http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/keyword/feminist-theory Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines. en-us Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:21:16 -0400 Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:21:16 -0400 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1937/knowledge-production-in-international-relations-a-poststructural-feminist-critique-of-liberal-feminism By Dana K.J. Al-Thani - In popular international relations (IR) theory, knowledge production is often dismissed as an objective process between the researcher and the empirical world. This article rejects this notion and contends that the process of knowledge production is always inherently political in the conduct and study of IR. In order to achieve this argument, a poststructural lens is adopted in order to critique the liberal understanding of knowledge production within IR as a scientific process capable of revealing ‘universal truths.’ Additionally, in discussing ‘the political’ this article... Wed, 09 Feb 2022 01:27 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1937/knowledge-production-in-international-relations-a-poststructural-feminist-critique-of-liberal-feminism http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1887/reconstructing-ruin-as-future-rethinking-the-spatiotemporality-of-race-and-gender-in-glissant-and-spillers-middle-passage By Yiyang Chen - Intersecting Edouard Glissant’s poetics with Hortense Spillers’ theory of race, gender, and sexuality alchemizes a new conception of the Middle Passage’s spatiotemporality. With the slave trade haunting the living, this paper attempts to orient a rupture in the fabric of spacetime, through which implosion leads to a new future. The destructive and destabilizing abyss of the Middle Passage, in itself, creates a philosophy of alterity, where linear, universalizing logics of the West become ruin through which new paradigms emerge. In Poetics of Relation, Glissant delineates three... Wed, 10 Mar 2021 08:59 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1887/reconstructing-ruin-as-future-rethinking-the-spatiotemporality-of-race-and-gender-in-glissant-and-spillers-middle-passage http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1791/terry-richardson-and-the-celebration-of-porn-chic-a-critique-of-fashion-photography By Yasmeen Sabet - In On Photography, Susan Sontag derides photography for generating a sense of false objectivity. Focusing on the moral implications of taking a photograph, she explores the relationship between artist and subject, exposing photography as a medium contingent upon violating its subjects.[1] Engaging with Sontag’s text, the following analysis studies fashion photography as a site embodying this exploitation, revealing the disturbing power dynamic between a defamed fashion photographer and his underage subject. In deconstructing Terry Richardson’s 2011 image of Lindsey Wixson (fig 1),... Mon, 07 Sep 2020 10:51 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1791/terry-richardson-and-the-celebration-of-porn-chic-a-critique-of-fashion-photography http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1442/a-contemporary-analysis-of-action-films-with-female-leads By Myranda A. Dapolito - A doorbell rings. Off screen, we hear a sing-songy “Coming!” A woman dressed in a cerulean track suit rushes to the door, expecting to find her daughter home from school. Instead, she finds another woman, blonde and leather jacket-clad. With one startling punch, the blonde woman simultaneously initiates a fight and inserts herself into the home. The two women proceed to destroy the living room of the house: shoving each other into framed pictures, propelling into tables, throwing shelves of painted china, becoming more and more bloodied by the second. The fight reaches a standstill... Wed, 07 Sep 2016 08:26 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1442/a-contemporary-analysis-of-action-films-with-female-leads http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1367/problematising-the-critical-realist-positional-approach-to-intersectionality By Ioana Cerasella Chis - Intersectionality is a much contested term which has been considered ‘a theory, a paradigm, a framework, a method, a perspective, or a lens’ (449; see Carbin and Edenheim 2013; Davis 2008). Academically, it offers a bridge for both generalist and specialist theorists to discuss the inter-relatedness of oppressive structures, identities, and experiences (Davis 2008:74-76). Hancock wonders whether intersectionality ‘can be the intellectual property of a single demographic group or whether it is in fact a meme’ (2015:624), while Carbin and Edenheim assert that intersectionality... Sun, 21 Feb 2016 02:29 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1367/problematising-the-critical-realist-positional-approach-to-intersectionality http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1352/the-development-of-modern-feminist-thought-a-summary By Saarang Narayan - This paper looks to trace three broad themes in the scholarship of feminism: the conceptualization of women as a socio-political category, the various ideas of women’s oppression, and the idea of emancipation. In particular, the work of four influential scholars—Mary Wollstonecraft, Friedrich Engels, Emma Goldman and Simone de Beauvoir—is used to provide a brief summary of the subject and its development. Each provides foundational ideas in the scholarship of feminism, in addition to representing the shifting discourse in the two major waves of feminism in modern history. Excerpts... Wed, 10 Feb 2016 09:20 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1352/the-development-of-modern-feminist-thought-a-summary http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/507/the-performance-of-femininity-in-charlotte-perkins-gilmans-herland-and-simone-de-beauviors-second-sex By Hayley Cavataro - Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novella Herland explores a separatist feminist utopia. Published in 1915, Herland begins when three men – a womanizer, a Southern gentleman fixated on woman as domestic angels, and a narrator who represents a neutral opinion – stumble upon a land inhabited only by females. This nation, dubbed ‘Herland,’ is a highly developed civilization filled with feminine imagery (every tree bears fruit in this fecund land). A utopia of sorts, it’s a land that values progress, peace, and order above all. As the men adjust to their nascent existence... Thu, 07 Apr 2011 09:34 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/507/the-performance-of-femininity-in-charlotte-perkins-gilmans-herland-and-simone-de-beauviors-second-sex