Unlike many other mainstream disciplines that only seek to broaden knowledge and thus become additive, women's studies try to question and posit new ways of thinking, inaugurating paradigm shifts and thus becoming subversive by trying to question established hierarchies of knowledge. This has not been an easy journey and the practitioners of this new approach have faced numerous odds as all pioneering endeavours encounter. This journey is a story that needs to be told and the present book attempts to do this by charting the trajectories of few women's studies scholars and their academic sojourn.

This book presents critical readings of eight contemporary German novels which feature historically documented women as their main protagonist, and which reconstruct women's lives by combining source material and invention. Protagonists include Cornelia Goethe, Caroline Schlegel-Schelling, Karoline von Guenderrode and Charlotte Corday. Through a thorough examination of these novels, the wider complexities of female identity, feminism, literary technique and historiography are illuminated and discussed. The author examines how historical events are used to substantiate ideological positions and how the narrators consider this problematic aspect of their project.

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.

This edited collection presents a compilation of personal essays on the role of public higher education in the lives of fourteen social scientists who are graduates of the Graduate Center, the doctoral granting institution at the City University of New York, the nation's largest public urban university.

This first biography of V.F. Calverton gives an intellectual history of the American radical movement from 1920 to 1940 and shows how he and his Modern Quarterly led the forefront in wars of ideas about sex, lit, and party. This lively study of the career and times of Calverton examines basic questions about the relationships between literature and politics, feminist agendas, and political theory in ways that are still relevant. Students of political thought, American history, and American literature will find this biography a provocative one that brings the period alive in new ways. A short introduction shows how Calverton yearned to be an American Lenin-Cassanova-Pericles. Philip Abbott then follows Calverton's participation in a series of intellectual wars fought in the 1920s and the 1930s. Thus does Abbott reassess American radicalism and the development of American bohemia and socialism. Calverton was the central figure in two efforts to found an American radical republic, both of which were rejected by his colleagues--famous writers and thinkers of his time. One attempt sought to create a republic of being in which participants explored the capacities of sexual liberation as an agent for change. Another involved the creation of a republic of doing in which radical citizens acted out revolutionary roles. This biography of a neglected theorist reevaluates radical projects in politics, psychology, and the arts in America in a seminal period in their development.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

In recent years, the global justice movement has grabbed headlines and reshaped political imaginations worldwide. Surprisingly, however, feminism is largely absent from accounts of the movement despite the fact that feminists are extensively involved on the ground. Addressing this significant gap in the literature, Eschle and Maiguashca shine a powerful light on what they term "feminist antiglobalization activism." Drawing on their fieldwork at the World Social Forum and European Social Forum, 2003 2005, they begin by outlining the vital role of feminist antiglobalization activism in Forum processes and events while also emphasizing its diversity. The authors then trace the origins of this activism, the critiques and aspirations of those involved, their political practices beyond the Forum, and their efforts to forge a sense of solidarity among themselves and with others. Taking feminism seriously, Eschle and Maiguashca conclude, points us toward a richer and more theoretically nuanced understanding of the global justice movement and its struggle to create other possible worlds. Their book thus offers vital insights not only for feminists, but also for all those interested in contemporary social movements and in global governance and resistance.

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?

Feminist researchers have produced a large body of critical scholarship on methodologies as they pertain to the study of women. However, questions about issues such as power, positionality and ethics in research related to men and masculinities have remained largely unaddressed. This is despite the fact that research on men and masculinities has grown exponentially in recent years, as is evidenced by the increasing number of scholarly books and journals on the subject. In this book researchers reflect on their experiences of studying men and masculinities from the perspective of topics ranging from internet dating and violence to social inclusion and rock climbing. They also canvass how we can address difference and diversity amongst men and between masculinities in our methodological approaches. Through the lens of masculinity studies the authors contribute to broader methodological debates about subjects such as field access, insider-outsider positioning and qualitative versus quantitative approaches.

The Lola film is a distinct subgenre of the woman's film in which woman's claim to pleasure is entertained without recourse to the figure of the femme fatale. Lola embodies a recognizable set of characteristics through which over time a select group of directors, actors, and audiences have responded in ways that do not succumb to the imperatives of gender. There are over thirty-five Lola films, starting with Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel: many are German, others are French, American, British, Italian, and Spanish, but her claim has also resonated in Argentina, China, Egypt, Mexico, Thailand, and the Philippines. Lola can be working class, lesbian, transgender, ethnic, suburban, or any combination. This book examines Lola as a specific and enduring aspect of the early twentieth-century "new woman": woman's forthright claim to pleasure on her own terms, liberated, if only as a cinematic fantasy, from the usual constraints of sex and gender.

Women, the Arts and Globalization: Eccentric Experience is the first anthology to bring transnational feminist theory and criticism together with women's art practices to discuss the connections between aesthetics, gender and identity in a global world. The essays in Women, the Arts and Globalization demonstrate that women in the arts are rarely positioned at the center of the art market, and the movement of women globally (as travelers or migrants, empowered artists/scholars or exiled practitioners), rarely corresponds with the dominant models of global exchange. Rather, contemporary women's art practices provide a fascinating instance of women's eccentric experiences of the myriad effects of globalization. Bringing scholarly essays on gender, art and globalization together with interviews and autobiographical accounts of personal experiences, the diversity of the book is relevant to artists, art historians, feminist theorists and humanities scholars interested in the impact of globalization on culture in the broadest sense.

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.

Mexican figures like La Virgen de Guadalupe, la Malinche, la Llorona, and la Chingada reflect different myths of motherhood in Mexican culture. For the first time, Melero examines these instances of portrayed motherhood as a discursive space in the political, cultural, and literary context of early twentieth century Mexico.

"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. "--

The relationship between feminism and the biological sciences has always been particularly tense and hostile. Feminists have been inclined not to trust what scientists had to say about the sexes, with science often being pronounced a Owhite, male enterprise.O But why should feminism and the biological sciences remain at odds? And what might be gained from a reconciliation? In Who's Afraid of Charles Darwin? Griet Vandermassen shows that, rather than continuing this enmity, feminism and the biological sciences, and in particular evolutionary psychology, have the potential and the need to become powerful allies. Properly understood, the Darwinian perspective proposed in this volume will become essential to tackling the major issues in feminism.