This book offers a novel, detailed and sensitive exploration of women's engagement with feminism. Centred on the themes of generations, hope, emotions and belonging, each chapter attends to the specific and particular practices of 'becoming feminist' via a series of accessible case studies. Adopting a theoretical and methodological focus on narrative and memory, this original and absorbing work analyses the various and complex ways in which feminism and its histories are received and processed by some feminist women today. Its focus on the specificity of experience disrupts overarching narratives of feminism and its histories, whilst acknowledging that such narratives are often used to sustain, defend and maintain a secure feminist identity. In doing so, it develops a growing body of work concerned with the relationships women forge to feminism's pasts, presents and futures, with a distinct focus on the stories feminist women tell about their lives. It will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, psychosocial studies, gender studies, women's studies and cultural studies.

From the NPR host of The Indicator and correspondent for Planet Money comes an "accessible, funny, clear-eyed, and practical" (Sarah Knight, New York Times bestselling author) guide for how women can apply the principles of 16th-century philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli to their work lives and finally shatter the glass ceiling--perfect for fans of Feminist Fight Club, Lean In, and Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office. Women have been making strides towards equality for decades, or so we're often told. They've been increasingly entering male-dominated areas of the workforce and consistently surpassing their male peers in grades, university attendance, and degrees. They've recently stormed the political arena with a vengeance. But despite all of this, the payoff is--quite literally--not there: the gender pay gap has held steady at about 20% since 2000. And the number of female CEOs for Fortune 500 companies has actually been declining. So why, in the age of #MeToo and #TimesUp, is the glass ceiling still holding strong? And how can we shatter it for once and for all? Stacy Vanek Smith's advice: ask Machiavelli "with this delicious look at what we have to gain by examining our relationship to power" (Sally Helgesen, New York Times bestselling author). Using The Prince as a guide and with charm and wit, Smith applies Renaissance politics to the 21st century, and demonstrates how women can take and maintain power in careers where they have long been cast as second-best. "Machiavelli For Women is the ultimate battle guide for our times. Brimming with hard-boiled strategies, laced with wit, it's a must-read for every woman ready to wield power unapologetically" (Claire Shipman, coauthor of The Confidence Code).

For centuries, the "great man" format and masculine discourse of biography and autobiography have eclipsed women. If we accept this history, we remain ignorant of "Lady Sarashina," a Japanese woman of the Han period, whose book survives from the 11th century. We overlook Margaret Cavendish and Dame Julian, two early English autobiographers. And we fail to consider sufficiently slave narratives, oral histories, or lesbian "coming out" stories.

Telling Women's Lives assesses existing traditions of autobiography and biography in search of a method capable of conveying the distinctive content of women's lives while retaining the tenor of feminine subjectivity. Drawing on feminist research methodologies of the past two decades as well as anthropology and sociology, Long paves the way for the formulation of an emergent feminist methodology for telling women's lives.

This highly original study seeks to revise and recreate the genre so as to accommodate a feminine discourse, narrator, reader, and subject. The "messiness" of women's lives-the daily work and detail that men have programmatically excluded-acquires new meaning as Long develops here an innovative theory of sociobiography.

Feminist Erasures presents a collection of essays that examines the state of feminism in North America and Western Europe by focusing on multiple sites such as media, politics and activism. Through individual examples, the essays reveal the extent to which feminism has been made (in)visible and (ir)relevant in contemporary Western culture.

Scholars of second-wave feminism often center their research on northern thought and political activity and usually overlook the vibrant pockets of actiVism that existed elsewhere. In Remapping Second-Wave Feminism, Janet Allured attempts to reshape the national narrative by focusing on the grassroots women's movement in the South, particularly in Louisiana. This book delves into unexplored origins of the feminist movement. While acknowledging the ways that the fight for African American civil rights produced the women's liberation movement in the South-and subsequently in the North- Allured also locates other wellsprings of the movement that were particularly important to southern change-seekers, especially preexisting women's organisations such as the League of Women Voters, the YWCA, and liberal churches. For many southern feminists, being part of a faith tradition that emphasised social justice reform is what ultimately propelled them into working for gender equality. Allured highlights key figures in Louisiana; divisions based on regional, sexual, and ideological differences; access to abortion; lawsuits that had national implications that emanated from southern women; and the fight against sexual assault and domestic violence. Through detailed archival and oral history research, she has forged a new path, making this a foundational work for the eld. Remapping Second-Wave Feminism will amend how we reflexively view feminism as a northern phenomenon, giving proper due to the southern contribution.

Male rape is a feminist issue - but perhaps not in the way that you might think. This work is an experiment in Foucauldian thought that attempts to satisfy Foucault's imperative to 'think differently'. From this positioning, feminist constructions of 'male rape' can plausibly be claimed to operate as a 'regime of truth', but one must necessarily question whether this is running counter to patriarchy.
This book seeks to problematize knowledge and practices regarding 'male rape', examining the social realms of the Academy, popular culture, policy and provision in the constitution of the subject. Discussion is moved beyond notions of fairness or justice. Instead, Cohen seeks to ascertain the discursive regularities in these sites, considers the power-effects of such discourse and thus conceives of 'male rape' as illustrating the success of governmentality.

This philosophical monograph on forgiveness is the first of its kind to be written from a feminist perspective. Kathryn J. Norlock urges scholars to attend to gender when analyzing and recommending forgiveness in practice. She demonstrates that while many academics find the concept of forgiveness both complex and fascinating, they seldom pay attention to the fact that issue of forgiveness intersect with those of gender in many crucial ways. By redefining forgiveness and what constitutes as an act of forgiveness, Norlock encourages readers to consider new questions about the advisability of trying to have a single, universal set of conditions for forgiveness because of the multidimensional nature of its practice and application.

This collection of essays by a diverse group of young academics, established critics, and well-known writers strikes an intriguing balance between scholarship and reminiscence. The only full-length book on Mary McCarthy that is not a biography, this volume contains discussions of McCarthy as a member of the New York intelligentsia, her search for a just and ethical political philosophy, and the paradox of her views on feminism. The contributors include McCarthy biographers Carol Brightman, Carol Gelderman, and Fran Kiernan; novelists Thomas Flanagan, Maureen Howard, and Thomas Mallon; Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Frances Fitzgerald; and critics Morris Dickstein and Katie Roiphe. The book concludes with a moving reminiscence by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Discover Virginia Woolf's landmark essay on women's struggle for independence and creative opportunity A Room of One's Own is one of Virginia Woolf's most influential works and widely recognized for its extraordinary contribution to the women's movement. Based on a lecture given at Girton College, Cambridge, it is one of the great feminist polemics, ranging in its themes from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (imaginary) sister, and the effects of poverty and sexual constraint on female creativity. The work was ranked by The Guardian newspaper as number 45 in the 100 World's Best Non-fiction Books. Part of the bestselling Capstone series, this collectible, hard-back edition of A Room of One's Own includes an insightful introduction by Jessica Gildersleeve that explains the book's place in modernist literature and why it still resonates with contemporary readers. Born in 1882, Virginia Woolf was one of the most forward-thinking English writers of her time. Author of the classic novels Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), she was also a prolific writer of essays, diaries, letters and biographies, and a member of the celebrated Bloomsbury Set of intellectuals and artists. Discover why A Room of One's Own is considered among the greatest and most influential works of female empowerment and creativity Learn why Woolf's classic has stood the test of time. Make this attractive, high-quality hardcover edition a permanent addition to your library Enjoy an insightful introduction by Jessica Gildersleeve, who connects the themes of the text to the concerns of today's audience Capstone Classics brings A Room of One's Own to a new generation of readers who can discover how Woolf's book broke new artistic ground and advanced the position of women writers and creatives around the world.

Existential Eroticism: A Feminist Approach to Understanding Women's Oppression-Perpetuating Choices offer a unique lens aimed at the underbelly of the lady through which feminists can reorient discourses on rationality and moral responsibility related to women's oppression-perpetuating choices. Shay Welch utilizes feminist ethics, broadly construed as feminist philosophy concerned with the ethical commitment to eliminate oppression, to scrutinize how women regard and judge one another and to offer a more representative account of restriction, rationality, and responsibility to begin the healing process between diverse and divergent women. The book aims not only to construct an analysis of self-perpetuated oppression that will broaden feminist understandings of experiences that motivate many women to choose as they do, it serves as a means of understanding the marginalized.

This study is about lesbian feminists in London in the late 1980s. It was a period when their community was experiencing considerable conflict and transition, as ideas about gender and sexuality on which their political beliefs were based were being challenged within their own community. The book goes through their public and personal lives, looking at how they coped with the challenges and the complex world of London, and how they began to change as a result.

Theory on the Edge brings together some of the foremost specialists working at the interdisciplinary interface between Irish Studies, feminist theory, queer theory, and gender and sexuality studies in order to trace the contemporary development of feminist thinking and activism in Ireland. The collection opens with a contribution from Ailbhe Smyth, the high-profile academic and public activist, whom many of the contributors acknowledge as a formative influence in their own feminist development. Essays utilize theory rooted in material issues, but always ask 'why' rather than just 'how' to draw interesting new conclusions on the depth and variety of Irish feminism.

"In these intricately woven, theoretically rich and subtle essays, Lidia Curti re-reads a diverse range of texts narrated by women in a variety of media. She deploys the interplay between genres and gender to disclose women narrating both the power of the female imaginary and the poetical and political reach of the voices, bodies and histories which sustain them."
"--Stuart Hall"

Exploring women's narratives from an innovative feminist perspective, Female Stories, Female Bodies combines theory and textual commentary in a wide-ranging interrogation of representation and identity, gender and genre. Cultural critic Lidia Curti takes us through a diverse range of texts in a broad spectrum of media and genres, drawing on feminist, psychoanalytic, postmodern, and postcolonial theory in a challenging and rigorous discussion of such themes as hybridity and monstrosity, the male and female gaze, melancholia, desire, and paranoia.

From Angela Carter and Toni Morrison to Jeanette Winterson and Jane Bowles, from daytime t.v. to Shakespearean drama, Curti examines variegated "textualities" in search of the "spaces and times" that narrative occupies in women's lives. Following de Certeau's dictum that "our stories order our world, providing the mimetic and mythical structures for experience," she argues that women must retrace their way in the interminable plurality of female narrative texts as a strategy for resisting the "official" closure of female identity. Female Stories, Female Bodies takes us on such a journey, bringing the body of female narrative to bear on the lived experiences of women everywhere.

This book is based on rich empirical data and findings concerning the lives, perceptions and ambitions of young middle-class female graduates, thus providing essential insights into the lives and viewpoints of a previously unresearched group in China from a feminist scholarly perspective. The study shows how the lives of young women and debates over youthful femininity lie at the very heart of modern Chinese history and society. With a central focus on women's issues, the book's ultimate goal is to enable Western readers to better understand the changing ideologies and the overall social domain of China under the leadership of President Xi. The empirical data presented includes interviews and group discussions, as well as illustrations, tables and images collected during a prolonged period of fieldwork. The insights shared here will facilitate cross-cultural communication with both Western feminist academics and readers who are sensitive to different cultures.

Both film noir and the Weimar street film hold a continuing fascination for film spectators and film theorists alike. The female characters, especially the alluring femmes fatales, remain a focus for critical and popular attention. In the tradition of such attention, "Dangerous Dames" focuses on the femme fatale and her antithesis, the femme attrapee.
Unlike most theorists, Jans Wager examines these archetypes from the perspective of the female spectator and rejects the persistence of vision that allows a reading of these female characters only as representations of unstable postwar masculinity. Professor Wager suggests that the woman in the audience has always seen and understood these characters as representations of a complex aspect of her existence.
"Dangerous Dames" looks at the Weimar street films "The Street," "Variety," "Asphalt," and "M" and the film noir movies "The Maltese Falcon," "Gun Crazy," and "The Big Heat." This book opens the doors to spectators and theorists alike, suggesting cinematic pleasures outside the bounds of accepted readings and beyond the narrow categorization of film noir and the Weimar street film as masculine forms.

This collection of essays considers the ways in which feminism is still an important issue in twenty-first century society. Looking at various forms of literature, media, and popular culture, the book establishes that contemporary images of femininity are highly contested, complex, and frequently problematic.

This book sheds new light on the way that, in the last decade, digital technologies have become inextricably linked to culture, economy and politics and how they have transformed feminist and queer activism. This exciting text critically analyses the contradictions, tensions and often-paradoxical aspects that characterize such politics, both in relation to identity and to activist practice. Aristea Fotopoulou examines how activists make claims about rights online, and how they negotiate access, connectivity, openness and visibility in digital networks. Through a triple focus on embodied media practices, labour and imaginaries, and across the themes of bodily autonomy, pornography, reproduction, and queer social life, she advocates a move away from understandings of digital media technologies as intrinsically exploitative or empowering. By reinstating the media as constant material agents in the process of politicization, Fotopoulou creates a powerful text that appeals to students and scholars of digital media, gender and sexuality, and readers interested in the role of media technologies in activism.

This book argues that the female philosopher, a literary figure brought into existence by Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, embodied the transformations of feminist thought during the transition from the Enlightenment to the Romantic period. By imagining a series of alternate lives and afterlives for the female philosopher, women authors of the early Romantic period used the resources of the novel to evaluate Wollstonecraft's ideas and legacy. This book examines how these writers' opinions converged on such issues as progress, education, and ungendered virtues, and how they diverged on a fundamental question connected to Wollstonecraft's life and feminist thought: whether the enlightened, intellectual woman should live according to her own principles, or sacrifice moral autonomy in the interest of pragmatic accommodation to societal expectations.

In its twelfth volume this text examines a number of Patristic texts and early Christian documents from a feminist perspective."The Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature" is the twelfth volume in the "Feminist Companion to the Bible and Early Christian Literature" series. Presenting cutting-edge studies by both established scholars and new voices from diverse cultures and contexts, the series not only displays the range of feminist readings, but also offers essential readings for all students of the New Testament and early Christian literature.This volume examines a number of Patristic texts and early Christian documents from a feminist perspective including "Clement of Rome", "Clement of Alexandria", the "Christian Martyr" and the "Gospel of Thomas". The contributors include: Barbara Bowe, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, Denise Buell, Virginia Burrus, Elizabeth Castelli, Elizabeth Clark, Kathy Gaca, Robin Jensen, Ross S Kraemer, Carolyn Osiek, Carolyn Osiek, and Theresa Shaw. It is suitable for libraries; academics; postgraduates and upper level undergraduates.

This is a feminist study of a recurring character type in classic British detective fiction by women - a woman who behaves like a Victorian gentleman. Exploring this character type leads to a new evaluation of the politics of classic detective fiction and the middlebrow novel as a whole.

Recovering the powerful and influential contributions of women from the nation's formative years The Political Thought of America's Founding Feminists traces the significance of Frances Wright, Harriet Martineau, Angelina and Sarah Grimke, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth in shaping American political thinking. These women understood the relationship between sexism, racism, and economic inequality; yet, they are virtually unknown in American political thought because they are considered activists, not theorists. Their efforts to expand the reach of America's founding ideals laid the groundwork not only for women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery, but for the broader expansion of civil, political, and human rights that would characterize much of the twentieth century and continues to unfold today. Drawing on a careful reading of speeches, letters and other archival sources, Lisa Pace Vetter shows the ways in which the early women's rights movement and abolitionism were central to the development of American political thought. The Political Thought of America's Founding Feminists demonstrates that early American political thought is incomplete without attention to these important female thinkers, and that an understanding of early American women's movements is incomplete without considering its profound impact on political thought. A complex and thoughtful guide to the indispensable role of women in shaping the American way of life, The Political Thought of America's Founding Feminists is essential for a comprehensive understanding of the history of American political thought.

This book takes the contentious issue of designer babies and argues against the liberal eugenic current of bioethics that commends the logic and choice regimes of selective reproduction. Against conceptions of Procreative Beneficence that trade on a disregard for the gifts of maternal bodies, it seeks to recover a thought of maternal giving and a more hospitable ethic of generational beneficence. Exploring themes of responsibility, gift and natality, the book refigures the experience of reproduction as the site of an ethical response to future generations, where refusal to choose one's children is one virtuous response. The book will appeal to anyone with an interest in reproductive ethics, feminist thought and those seeking principled grounds for resisting the technologies of choosing children.

In this major new book, Griselda Pollock engages boldly in the culture wars over `what is the canon?` and `what difference can feminism make?` Do we simply reject the all-male line-up and satisfy our need for ideal egos with an all women litany of artistic heroines? Or is the question a chance to resist the phallocentric binary and allow the ambiguities and complexities of desire - subjectivity and sexuality - to shape the readings of art that constantly displace the present gender demarcations?