Gender, Space, and Feminist Geography

doi:10.1017/9781009424264.009

Chapter 6 - Gender, Space, and Feminist Geography

from Part II - Developments

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025

Radost Rangelova

Edited by

Elizabeth Evans

Show author details

Elizabeth Evans: Affiliation:
Wayne State University, Detroit

Book contents

Get access

Summary

This chapter offers an overview of the key thinkers, main concepts, and critical arguments that inform feminist geographers’ work on the relationship between gender and space, and it conveys some principal ways in which this work has been important for literary scholars interested in the interplay between gender and space. I propose that the field’s multidisciplinary theoretical conversations on space and gender have two principal objectives. On the one hand, by revealing how everyday spaces are gendered and queered, they work to dismantle the traditional patriarchal order that governs them. On the other, they adopt intersectional approaches, aiming to expose the relationship between patriarchy and other axes of oppression (racism, classism, ableism, etc.) in a variety of spaces, making visible the complex ways in which marginalized people navigate, negotiate, and subvert oppressive spaces. Feminist geographers thus propose and enable more liberatory gender discourses in order to envision alternative, inclusive spatial configurations of social relations.

Keywords

feminist geography space gender Caribbean literature house city nation

Type: Chapter
Information: Space and Literary Studies , pp. 103 - 119

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009424264.009 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

Blunt, Alison and Rose, Gillian. “Introduction: Women’s Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies.” Writing Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies, edited by Blunt, Alison and Rose, Gillian. The Guilford Press, 1994, pp. 1–25.Google Scholar

De Castro, Juan. The Spaces of Latin American Literature: Tradition, Globalization, and Cultural Production. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.CrossRef Google Scholar

DeLoughrey, Elizabeth. Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures. University of Hawai’i Press, 2007.Google Scholar

Díaz, Ella. “The Art of Afro-Latina Consciousness-Raising in Shadowshaper.” Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature, edited by Boffone, Trevor and Herrera, Cristina. University Press of Mississippi, 2020, pp. 88–102.CrossRef Google Scholar

Dowler, Lorraine, Carubia, Josephine, and Szczygiel, Bonj. “Introduction.” Gender and Landscape: Renegotiating Morality and Space, edited by Carubia, Josephine, Dowler, Lorraine, and Szczygiel, Bonj. Routledge, 2005, pp. 1–15.Google Scholar

Duncan, Nancy. “Renegotiating Gender and Sexuality in Public and Private Spaces.” Bodyspace: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality, edited by Duncan, Nancy. Routledge, 1996, pp. 127–45.CrossRef Google Scholar

Edmondson, Belinda. “The Urban–Rural Dialectic and the Changing Role of Black Women: Jane’s Career, Banana Bottom, and Pocomania.” The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature, edited by Bucknor, Michael and Donnell, Alison. Routledge, 2011, pp. 157–64.Google Scholar

Francis, Donette. “Strategies of Caribbean Feminism.” The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature, edited by Bucknor, Michael and Donnell, Alison. Routledge, 2011, pp. 332–43.Google Scholar

Gaensbauer, Deborah. “Geography and Identity in Maryse Condé’s Dieu nos l’a donné.” The French Review, 74, no. 2, 2000, pp. 287–95.Google Scholar

García Calderón, Myrna. Espacios de la memoria en el Caribe Hispánico insular y sus diásporas. Ediciones Callejón, 2012.Google Scholar

Hamilton-McKenna, Caroline. “‘Beyond the Boundaries’: Negotiations of Space, Place, Body and Subjectivity in YA Fiction.” Children’s Literature in Education, 52, 2021, pp. 307–25.Google Scholar

Kennedy, Joy. “The Edge of the Map: Feminist Geography and Literature.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 6, no. 1, 2004, pp. 79–90.Google Scholar

Lambright, Anne. “On Being a Woman in the City of Kings: Women Writing (in) Contemporary Lima.” Unfolding the City: Women Write the City in Latin America, edited by Lambright, Anne and Guerrero, Elizabeth. University of Minnesota Press, 2007, pp. 49–66.Google Scholar

Lambright, Anne. and Guerrero, Elisabeth. “Introduction.” Unfolding the City: Women Write the City in Latin America, edited by Lambright, Anne and Guerrero, Elizabeth. University of Minnesota Press, 2007, pp. xi–xxxii.Google Scholar

Latorre, Sobeira. “Caribbean Crossings: The Historical Fictions of Julia Alvarez and Ana Lydia Vega.” Journal of Caribbean Literatures, 7, no. 2, 2013, pp. 1–14.Google Scholar

Longhurst, Robyn. “Geography and Gender: A ‘Critical’ Time?” Progress in Human Geography, 26, no. 4, 2002, pp. 544–52.CrossRef Google Scholar

Manzanas, Ana and Benito, Jesús. Occupying Space in American Literature and Culture: Static Heroes, Social Movements, and Empowerment. Routledge, 2014.CrossRef Google Scholar

Massey, Doreen. Space, Place, and Gender. University of Minnesota Press, 1994.Google Scholar

McDowell, Linda. “Space, Place, and Gender Relations: Part II. Identity, Difference, Feminist Geometries and Geographies.” Progress in Human Geography, 17, no. 3, 1993, pp. 305–18.Google Scholar

Narain, Mona and Gevirtz, Karen Bloom. “Introduction.” Gender and Space in British Literature, 1660–1820, edited by Narain, Mona and Gevirtz, Karen Bloom. Ashgate, 2014, pp. 1–16.Google Scholar

Pérez Fernández, Irene. “Representing Third Spaces, Fluid Identities and Contested Spaces in Contemporary British Literature.” Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 31, no. 2, 2009, pp. 143–60.Google Scholar

Perfetti, Lisa. “The Postcolonial Land that Needs to Be Loved: Caribbean Nature and the Garden in Simone Schwartz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumé Miracle.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 14, no. 1, 2007, pp. 89–105.CrossRef Google Scholar

Rama, Ángel. The Lettered City. Duke University Press, 1996.Google Scholar

Rangelova, Radost. Gendered Geographies in Puerto Rican Culture: Spaces, Sexualities, Solidarities. University of North Carolina Press, 2015.Google Scholar

Rivera, Carmen. “Rosario Ferré and the Memory of Space.” South Atlantic Review, 81, no. 3, 2016, pp. 56–72.Google Scholar

Rodríguez, Ileana. House, Garden, Nation: Space, Gender, and Ethnicity in Post-Colonial Latin American Literature. Duke University Press, 1994.Google Scholar

Tabur, Semsettin. Contested Spaces in Contemporary North American Novels: Reading for Space. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.Google Scholar

Taylor, Emily. “Rewriting the Mother/Nation: No Telephone to Heaven, In Another Place, Not Here and Cereus Blooms at Night.” The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature, edited by Bucknor, Michael and Donnell, Alison. Routledge, 2011, pp. 234–42.Google Scholar

Wilhite, Keith. “Blank Spaces: Outdated Maps and Unsettled Subjects in Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies’.” MELUS, 41, no. 2, 2016, pp. 76–96.CrossRef Google Scholar

Yan, Lin. “Identity, Place, and Non-Belonging in Jean Rhys’s Fiction.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 8, no. 10, 2018, pp. 1278–82.CrossRef Google Scholar