Nichole Edwards
I am currently a contract faculty member at Western University, Brescia University College, and Wilfrid Laurier University. I have also taught courses at University of Guelph, and Trent University. I teach in the departments of Women's Studies, Sociology, Family Studies, and Youth and Children's Studies.
Courses I'll be teaching in 2017/2018 academic year:
WS2161A - Women and Popular Culture (Western)
WS2163B - Sex Education: Its Histories and Controversies (Western)
SOC2242A - Gender and Society (Brescia)
SOC3385F - Sexuality and Stigma (Brescia)
SOC2235 - The Family (Brescia)
YY440BR - Youth and Sexuality (Laurier Brantford)
Past courses include:
Contemporary Feminisms, Social Construction of Gender, Diversity and the Canadian Family, Gender Perspectives on Families and Households
_______________________
My PhD thesis considered the relationship between feminism and heterosexuality in practice. It aimed to explore how feminist values and beliefs help to shape or inform (hetero)sexual practices, identities and relationships. In turn, it highlighted how lived experiences of (hetero)sexuality influence feminist politics. Seventeen feminist-identified women explored this complex relationship through solicited diaries and semi-structured (follow-up) interviews.
Theoretically informed by a feminist phenomenological poststructuralist framework, this research argues for the importance of lived experience as a way of making meaning. Equally, it recognizes the narratives presented as part of a much broader social world – a world with already established meanings. Participants are understood as both producers and carriers of meaning, where the social world is constructed through their actions (and stories), but who are, in turn, being constructed by them. Plummer notes that sexual stories work in many ways - they reinforce the dominant culture, and at the same time, put it into question. These women’s experiences have proven to produce both.
The findings of the research suggest that feminist values not only influence experiences of heterosexuality within the context of a sexual encounter, but also between instances of sex (through everyday interactions that occur outside a sexual encounter) and beyond the context of sex. This three-part approach supports the idea that meaning-making is fluid, unstable, and subject to change as participants move through different contexts of sex; as such, the findings present an understanding of plural feminisms and multiple heterosexualities, where feminist values and identities are just as various in meaning as the (hetero)sexual experiences from which they emerge. Grounded in often complicated and contradictory narratives, this research explores a relationship between feminism and heterosexuality that acknowledges its complexities and possibilities, tensions and potentialities, and in doing so, presents a nuanced understanding of feminist heterosexualities.
Supervisors: Dr. David Bell and Dr. Sally Hines
Courses I'll be teaching in 2017/2018 academic year:
WS2161A - Women and Popular Culture (Western)
WS2163B - Sex Education: Its Histories and Controversies (Western)
SOC2242A - Gender and Society (Brescia)
SOC3385F - Sexuality and Stigma (Brescia)
SOC2235 - The Family (Brescia)
YY440BR - Youth and Sexuality (Laurier Brantford)
Past courses include:
Contemporary Feminisms, Social Construction of Gender, Diversity and the Canadian Family, Gender Perspectives on Families and Households
_______________________
My PhD thesis considered the relationship between feminism and heterosexuality in practice. It aimed to explore how feminist values and beliefs help to shape or inform (hetero)sexual practices, identities and relationships. In turn, it highlighted how lived experiences of (hetero)sexuality influence feminist politics. Seventeen feminist-identified women explored this complex relationship through solicited diaries and semi-structured (follow-up) interviews.
Theoretically informed by a feminist phenomenological poststructuralist framework, this research argues for the importance of lived experience as a way of making meaning. Equally, it recognizes the narratives presented as part of a much broader social world – a world with already established meanings. Participants are understood as both producers and carriers of meaning, where the social world is constructed through their actions (and stories), but who are, in turn, being constructed by them. Plummer notes that sexual stories work in many ways - they reinforce the dominant culture, and at the same time, put it into question. These women’s experiences have proven to produce both.
The findings of the research suggest that feminist values not only influence experiences of heterosexuality within the context of a sexual encounter, but also between instances of sex (through everyday interactions that occur outside a sexual encounter) and beyond the context of sex. This three-part approach supports the idea that meaning-making is fluid, unstable, and subject to change as participants move through different contexts of sex; as such, the findings present an understanding of plural feminisms and multiple heterosexualities, where feminist values and identities are just as various in meaning as the (hetero)sexual experiences from which they emerge. Grounded in often complicated and contradictory narratives, this research explores a relationship between feminism and heterosexuality that acknowledges its complexities and possibilities, tensions and potentialities, and in doing so, presents a nuanced understanding of feminist heterosexualities.
Supervisors: Dr. David Bell and Dr. Sally Hines
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http://www.theskinny.co.uk/deviance/features/304266-female_pleasure_desire_youre_doing_phd_in_what
Print edition (found on p.39): http://issuu.com/theskinny/docs/issuu_the_skinny_northwest_april13?e=1069858/1948716
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Papers
Motivated by overwhelming themes of protection and prevention, the informal sexual knowledge these women gravitated towards approached understandings of sex and sexuality from a critically informed, sex-positive, feminist framework, that includes the potential and possibility of female pleasure and desire. In many cases, seeking informal sexual knowledge emerged alongside these young women’s early associations with feminist values and identities; as such, this article considers the role of feminism and sex-positive texts in young women’s reflections of gaining informal sexual knowledge.
Key words: feminism, sex-positive, young women, heterosexuality, sex education
This chapter aim to contribute to a growing body of literature that is advancing the way agency is conceptualized, where the focus becomes less on agency as something to be achieved once independent from the constraint of dominant norms, and more so on the ability to make an act one’s own - where inhabiting and investing in dominant norms is a means of locating oneself in one’s own desires and one’s own sexuality.
Keywords – choice, agency, feminism, sexual practices, embodiment, submission
http://www.theskinny.co.uk/deviance/features/304266-female_pleasure_desire_youre_doing_phd_in_what
Print edition (found on p.39): http://issuu.com/theskinny/docs/issuu_the_skinny_northwest_april13?e=1069858/1948716
"
Motivated by overwhelming themes of protection and prevention, the informal sexual knowledge these women gravitated towards approached understandings of sex and sexuality from a critically informed, sex-positive, feminist framework, that includes the potential and possibility of female pleasure and desire. In many cases, seeking informal sexual knowledge emerged alongside these young women’s early associations with feminist values and identities; as such, this article considers the role of feminism and sex-positive texts in young women’s reflections of gaining informal sexual knowledge.
Key words: feminism, sex-positive, young women, heterosexuality, sex education
This chapter aim to contribute to a growing body of literature that is advancing the way agency is conceptualized, where the focus becomes less on agency as something to be achieved once independent from the constraint of dominant norms, and more so on the ability to make an act one’s own - where inhabiting and investing in dominant norms is a means of locating oneself in one’s own desires and one’s own sexuality.
Keywords – choice, agency, feminism, sexual practices, embodiment, submission