An examination of women's roles in politics and society in the contemporary Russian Federation as it creates a new market economy and democratic course born of a millennium of history and nearly 75 years of authoritarian communist rule.

The stage is set in the introduction followed by an examination of the history of the Bolshevik socialist state in 1917 through the participation of women in recent multiparty elections in 1993. The tsarist and Communist gender culture is presented, and the book then considers why and how, the Soviet Union disintegrated. Next the editors explore the reborn Russia of President Boris Yeltsin and women's rights under Soviet and post-Soviet rule. The book is enriched by statistical tables and glossaries of the names of leaders and terms for easy identification.

Chaucer was a keen observer of the lives of women with a remarkable ability to see beyond his culture's preconceptions concerning their proper roles. The lives of medieval women were divided into three estates--virginity, wifehood, and widowhood--each with complex rules extending to particulars of speech and dress, but all directed toward the single purpose of preserving female chastity, for which a woman was to be prepared to suffer or even die. Margaret Hallissy's lively and literate study traces Chaucer's female characterizations against a background of medieval rules and common assumptions governing women to determine where he adhered to or departed from the behavioral norms. She concludes that he discounted much of these codes of conduct as being detrimental to the development of a full human person. The Wife of Bath, Chaucer's most drastic deviation from the received wisdom about women of his day, could only have been developed by an author/narrator who turned from the prescribed written rules--which, sacred or secular, were all instruments of patriarchal power--to female discourse and action. Applying insights from the works of modern social historians of the Middle Ages and ranging widely in sources from the visual arts, civil and canon law, homiletics, theology, architecture, fashion history, and medicine, Hallissy illuminates the preconceptions with which Chaucer's original audience would have encountered his work and brings her findings to bear on a close analysis of literary characters in the text. The resulting study provides an original and essential dimension for reading Chaucer, while its feminist-historicist approach broadens the audience to those interested in medieval studies and women's studies in general.

With the publication of this book, the Reverend Anna Howard Shaw assumes her rightful place in the pantheon of great American orators. Beginning with a brief introduction and a biographical sketch, the book traces Shaw's career and work as a public lecturer. Because of its significance in her later life, Shaw's training and brief tenure as a pastor and the sermons she delivered at suffrage meetings are also considered. The impact of her work as a paid lecturer for temperance and other causes--which led directly to her commitment to work full time for suffrage--her suffrage campaigns, and her work with Susan B. Anthony as a public advocate for suffrage are also scrutinized. Her speeches and appearances before legislative committees are an integral part of the analysis of her role as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Finally, Shaw's public speaking efforts after she resigned as president, including her work for the war effort and the League of Nations, are also analyzed. The second half of the volume includes the full text of speeches referenced. A collaborative effort, this book is the product of two distinguished scholars in communication. Authors Wil Linkugel and Martha Solomon bring to their analysis of Shaw's oratory a consistency of style and a concentration of substance that belies its joint authorship. Combining sensitivity to the moral, political, and sexist exigencies that Shaw faced with a close criticism of the reverend's civil rhetoric, they detail why Shaw was esteemed by her countrymen. The authors' efforts are a significant addition to the very limited material available on important women orators and will be appreciated by scholars of rhetoricand communication, women's history, and American history.

"The Subject of Rosi Braidotti: Politics and Concepts" brings into focus the diverse influence of the work of Rosi Braidotti on academic fields in the humanities and the social sciences such as the study and scholarship in - among others - feminist theory, political theory, continental philosophy, philosophy of science and technology, cultural studies, ethnicity and race studies. Inspired by Braidotti's philosophy of nomadic relations of embodied thought, the volume is a mapping exercise of productive engagements and instructive interactions by a variety of international, outstanding and world-renowned scholars with texts and concepts developed by Braidotti throughout her immense body of work.In Braidotti's work, traversing themes of engagements emerge of politics and philosophy across generations and continents. Therefore, the edited volume invites prominent scholars at different stages of their careers and from around the world to engage with Braidotti's work in terms of concepts and/or political practice.

This unique book brings together international scholars from around the globe to examine how different feminist theories are being used in early childhood research, policy and pedagogy. The array of feminist discourses captured by the authors offer contextualised possibilities for disrupting dominant patriarchal beliefs and producing change. The authors address and challenge how early childhood experiences, institutions and practices produce gendered effects across and within diverse contexts and demonstrate how feminism(s) in action can be used to reconceptualise research methods, government policy, children's learning, teaching practice and educational resources. In this way, the book contributes to creating new knowledge connections and community alliances in the global effort to end gender-based inequalities across local and global communities.

"Rethinking Contemporary Feminist Politics" puts forward a timely analysis of contemporary feminism. Critically engaging with both narratives of feminist decline and re-emergence, it draws on poststructuralist political theory to assess current forms of activism in the UK and present a provocative account of recent developments in feminist politics.

From Mean Girl to BFF, Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood explores female sociality in postfeminist popular culture. Focusing on a range of media forms, including film, magazines, conduct books, TV and digital networking sites, Alison Winch reveals the ways in which friendships are increasingly encouraged to be strategic. Girlfriendship is examined as an affective social relation where slut-shamers, frenemies and bridezillas bond by controlling each other's body image through a 'girlfriend gaze'. Through a combination of psychosociological theory and media analysis, this book offers a complex understanding of patriarchy, by looking at how neoliberalism penetrates the intimate relations between women.

Both a scholarly and personal critique of current feminist Moroccan discourses, this book is a call for a larger-than-Islam framework that accommodates the Berber dimension. Sadiqi argues that current feminist discourse, both secular and Islamic ones, are not only divergent but limit the rich heritage, knowledge, and art of Berber women.

This book examines how feminist movements have contested the dominant discourses and state politics that have impeded women's autonomy over their bodies since the late 1960s. It deals with two important facets of this struggle, prostitution and the right to abortion, as they relate to the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.

Single Women in Popular Culture demonstrates how single women continue to be figures of profound cultural anxiety. Examining a wide range of popular media forms, this is a timely, insightful and politically engaged book, exploring the ways in which postfeminism limits the representation of single women in popular culture.

What does it mean to be a woman in the 21st century? The feminist movement has a long and rich history, but is its time now passed? This edited collection is driven by the question, why is feminism viewed by some (we would add a majority) as outdated, no longer necessary and having achieved its goals, and what role have the media played in this?

Women are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS. By focusing on the pandemic at its epicenter in Southern Africa, this book explores the gendered power inequalities driving women's vulnerability to HIV and provides suggestions of how to individually and collectively address women's oppression.

Born in the northern region of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Marie Mason Potts (1895-1978), a Mountain Maidu woman, became one of the most influential California Indian activists of her generation. In this illuminating book, Terri A. Castaneda explores Potts's rich life story, from her formative years in off-reservation boarding schools, through marriage and motherhood, and into national spheres of Native American politics and cultural revitalization. During the early twentieth century, federal Indian policy imposed narrow restrictions on the dreams and aspirations of young Native girls. Castaneda demonstrates how Marie initially accepted these limitations and how, with determined resolve, she broke free of them. As a young student at Greenville Indian Industrial school, Marie navigated conditions that were perilous, even deadly, for many of her peers. Yet she excelled academically, and her adventurous spirit and intellectual ambition led her to transfer to Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian Industrial School. After graduating in 1912, Marie Potts returned home, married a former schoolmate, and worked as a domestic laborer. Racism and socioeconomic inequality were inescapable, and Castaneda chronicles Potts's growing political consciousness within the urban milieu of Sacramento. Against this backdrop, the author analyzes Potts's significant work for the Federated Indians of California (FIC) and her thirty-year tenure as editor and publisher of the Smoke Signal newspaper. Potts's voluminous correspondence documents her steadfast conviction that California Indians deserved just compensation for their stolen ancestral lands, a decent standard of living, the right to practice their traditions, and political agency in their own affairs. Drawing extensively from this trove of writings, Castaneda privileges Potts's own voice in the telling of her story and offers a valuable history of California Indians in the twentieth century.

Sadlier's study of women writers in Portugal after the 1974 revolution is a useful contribution to a neglected European literature, in which women are making a forceful contribution; and it is one of the few sources of such information in English. . . . Works analyzed include the famous Novas Cartas Portuguesas (Lisbon, 1972) by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa, Xerazade e os outros (Lisbon, 1964) by Fernanda Botelho, Lidia Jorge's O Dia dos Prodigios (2nd ed., 1980), Helia Correia's Montedemo (Lisbon, 1983), and Teolindo Gersao's O Silencio (1981). These studies are followed by an appendix on the background of women's rights and feminism in Portugal. Although Sadlier has chosen these works because of their common tradition of literary modernism and aesthetic experimentation, her readings are descriptive rather than theoretical and provide an excellent introduction to representative works and themes of major contemporary women writers. Choice Contemporary Portugal offers a fascinating mixture of social revolution, literary experiment, and feminist practice. Since the revolution in 1974, the country has produced a large number of writings by and about women. In fact, for the first time in Portuguese history, there are at least as many women as men writing books. The Question of How: Women Writers and New Portuguese Literature presents an analysis of texts by the Three Marias, Fernanda Botelho, Lidia Jorge, Helia Correia, and Teolinda Gersao. The first book to be written in English on contemporary Portuguese women writers, it investigates what Portuguese literary women have to say about their culture. In addition to showing how specific works of fiction are inflected by gender and ideology, Sadlier also presents a brief historical account of feminism in Portugal. The only book of its kind in the field, The Question of How: Women Writers and the New Portuguese Literature will be of interest to both students and specialists of Hispanic literature, West European studies, Women's studies, literary theory, and criticism.

Over the last thirty years, feminist, postcolonial and queer theorists have interrogated the ways in which sexuality is conceptualized and constructed, specifically with the intention of deconstructing essentialist notions of sexuality and identity formation. Yet, while recent theoretical interventions have re-situated sexuality as a historical and social category--allowing us to see how ideas about sexuality are linked to forms of power and other hegemonic categories of identity and subjectivity like class, race, gender and nationality--sexuality remains a contentious subject. In critically examining the plural representations of sexuality in contemporary literature, this book has a distinctly global emphasis, containing essays that interrogate sexuality in the work of not only a number of mainstream American and British writers but also less well-known writers from New Zealand and Canada. All of the chapters owe primary intellectual and theoretical debts to three broad and overlapping domains of critical scholarship and practice: feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial studies. As the first critical collection of essays to consider the representation of sexuality across such a wide variety of contemporary writing, Sexuality and Contemporary Literature analytically foregrounds insights into the historical and current arrangements of sexuality that contemporary literature provides, while also inviting the reader to imagine other possibilities for the future that literary texts open up. Sexuality and Contemporary Literature is an important book for literary and cultural studies collections.

"In recent years adult educators have been working to develop an important body of literature on neo-liberalism, capitalism, and imperialism. Many of these analyses draw on various strands of Marxist theorizing. With the exception of Jane Thompson's work as an early socialist feminist, a Marxist-Feminist framework has yet to be articulated for adult education. This text combines original empirical studies with literature review from critical adult education and feminist theory to examine the sites, theories, and practices of adult education from a Marxist-Feminist perspective. "--

"Twine and Blee break new ground with case studies of international, feminist, and antiracist struggles"
-- "Feminist Collections"

aThe editors have done an admirable job of drawing together works of diversely positioned authors, each of whom approach the topic of feminism and antiracism from their own unique personal and disciplinary standpoint.a
--Anne Wagner, Dept of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, University of Toronto

"Focuses on what is happening in the "streets," in feminist, antiracist social movements around the globe."
-- "Signs"

A collection of international scholars and activists answer the questionshow does gender and region/nation play a defining role in how feminists engage in anti-racist practices? How has the restructuring in the world economy affected anti-racist organizing? How do Third World Feminists counter the perception that feminism is a "Western" ideology and how effective are their methods? What opportunities does globalization bring for cross-cultural organizing?

From essays on the race and gender issues in organizing exotic dancers to resistance art in Africa and the U.S., this timely and necessary anthology will be sure to spark debate and controversy.

Contributors: Angela Davis, Kathleen Blee, France Winddance Twine, Heater Merrill, Veronica Magar, Siobhan Brooks, Delores Walters, Michelle Rosenthal, Ellen Kaye Scott, andrea breen, Yoshiko Nozaki, Sohera Syeda, Becky Thompson, Paola Bacchetta, Carolyn Martin Shaw, Eileen O'Brien and Michael Armato, Jane Freedman, Cathleen Armstead, Ashwini Deshpande, and Minelle Mahtani.

A Feminist Perspective on Virtue Ethics provides of historical survey of feminist virtue ethics, and shows how the ethical theorizing of women in the past can be brought to bear on that of women in the present.

The question of the representation of women in the media has been an important one for feminists over the past three decades. This diverse collection of essays represents three major trends in feminist media studies: the liberal feminist perspective, which focuses on the media's tendency to misrepresent and oppress women; the postmodern perspective, which illustrates the ways in which women can participate in, enjoy, and sometimes subvert the dominant media; and the more recent attempts to identify and challenge the subtle backlash that threatens to obliterate feminist gains. The contributors cover a wide range of subjects, from advertisements for women's stockings to the life and death of Princess Diana.

After the granting of the vote to women in 1918, the struggle for women's rights intensified with a nationwide campaign for the right to birth control. This campaign was met with a great deal of hostility; it threatened to overturn Victorian ideas about female sexuality, female empowerment and the traditional roles within the family. The most well known of the campaigners, scientist and early feminist Marie Stopes, opened clinics across England which fitted 'contraception caps' to women for free. The first history of this grassroots social movement, "Birth Control and the Rights of Women" offers a window into the social and cultural history of the period, and features new archival material in the forms of memoirs, personal papers and press cuttings. This is an essential contribution to the influential field of women's history and a vital addition to the history of feminism.

Transnational Borderlands: The Making of Cultural Resistance in Women's Global Networks investigates the implications of transnational feminist methodologies at multiple levels: collective actions, theory, pedagogy, discursive, and visual productions. It addresses a substantial gap in the field of transnational feminisms; namely, the absence of a voice that links social and theoretical outcomes to the politics of representation in literature, visual art, discourses of rights and citizenships, and pedagogy. The book encompasses three categories of relevance to contemporary transnational methodologies: the politics of cultural representation in literature and visual art, the de-centering of human/women's rights, and pedagogies of crossing and dissent. Given current interest in the cultures of globalization and the role women and other minorities play in them, we expect this book will appeal to scholars in the fields of Women's and Gender Studies, Borderlands Studies, Transnational Studies, and to anyone interested in how transnational processes shape a culture of resistance in women's global networks.