Ask a Feminist

On this episode, Sandra McEvoy speaks to Jennifer Fluri about what the United States’s withdrawal from Afghanistan means for Afghan women and for the feminist movement in Afghanistan. Jennifer’s expertise as a geographer and her transnational feminist perspective are sorely needed in this perilous moment. As the withdrawal was under way, we heard familiar concerns--voiced by pundits and politicians--about the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban. But the broader context of the long US occupation, its effects on gender relations, and the history of women’s organizing in Afghanistan makes for a much more complicated picture, as you’ll hear. Jennifer--a professor of geography at University of Colorado Boulder who has worked in and on Afghanistan for almost twenty years--illuminates this complex history in this conversation with Sandra, who is clinical associate professor of political science at Boston University and a member of the Signs editorial board.

Three esteemed feminist science-studies scholars—Sarah Richardson, Rene Almeling, and Natali Valdez—discuss reproduction in the age of epigenetics. They offer a critical appraisal of recent developments in the much-hyped field of epigenetics, particularly as those developments have focused on reproduction. Their discussion provides a crucial corrective as the biological sciences push for more epigenetic and high-tech approaches to reproductive health. Their feminist lens allows them to ask new questions and push back against scientific approaches that continue to place responsibility for managing reproductive risk onto individual women. They ask why these new epigenetic approaches—which even feminists had hoped might lead to more capacious or holistic understandings of reproduction—ultimately fail to live up to their own hype.

How has feminism shaped US asylum law? Why and how is the Trump Administration trying to undo feminist gains? Hear asylum- and refugee-law expert Deborah Anker discuss the history and present of gender in the US asylum system in the latest episode of Ask a Feminist. Anker is the founder and director of the Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Law Clinical Program and is one of the most widely known asylum scholars and practitioners in the United States. She speaks to Aziza Ahmed, professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law, and takes us through the key cases and arguments that have led to the current moment, the transformations the system is currently undergoing, and why she is less pessimistic than might be expected. A transcript is also available on our website (http://signsjournal.org/ask-a-feminist/). The theme song is “I Dunno” by Grapes, available on SoundCloud.

Renowned labor and immigrant-rights organizer Dolores Huerta speaks to Rachel Rosenbloom, professor of law at Northeastern University, about gender and immigrant rights. Huerta speaks about the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment, the gender politics of the labor and immigrant-rights movements, DACA and the DREAMers, and the possibilities for organizing during Trump's presidency. This conversation is part of the Feminist Public Intellectual Project, a series of open-access features presented by Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (http://signsjournal.org/fpip).