made me set the book down to consider or visualize ideas. In a very tight nutshell: Amazzone delves into the multicultural history and symbolism of this incarnation of the Goddess, offering a model of spirituality and feminism to a world that greatly needs it.

I must say here that I identify as an atheist and feminist. Because I personally cannot believe that the entire universe was created by a deity, unsurprisingly, some concepts and language in this book did not attract me; however, my mind is always open to be engaged. I eagerly boarded Amazzone’s train for female empowerment and higher consciousness.

Though I’m not religious, spirituality and mythology fascinate me. I have always wanted to learn more about goddesses and female deities, and the depth of traditions and storytelling surrounding the Goddess Durga is worth its weight in gold. I would love to see the ten-day Durga Puja and visit the goddess' temples. This book enlightened, inspired, and encouraged me to venture outside of what I had previously known.

Amazzone’s personal pain was parallel with my own. She generously shared her physical and emotional pain, and how she was able to heal through spiritual comfort. This is a journey many of us can relate to and benefit from sharing.

Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power would be of great interest to academics, spiritualists, and those interested in personal growth. The rest of us may want to stick with Women Who Run with the Wolves for personal guidance.

Written by: Jacquie Piasta, January 26th 2011

Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks, and Consumer Culture

mandy — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Hilary Radner

Routledge

In the past decade, America cinema has shown a change towards producing more women-centered movies, depicting independent unmarried women who seek out their own empowerment and gradually changing society’s view of single women. The women of Sex and the City, for instance, celebrate their singledom, showing it not to be the pitiable state it was once thought to be. While these women possess many feminist qualities, they also have attributes that separate them from the traditional ideals of feminism, a perspective which media studies scholar Hilary Radner labels neo-feminist in her current work, Neo-Feminist Cinema.

Radner compellingly opens her book with a discussion of how neo-feminism differs from second wave feminism. Radner traces the start of neo-feminism to Helen Gurley Brown, who wrote the infamous Sex and the Single Girl. Groundbreaking for its time, the book idealized for women a lifestyle in which they maintained their own independent identities and lives from men, encouraging them to seek out both fulfilling careers and sexual experiences. Through her focus on being fashionable, attractive, and forever youthful in appearance, the former Cosmopolitan editor showed an extreme diversion in her views from that of feminists of the same era, including groundbreaker Gloria Steinem.

In Neo-Feminist Cinema, Radner connects Gurley Brown's views to the neo-feminist views expressed in contemporary works in which feminist-seeming ideologies are undercut by a focus on extreme consumerism (Manolo Blahniks, anyone?) and male sexual attention. Radner then dissects such other modern day films as Something’s Gotta Give, Legally Blonde, Maid in Manhattan, and Pretty Woman. Each films' focus on the girlishness of the characters, regardless of their age (even at forty- and fifty-years-old the cast of Sex and the City possess girlish qualities), as well as women's supposed fixation with fashion and extreme consumerism. Radner posits that neo-feminism replaces consumerism, instead of maternalism, as the primary feminine attribute. Radner’s analysis of each film is both compelling and convincing, though her method of devoting a chapter to each film results in redundancies, as many films possess the same characteristics.

Radner's work is most compelling in her definition of neo-feminism and her historical tracing back to show the roots of the term. Radner gives needed attention to how feminism has slowly filtered into popular culture, mutating the movement into a new form, one that furthers consumerism and maintains a woman’s focus on being sexually desirable to men.

Radner seems overly critical of popular culture in her work. While the neo-feminism expressed in popular works today may be a watered down, shallower version of the feminism second wavers expressed, it nonetheless is a positive step forward for the depiction of women in the media. The depictions of these images encourage women to pursue more self-actualized societal roles and encourages both genders to be accepting of women within such roles. Television shows and films have positively depicted empowered single women for over a decade, albeit ones who may not be quite what our feminist fore-mothers idealized as the future for modern women.

In the end, Radner’s work is both compelling and thought provoking, and she successfully pinpoints the media’s version of contemporary society’s ideal woman. Women who can lead successful and challenging lives absent of husbands and children are positive images to influence women, even if they encourage women to also spend undue amounts of time on their appearance.

Written by: Adrienne Urbanski, January 14th 2011

Written on the Body of The Erasable Woman

mandy — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with Shaunga Tagore

When did you start writing poetry?

At a very young age—probably when I started writing with chalk on my bathroom door or adding my own two cents to my parents’ biology textbooks they tell me I always furiously flipped through. I experienced a lot of racism, (hetero)sexism, and different kinds of regulation at a young age too, and I think what that did was make me really quiet and closed up in a lot of ways. But expressing myself creatively was something I did to become myself again—whether that be through writing, acting, music, or just telling stories about how I imagined my life to be, instead of the scary, oppressive ways I often experienced it.

Who has influenced your writing?

First and foremost, my family: my parents and sister created an environment for me where creativity was valued and encouraged. Now still, there are so many ways I am creatively inspired by the lives and perspectives of my friends and family, even in ordinary moments. I’m also lucky to be a part of Asian Arts Freedom School, a creative arts and radical Asian history and politics group, where the conversations and stories continually influence and push my own writing.

As for famous people, some who come to mind are Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Shyam Selvadurai, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Smarasinha, Himani Bannerji, and Andrea Smith.

The Erasable Woman is your Master's thesis project; why did you choose to write it in poetry?

I was sick of writing like an academic. (Laughs.) My topic was exploring colonial violence against racialized queer women, as well as how broad systems of oppression or histories can manifest intimately on women’s bodies, and in personal relationships. I find that poetry can express this intimacy in ways academic writing cannot. A lot of people in academia would not consider poetry a legitimate way to express theory or politics, but poetry is theory, it is knowledge, and it is political. I was really lucky to have a supervising committee who understood and supported this kind of project (Enakshi Dua and Priscila Uppal).

Why the title The Erasable Woman?

The Erasable Woman is a title of one of my poems, and I feel it fits the entire collection. A major theme that runs through my manuscript is erasure…being forgotten, lost, ignored, invisible, expendable, and disposable. At the same time, it asserts a physical, spiritual, sexual, emotional, and undeniable presence in the midst of being and feeling erased. That’s one of the ways I tried to express the complexity of what it means to experience oppression and survive/resist it at the same time.

Erasure is such a key and powerful way that violence is allowed to continue. [It] speaks to the ways in which racism and other oppressions in feminist movements is ignored, and the well-being of women of colour is not considered. Also, the value of challenging sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in a lot of anti-racist or queer initiatives is often marginalized and not given enough importance. So many things in this world are structured through erasure: mainstream education denies the violence of colonial conquest on this land by largely painting it as a benign, peaceful process; national media doesn’t pay enough attention to the ways in which violence impacts marginalized bodies or communities; survivors in/of abusive relationships are silenced and shut down when they try and fight/talk back; queer or unconventional love/desire is constantly trivialized and demonized; expressing or feeling certain kinds of emotions is minimized. I wanted to explore these topics in my own way.

How do your identities influence your work?

I can’t separate myself from my social position, or my mashup of identities, and I can’t separate myself from my writing, so it all becomes intertwined. In this particular work, it was important for me to center the voice of a queer woman of colour, because it’s not a perspective that’s often given attention—in literature, feminism, anti-racism, or queer politics.

How did you came to the decision to use images in your collection?

I always start with a feeling or idea I need to express (sometimes desperately), and I follow my intuition, as well as work with my skill set, to give shape and form to that feeling or idea the best and most honest way I can figure out how. For example, at one point I wanted to create something that expressed how the bodies of women of colour are judged and marked by oppression just by living in the world. So, one of the pieces that appears in my collection (called "bodysnatchers") contains a series of photos with oppressive words actually written on the body. It just made the most sense.

The Erasable Woman is currently not available to the public. Can you tell us what your plans are for this wonderful collection of poetry?

The Erasable Woman is still a work in progress that I am currently fine-tuning, and I hope to get it published in the near future. I’m really excited about how it’s shaping up and have been doing readings at various events. I now have a website, which is new and still under construction, where people can read some of my work and check out other things I’m up to.

Read the full interview at Black Coffee Poet

Written by: Janet Romero-Leiva, December 29th 2010

Women's History Has Many Points of View

mandy — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with RE/VISIONIST

With the question "who gets to write history?" at its center, RE/VISIONIST is an online publication started by a handful of graduate students at Sarah Lawrence College who study women's history. Many historians push to catalog the discipline of history as a pure science, but this group is instead interested in critiquing the supposed objectivity of their discipline, and giving credence to subjective perspectives. Even more, the editors aim to analyze history through the lens of multiple feminisms. I opened a dialogue with one of the editors of RE/VISIONIST, and in true feminist style, she responded to my questions by conducting a roundtable discussion amongst the staff.

How did RE/VISIONIST come about?

Thea Michailides: Sarah Lawrence has a creative, vocal, and lively undergraduate community but—outside of the writing program—there really wasn't a space for graduate students to exchange ideas and feature our work. Roz's idea of establishing a blog or online journal gave us the opportunity to put what we were learning in the classroom to practical use.

Roz Hunter: As students, RE/VISIONIST offers us the opportunity to use an historical lens to examine contemporary issues and serves as an outlet to discuss how gender plays out today. We come from a multitude of educational backgrounds—including Women's Studies, Anthropology, English Literature, Political Science, and Fine Arts—and we aim for an interdisciplinary approach to current events.

Kate Wadkins: I find myself surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurial women who are pursuing their dreams of creative and scholarly work. For a long time, I wished I had access to some kind of publication to pull all this work together. RE/VISIONIST provides a resource for feminist voices.

What pnline spaces embody aspects of what you are trying to achieve?

Nydia Swaby: Racialicious is definitely an example of the kind of work we want to be doing. I also like Paradigm Shift; their tag line—"Use the 'F' word. Discuss. Evolve. Grow with Us. Change NYC. Change the World."—made me feel powerful, and I really enjoy their blog. Equal Writes, which was started by a group of students at Princeton, aims to do something similar to the work we do in saying that Feminism is not a dirty word.

Your publication features issues you see as absent from the larger discourse on women or feminism. How are you attempting to revise, revisit, or re-imagine the historical and contemporary issues you write about?

Nydia: We are reclaiming the notion of revising history not because we want to erase the things that happened in the past, but because we want to build on them. The name was inspired, in part, by a course that all first-year Women’s History Graduate students are required to take at Sarah Lawrence called "Visions/Revisions: Issues in US Women's History.”

Victoria Sollecito: Right, it was an historiography course, and it really pushed us to think about how history gets written and why and by whom and how it changes over time. So revisionist is a dirty word and feminist is a dirty word and we are both! How awesome is that? And we are using feminism as a framework for this re-visioning of history and culture and the media and politics and everything else.

Roz: The discipline of women's history aims to create a re/vision of the past and tell the stories of groups who have been written out of history books. Women's history can serve as a tool to uncover the lost social histories of remarkable individuals and groups who have been previously ignored. We believe that you cannot study history without critically analyzing the roles race, gender, sexuality, religion, ability, age, and class have played, and still play, in it. We strive to make sense of the social hierarchies that have and do exist, and how complex systems of domination (whether it be male domination, racial domination, or class domination) all work together to continue to oppress and marginalize. We aim to uncover lost histories.

Nydia: I became interested in writing about Amy Ashwood Garvey because it really shocked me that she was such an integral part of the Pan-African movement (many have suggested that she was the co-founder of the United Negro Improvement Association), yet you hardly ever find references to her in history books. Writing about her work seemed fitting for RE/VISIONIST because we aim to uncover these kinds of lost histories.

Kate: An exciting discovery I had was reading an excerpt from bell hooks' Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center where she describes challenging the notion of gender-as-the-ultimate-oppression by radical women of color and their White allies as "the basis of revisionist feminist theory." Reading this crucial starting point for intersectional feminist theory as revisionist was both inspiring and solidifying for our mission.

What you think about the term feminism? Is it an important term to use, to interrogate, to dismantle, to celebrate?

Roz: Many of our staff writers and contributors are wary of the term. We do celebrate the word, but we purposely pluralize it in our mission statement. It is very common to hear (White) women criticize the younger generation for not embracing the term, but we have many reasons to reject it. Feminism has had a history of exclusion and many feminist writings, speakers, and activists have used feminism to reinforce the status quo of race and class oppression. Feminism has often meant the promotion of the rights of White women at the expense of the rights of people of color, immigrants, queers, and the poor. We recently posted a quote from Barbara Smith that articulates some of our thoughts on feminism:

Feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of color, working class women, poor women, disabled women, lesbians, old women—as well as white economically privileged, heterosexual women. Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism but merely female self-aggrandizement.

Thea: The word feminism is important to preserve even though it has the power to be both divisive and galvanizing depending on the characteristics of the audience. I see feminism as a tool for unifying women in an era that encourages individuals to focus on relationships with those who share their unique experiences of oppression along—for example—racial, ethnic, and generational lines. This tactic may aid in revealing spaces where history has been negligent, but it also undermines the potential for unity. Women need to seek appreciation for their shared experiences while learning about those that are specific to their contexts. Feminism, as a word and an idea, offers a means for describing this coalition of sorts.

How do you overcome the exclusionary aspects of academic discourse?

Victoria: We want to move away from a definition of history that restricts the writing of history to senior tenured faculty members in history departments and restricts the subjects of history to dates of battles and the lives of the presidents. It isn't that those things aren't important; it's just that we feel like a twenty-first century visual artist's reflections on gender norms and expectations about sexuality are as important as any textbook.

Kate: Pop culture has its claws on the emerging minds of youth, as well as our psychic selves, and if we don't recognize its importance, we're just limiting our critique. This is a problem that exists in history, in pop culture, and in our lived experience—hence our aim to discuss all of those arenas and not privilege one.

Thea: We cannot avoid that we are engaged in the academic world and are, therefore, privileged no matter how vigilantly we may examine our work and the work of others in RE/VISIONIST. I feel our aim should be to recognize that, even as we try to illuminate the people and experiences traditional history has overlooked, we too are a part of an elite and, as such, may perpetrate similar acts of negligence.

Photo credit: Nydia Swaby

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, November 27th 2010

Made in Dagenham

brittany — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nigel Cole

Sony Pictures Classics

I am not much for plays. I generally prefer to sit bundled in my comforter, wine in hand, and watch a movie. However, I was recently convinced by a friend to join her for Mrs. Warren’s Profession, the main attraction of which was Sally Hawkins. I know Sally Hawkins only from Happy-Go-Lucky where her cheerfulness, tireless as the Sony synopsis describes, was also guileless and irritating. It was nice seeing Hawkins as something more than a ditz; no, not more than a ditz, merely a different kind of ditz—aloof and self-righteous in a very different way. In Made in Dageham, Hawkins’ character is still wrapped up in her own fiction.

Made in Dagenham depicts the first strike of female workers in Britain. Starting as a dispute over wage classification, these women were not “unskilled” so much as they were specialized; however, the strike expands to an argument about pay equality. The strike is settled at ninety-two percent of parity.

Between unskilled and ninety-two percent, however, life continues and Rita O’Grady, as played by Hawkins, is too soon to forget the mundane—or at least it appears. She does not return to cooking or doing the dishes, and in a pivotal argument with her ever passive-aggressive husband, she rebukes him for behaving as he should towards her and their children, but never better. It is not a Betty Friedan sort of stance, trying to have it all, but it is also not third wave feminism’s acceptance that maybe having it all is not possible. In the film, O’Grady is called “the Revlon Revolutionary,” but only because she is a woman, not because her feminism resembles lipstick feminism. Her life doesn’t represent a particular political stance and seems merely a meditation on the ways things were.

While the film invites comparisons to Norma Rae, I have none to offer. The women of Dagenham were all too willing to go on strike, having seen their men do as much before. The women escalate their action after they feel that management’s response to their initial action is disrespectful. The women’s strike in Dagenham is endogenous, brought about by the preexisting union and acceptance of this behavior in a way that the South never has been.

Made in Dagenham is mostly a bubblegum depiction of feminism. It has a token scene in the union headquarters wherein heated arguments rely upon Marx—the progress of a society can be measured by its treatment of women. The film never develops any of its arguments or its characters fully; all remaining as tokenistic representations of the depths which feminism can reach.

Written by: Elisheva Zakheim, November 19th 2010

Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women

beth — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Rebecca Traister

Simon & Schuster

As we entered our hotel after a day of sightseeing while on vacation in New York City in September 1984, my father lifted me onto his shoulders so I could see what the fuss was all about in the lobby. The lights were bright and there were lots of tall men in suits all around us. With my father’s direction, I could see the backs of the heads of the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates trying to navigate the crowd. I can still picture the back of Geraldine Ferraro’s head; all I remember from that moment was that her hair was blond and in a hairstyle similar to my mother’s.

Rebecca Traister, a writer for Salon, introduces her blow-by-blow account of the 2008 presidential election with her first political memory from 1984: in the voting booth with her mom turning the lever to make a selection for the first female candidate to appear on a Democratic ticket for president. Traister and I are both in our mid-thirties, and I would argue that her experience in the most recent political election is representative of our generation of feminists.

Her book, Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women, provides a detailed and thrilling account of that epic race, including astute observations from a feminist perspective. She uniquely intertwines her personal interpretations with the nitty-gritty details of the historic campaigns, including critical reactions from feminists and women regarding the gendered nature of the media response and public debate surrounding Hilary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, and other women involved in the election. She argues that the 2008 Presidential Race was a modern-day consciousness raising experience for a generation of women who grew up with easy access and little personal experience with—or at least little critical observation of—the patriarchal structures that surround them in the twenty-first century. She says that the story she tells is “about the country and its culture, how well we all reacted to the arrival of these surprising new figures on the presidential stage and what they showed us about how far we had come and how far we had yet to go.”

I found her internal struggle regarding which candidate to support during the primaries so similar to my own experience and resonant with the experience of many women in the United States during this election. She relies heavily on interviews with women—particularly feminists—from all corners of society. She interviews second wave feminists, pundits, journalists, bloggers, and newcomers to feminism as she exposes the gendered bias towards candidates that was not sufficiently or substantively addressed in the mainstream media during the election cycle. The overt sexism, the race/gender divide, and a nascent, conservative (and therefore questionable) feminist uprising are all analyzed ruthlessly and succinctly. Traister writes with command, intelligence, and a sense of humor.

Speaking of humor, she also discusses the role of comedians with a feminist twist, like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, as well as the role of women journalists, like Katie Couric and Rachel Maddow, all of whom were integral in the cultural interpretations of these political figures. Traister validates and applauds their roles in the process of influencing the electorate regarding gender interpretations of the election as well as long held biases against women in comedy and news.

The frequent refrain in Traister’s book is one in which she considers her mother. She tries to bring together the generations by using her personal connection to her mom’s politics along with the positions of second wave feminists and younger feminists like herself. She wonders how we can be dealing with these same issues that her mom dealt with so many years ago and she answers those questions both personally and politically. Though she highlights the differences in generations of feminists, she finds a way to unite their stories and experiences as they converge on this highly anticipated and much debated event in American history.

Written by: Ashley Josleyn French, November 19th 2010

A Woman's Agenda 2011: Celebrating Movers and Shakers

beth — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Karen Helm

Second Story Press

Whenever I walk into an office supply store, my heart bursts into song. Traipsing rapturously down the aisles of Staples or Office Depot, it's all I can do not to spin like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Five subject notebooks and highlighter markers, White-Out and staples and hanging file folders, colorful Post-its of differing size: these are a few of my favorite things.

As someone with a fetishistic love of organization, I appreciate a good annual planner. While I generally keep my schedule and to do lists updated using a variety of paperless tools—such as Outlook's calendar feature and Google Docs—there are benefits to having a hard copy version of my schedule: at a glance, I can see everything on my plate without needing to pull out my laptop. It also allows me to step out of the weeds of my day-to-day commitments and reflect about my workload and my year. Finally, because I'm shortly going to be spending the next two years volunteering abroad, I want to have a tangible, coherent vision of what's happening in my life next, during months of transition where I will feel lost and out of control for long stretches of time—and possibly with minimal technology available.

A lot to ask of a planner, I know. Still, A Woman's Agenda 2011 seems a good fit for my needs. Solidly spiral bound and measuring roughly five inches by eight inches, the calendar is hefty enough to accommodate the details of my schedule I need while still being small enough to fit in a purse or messenger bag—and feel manageable. Each month has two blank pages for notes; each week has space for an hour-by-hour breakdown of your schedule. Unfortunately, the weekends get short shrift, with fewer lines allotted for tasks on Saturday and Sunday.

This oversight is compensated for, to an extent, by the inspiration that dots the pages of this calendar: every month has a feminist luminary. Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and American politician Shirley Chisholm both receive two-page profiles, as do several Canadian women like women's hockey team captain Cassie Campbell-Pascall. Every week also has an inspiring quote, presumably by the woman profiled at the start of the month (those these are unattributed, so this is an assumption). Finally, there is a list of feminist websites to visit for further inspiration and community.

While A Woman's Agenda 2011 is flawed, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Snag one for the on-the-go feminists in your life, as they start to reflect on what they'll accomplish in the coming year.

Written by: Catherine Nicotera, November 15th 2010