In a two-part paper in this edition, Bentley et al. (2019; 2019a) consider brain plasticity as the neural embodiment of social and cultural experiences and in relation to the malleability of neural sex/gender differences – with particular reference to spatial cognition. In this short opinion piece, we raise some additional points that concern the societal … Read more
For a commentary to this article, and counter-response by the authors, please scroll down to see updates. Biological explanations of differences in behavior between women and men or girls and boys are everywhere, from scientific articles to bestselling self-help books to parenting guides to diversity and inclusion workshops to Hollywood movies. Often, the basic structure … Read more
Traducción: Beatriz Félix Canseco, Unidad Académica de Trabajo Social y Ciencias del Desarrollo Humano, Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas. Traducido de: Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Noviembre 2013, Vol. 17, No. 11. ¿Por qué el entendimiento popular sobre las diferencias entre lo femenino y lo masculino aún se basa en modelos rígidos de desarrollo, a pesar de … Read more
The peer-reviewed articles in this issue invite readers to ponder scientific questions about sex, gender, and brains that are entangled with, instead of opposed to, theoretical insights from gender and sexuality studies. Written by an international group of interdisciplinary scholars who work at the junction of brain sciences and gender studies, these papers do not … Read more
This issue of Scholar and Feminist Online edited by Laurie Postlewate, Christine McWebb and Lori J. Walters pushes us to think critically about women’s agency in pre-modern Europe. Divided into two halves, “Imagined Community” and “Enlightened Collaboration,” this issue spans from the Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century and provides nuanced engagements with the … Read more
The scholar’s project to understand women’s situations, roles, and identities in any given space, over any given period, encounters two important challenges: access to the subjects themselves and interpretive perspective on their lives and accomplishments. When the given period is the pre-modern era this is especially true, as women’s direct expressions were inhibited by lack … Read more
The history of sixteenth-century Siena contains, hidden in the folders of its official documentation, extremely rich and extremely fragmented glimpses of many women. In this essay, I intend to identify several women named in Girolamo Bargagli’s 1572 Sienese parlor-game book Dialogo de’ giuochi che nelle vegghie sanesi si usano di fare (Dialogue of the games … Read more
One of the best-kept secrets in late eighteenth-century Paris was Friedrich Melchior Grimm and Jacques Henri Meister’s Correspondance littéraire (1753–1813). Although well-known today, the bimonthly periodical of literary and theater reviews, letters, philosophical essays, and all genres of literary composition remained clandestine throughout its sixty years of circulation. Its readership was exclusive, limited to a … Read more
How did women actors and visual artists perform the role of “woman” from the end of the ancien régime to the early aftermath of the French Revolution? There is no doubt that “woman artist” was not a credible social status in eighteenth-century France. “Actress” was even less so. Between about 1780 and 1830, these two … Read more
The space of the salon is often purported to be one in which, in eighteenth-century France, women were allowed a new kind of agency and power. But far from favoring women’s integration into the public sphere, it appears to have reinforced gender norms. The idea that the salon offered women an essential influence in intellectual … Read more
