Elspeth Probyn (born 1958) [1] is an Australian academic. She is currently professor of gender and cultural studies at the University of Sydney. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. [2]
In a 2019 Feminism & Psychology interview, Probyn spoke of growing up in an army family and moving frequently. She described her father as upper middle class and her mother as a Canadian whose own father had been "a staunch socialist". Probyn credited her father's concern that she and her sister speak in English accents appropriate to their class status with having awakened her early awareness about class differences. Probyn attended state schools. [3]
Concurrently, she holds positions as adjunct professor of cultural geography at the University of Western Australia [4] and as adjunct research professor at the University of South Australia. [5] She received her Doctorate in Communications from Concordia University, 1989. She lectures and publishes in fields including cultural studies, media studies and sociology, with a particular focus on food, sexuality and the body. She has previously taught in Canada and the US. [ citation needed ]
Probyn's work has helped to establish several new areas of scholarship – from embodied research methods to cultural studies of food. Professor Probyn is the author of several groundbreaking monographs and over a hundred articles and chapters across the fields of gender, media, and cultural studies, philosophy, cultural geography, anthropology and critical psychology.
In her first book, Sexing the Self, Probyn explores how "feminist reflexivity" emerges from the experience of affective dissonance produced when an individual's way of knowing (epistemology) conflicted with the way they are able to be in relation to the world (ontology). Clare Hemmings argues that Probyn's understanding of reflexivity points to alternative ways of promoting political transformation by building solidarity around feminist activity rather than through limiting motivations related to self-preservation and identity politics. [6]
In Blush: Faces of Shame, published in 2005, Probyn investigates the productive aspects of shame and its capacity to generate new relational ethics. Explaining her conceptualization of shame as a productive affect, Probyn stated:
When one feels shame it is a profound intra-subjective moment that has the capacity to undo something of the person - that provokes a deep psychic emotional disturbance, which is productive in every sense. Feeling shame produces a new sense of self even if it only momentary; it produces a profound reflection on the self. [3]
Her current research includes questions about the sustainability of food production and consumption from an ethnographic and cultural perspective. [2] This draws from previous work on embodiment, gender, sexuality, ethics and cultural practice. Her exploration of these issues draws from contemporary debates about the more-than-human realm and the power of non-human agents and agencies.
As of 2018, her most recent book is Eating the Ocean (2016). [7]
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that societies prioritize the male point of view and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women.
Judith Pamela Butler is an American philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory.
Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She was best known for her writings on race, feminism, and class. The focus of hooks' writing was to explore the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published around 40 books, including works that ranged from essays, poetry, and children's books. She published numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures. Her work addressed love, race, class, gender, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism.
Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Objectification is most commonly examined at the level of a society, but can also refer to the behavior of individuals and is a type of dehumanization.
Donna J. Haraway is an American professor emerita in the history of consciousness and feminist studies departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. She has also contributed to the intersection of information technology and feminist theory, and is a leading scholar in contemporary ecofeminism. Her work criticizes anthropocentrism, emphasizes the self-organizing powers of nonhuman processes, and explores dissonant relations between those processes and cultural practices, rethinking sources of ethics.
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
Feminist sociology is an interdisciplinary exploration of gender and power throughout society. Here, it uses conflict theory and theoretical perspectives to observe gender in its relation to power, both at the level of face-to-face interaction and reflexivity within social structures at large. Focuses include sexual orientation, race, economic status, and nationality.
Intersectionality is a sociological analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, height, age, weight and physical appearance. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing. However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the practical uses of intersectionality.
The men's movement is a social movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily in Western countries, which consists of groups and organizations of men and their allies who focus on gender issues and whose activities range from self-help and support to lobbying and activism.
Sheila Jeffreys is a former professor of political science at the University of Melbourne, born in England. A lesbian feminist scholar, she analyses the history and politics of human sexuality.
Beverley Skeggs is a British sociologist, noted as one of the foremost feminist sociologists in the world. Currently, she works as a "Distinguished Professor" in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University, developing a Center for Social Inequalities in the North West of England. She continues to run the "Economics of Care" theme at the International Inequalities centre at the London School of Economics (LSE) and is a visiting professor at Goldsmiths University. She has been the head of two of the UK's leading Sociology Departments, at the University of Manchester and Goldsmiths, as well as co-director of Lancaster's Women's Studies. In addition, she played a part in transforming Britain's oldest sociology journal, The Sociological Review, into an independent foundation devoted to opening up critical social science and supporting social scientists.
Angela McRobbie is a British cultural theorist, feminist, and commentator whose work combines the study of popular culture, contemporary media practices and feminism through conceptions of a third-person reflexive gaze. She is a professor of communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Feminism in China refers to the collection of historical movements and ideologies in time aimed at redefining the role and status. women in China. Feminism in China began in the 20th century in tandem with the Chinese Revolution. Feminism in modern China is closely linked with socialism and class issues. Some commentators believe that this close association is damaging to Chinese feminism and argue that the interests of the party are placed before those of women.
Rosalind Clair Gill is a British sociologist and feminist cultural theorist. She is currently Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at City, University of London. Gill is author or editor of ten books, and numerous articles and chapters, and her work has been translated into Chinese, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.
Feminist metaphysics aims to question how inquiries and answers in the field of metaphysics have supported sexism. Feminist metaphysics overlaps with fields such as the philosophy of mind and philosophy of self. Feminist metaphysicians such as Sally Haslanger, Ásta, and Judith Butler have sought to explain the nature of gender in the interest of advancing feminist goals.
Lisa L. Moore is a Canadian-American academic and poet. She earned a B.A. in English with honors at Queen's University in 1986, and then completed her doctorate at Cornell University in 1991. Principal themes in Moore’s work include the centrality of love between women to literary genres such as the novel, the landscape arts, and the sonnet; the transatlantic and multi-racial history of feminist art and thinking; and the importance of poetry to second-wave feminist, womanist, and lesbian cultures and politics.
Kay Deaux is an American social psychologist known for her pioneering research on immigration and feminist identity. Deaux is Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Department of Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). According to Brenda Major, Deaux's work centers on the question of how social categories affect one's psychological makeup, social behavior, and life outcomes, while emphasizing the subjectivity of people's identities and experiences and the larger social context.
Meredith Rachael Jones is an Australian cultural theorist, currently employed at Brunel University London as Professor in Arts and Humanities, and as the director of its Institute of Communities and Society.
Professor Catharine Lumby is an Australian academic, author and journalist, currently Chair of the Department of Media and Communication at University of Sydney.
Elizabeth A. Wilson is a Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Emory University. She is a scholar of feminist science studies, and her work brings together psychoanalytic theory, affect theory, feminist and queer theory, and neurobiology. She is the author of Neural Geographies: Feminism and the Microstructure of Cognition (1998), Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body (2004), Affect and Artificial Intelligence (2010), and Gut Feminism (2015).