Between Hope and Disappointment: Visiting and Revisiting Feminist Theory, Representation, Popular Culture, and Gender

Abstract

This panel explores different dimensions of learning and seeing and revisiting politics and feminism. The papers examine narratives, imaginaries, and theories to see where hope and disappointment are woven into our lives and our cultural understandings of feminism and gender. Using comparative politics, memory studies, aesthetic theory, political theory, and feminist theory to analyze more contemporary texts and outcomes, the authors work to uncover our thinking about realities and ideas beyond reality and how all of this contributes very real politics. Papers focusing on disparate popular culture narratives (kidnapping and trafficking in different global regions; fascinations with witches and women with power; superpowered and superfit bodies and the overwhelming presence of superheroes in contemporary culture; and the false promises of feminism) find strikingly connected ideas about hope and disappointment within feminist theory.

Title	Details
"Not Enough": Navigating dichotomies and decolonial hopes as Latina ECR in Academia	View Paper Details
Trafficking in the -Woods: the Impact of Accurate Representation of Sex Trafficking in American, Indian, and Nigerian Cinema	View Paper Details
Witchcraft All Along: Anxiety and Gendered Power in Popular Imagination	View Paper Details
Caucus Democracy: A Feminist Political Science Fiction	View Paper Details
The Aesthetics of the Body: Superheroes, Power, Gender, Expectations, and Disappointments	View Paper Details