Halessa Regis

PhD researcher at the University of Brighton (UK) 2021; she holds a Master degree in English Language and Literature Studies (2017) with a focus on cultural studies, a Bachelor degree in English Language and Literature (2014)  with a focus on Applied Linguistics and English as a Lingua Franca and a Teaching degree in English Language and Literature (2014) for primary and secondary school, by the Federal University of Santa Catarina (DLLE / PPGI / UFSC). As a researcher, she has focused mostly on American Literature, Beat Generation women writers, marginal writing, cultural studies, linguistic inequalities regarding gender, feminist counterculture, interculturality, intertextuality and social cultures. She is also a member of the European Beat Studies Network (EBSN) since 2020. She has taught English as a second language, English Literature, Portuguese as a second language and Spanish in public and private schools, in Brazil (2002-2004, 2009-2017) and, in the UK (2017-2021). Nowadays, a full-time PhD researcher focusing on American literature, feminist theory and the Beat Generation women writers.

My research investigates feminist voices in the writing of Hettie Jones and Joyce Johnson, more specifically, in their memoirs, letters and poems. We may recognize hidden voices in the works of the Beat Generation women, in the light of some feminist criticism, identity discussions, and intertextual views. The Beat women writers discovered themselves as writers after the IIWW and wrote their world of political movement transforming their lives due to their double (or multi) consciousness views that related to gender discrimination over decades. Feminisms, herein discussed, encompass gender, race, ethnics, and social displacements. The Beat women writers recount their difficulties and hopes as women, mothers, workers and, writers/artists in their work, breaking patriarchal expectations for women’s roles within a white, supremacist post-war American society. They shifted women’s positions in many cultural aspects not only for their generation but for decades to follow. Currently discussions about Beat Generation women's work are being more and more spread, however, we have neither yet come to an end to completing a history of this Beat movement considering the legacy of the women related to it, nor raising sufficient awareness about discrimination and social inequality, especially regarding the feminisms intertwined in a faulty patriarchal system.

Keywords: Feminism; Counterculture; Hettie Jones; Joyce Johnson; Beat generation; Beat Generation Women; Memory; Narratives; Gender Studies, Feminist Theory.