This collection explores how new directions in feminist literary study might be informed by the work of the past. It offers a snapshot view of new feminist research in the field today and traces the influence of the substantial feminist inheritance in English Studies through six distinct, individual pieces of rigorous and innovative new work.

From a star astrophysicist, a journey into the world of particle physics and the cosmos -- and a call for more just, inclusive practice of science.

Science, like most fields, is set up for men to succeed, and is rife with racism, sexism, and shortsightedness as a result. But as Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein makes brilliantly clear, we all have a right to know the night sky. One of the leading physicists of her generation, she is also one of the fewer than one hundred Black women to earn a PhD in physics. You will enjoy -- and share -- her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter -- all with a new spin and rhythm informed by pop culture, hip hop, politics, and Star Trek.

This vision of the cosmos is vibrant, inclusive and buoyantly non-traditional. By welcoming the insights of those who have been left out for too long, we expand our understanding of the universe and our place in it.

The Disordered Cosmos is a vision for a world without prejudice that allows everyone to view the wonders of the universe through the same starry eyes.

At all levels of government--from the international to the local--public policies are formulated mainly by men, but their impacts are felt, sometimes differently, by women, men, and children. This book considers the impact of public policy on various aspects of women's lives, including sex and birth, marriage and death, work and child rearing, and women's responses to those policies. Written by scholars who have lived on five continents, the chapters span the First and Third Worlds, with several providing case illustrations of policies affecting women in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Written by scholars from several disciplines, the volume includes the fields of economics, politics, and planning. Literature also is covered, along with women's fiction as a source of women's opinions. The work is divided into two sections. The first section, Economic Policies and Migration, considers the impact of economic and demographic policies. The second section, Sex and Marriage, Violence and Control, considers policies relating to women's interpersonal relationships. Urban culture is discussed in an epilogue.

This volume offers feminist perspectives on the social, cultural and medical aspects of women as sexual beings and of their fertility, pregnancy and child bearing. It serves as a companion to "Advances in Gender Research volume 7, Gender perspectives on Health and Medicine: Key Themes". As in the previous volume, the authors critique and transcend conventional biomedical approaches to the subject matter. The seven essays raise questions about control and agency asking who decides if, when and how fertility should be controlled and the circumstances under which child birth takes place. They address decision-making on multiple levels from the individual to the national and transnational and grapple with such controversial matters as genital cutting, self-help menstrual extraction and direct-entry midwifery. They interrogate the policies and practices of states and transnational agencies that have a bearing on sexuality and reproductive health, the ways in which womens genitalia have been objectified and manipulated by practices that purport to be both traditional and modern, and the motivations of those who provide alternative forms of fertility control and birthing methods. The intended audience is the social science community, especially those who are interested in the study of gender, sexuality and reproductive health, medicine and alternative medicine, and the areas where these interface.

"A timely intervention into debates on the representation of feminist and feminine identities in contemporary visual culture. The essays in this collection interrogate how and why certain formulations of feminism and femininity are currently prevalent in mainstream cinema and television, offering new insights into postfeminist media phenomena"--

While gender and race often are considered socially constructed, this book argues that they are physiologically constituted through the biopsychosocial effects of sexism and racism. This means that to be fully successful, critical philosophy of race and feminist philosophy need to examine not only the financial, legal, political and other forms of racist and sexism oppression, but also their physiological operations. Examining a complex tangle of affects, emotions, knowledge, and privilege, The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression develops an understanding of the human body whose unconscious habits are biological. On this account, affect and emotion are thoroughly somatic, not something "mental " or extra-biological layered on top of the body. They also are interpersonal, social, and can be transactionally transmitted between people. Ranging from the stomach and the gut to the hips and the heart, from autoimmune diseases to epigenetic markers, Sullivan demonstrates the gastrointestinal effects of sexual abuse that disproportionately affect women, often manifesting as IBS, Crohn's disease, or similar functional disorders. She also explores the transgenerational effects of racism via epigenetic changes in African American women, who experience much higher pre-term birth rates than white women do, and she reveals the unjust benefits for heart health experienced by white people as a result of their racial privilege. Finally, developing the notion of a physiological therapy that doesn't prioritize bringing unconscious habits to conscious awareness, Sullivan closes with a double-barreled approach for both working for institutional change and transforming biologically unconscious habits. The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression skillfully combines feminist and critical philosophy of race with the biological and health sciences. The result is a critical physiology of race and gender that offers new strategies for fighting male and white privilege.

Voices from the Asylum is a fascinating investigation of the lives of four women incarcerated in French psychiatric hospitals in the second half of the nineteenth century. The renowned sculptor (and mistress of Rodin) Camille Claudel, the musician Hersilie Rouy, the feminist activist Marie Esquiron, and the self-proclaimed mystic and eccentric Pauline Lair Lamotte, all left first-hand accounts of their experiences. These rare and unsettling documents provide the foundation for a unique insight into the experience of psychiatric breakdown and treatment from the patient's viewpoint.
By linking the question of gender to the process of medical diagnosis made by contemporary clinicians such as Sigmund Freud, this book argues that psychiatric medicine functioned as an integral part of an essentially misogynistic and oppressive society. Wilson suggests that "delusional" utterances can be read as meaningful when read as metaphorical expressions of real suffering, and as strategies to ensure the survival of a self under threat. These narratives therefore constituted an act of resistance on the part of the women who wrote them, and they prefigure the feminist revisionist histories of psychiatry that appeared later in the twentieth century.
Straddling the disciplines of literature and social history, and based on extensive archival research, this book makes an important contribution to the feminist project of writing women back into literary history. It brings to light a remarkable but hitherto unrecognised literary tradition in the prehistory of psychoanalysis: the psychiatric memoir.

Essential characteristics of Women's decision-making have long been ignored or, if considered at all, have been viewed in relationship to male-based factors. Veeder, drawing on experiences of Irish women, establishes that women making important choices do so differently than men. The women, ranging in age from as young as thirteen to over sixty-five, were divided into three age groupings, thereby offering insights into variables over much of the life-span. Themes, born from common experiences emerge from the poignant, compelling accounts of individual women. The author's analysis and commentary structure the book's development and maintain its focus on the context wherein women make their private, but immensely important, decisions--the family. Education, vocation, marriage, and childbearing are considered relative to the thought and emotional factors that influenced the women's decisions. Veeder concludes that women show strength and insight in their approach to choices. She sees women, in comparison with men, as taking more factors into consideration, being more aware of consequences, being more practical, flexible, and valuing of relationships. Women's participation in the workforce and their increased societal roles make this a most timely book. It is, too, an important contribution to, and stimulus for, additional research on gender and decision-making.

This is the first collection to bring together well-known scholars writing from feminist perspectives within critical discourse analysis. The theoretical structure of CDA is illustrated with empirical research in Eastern and Western Europe, New Zealand, Asia, South America and the US, demonstrating the complex workings of power and ideology in discourse in sustaining particular gender(ed) orders. These studies deal with texts and talk in domains ranging from parliamentary settings, news and advertising media, the classroom, community literacy programs and the workplace.

Are women still oppressed? Is paid employment the key to liberation? Should pornography be banned? Do women have an absolute right to abortion? Can women in government really make a difference?

In this comprehensive study, Valerie Bryson draws on a wide range of theoretical, empirical and comparative material to provide a lucid account of feminist debates and the ways in which political disagreements stem from underlying theoretical assumptions. By disentangling questions of style and strategy from more profound disagreements, Bryson points the way to more effective forms of feminist political practice.

Feminist Debates provides analysis of the situation of women in western societies, and examines women's participation in the workplace, the changing structure of the family, the extent of male violence against women, the development of reproductive technology, the political representation of women, and the role of the law in maintaining and challenging gender inequalities.

Clear and balanced in its assessment of various problems and perspectives, "Feminist Debates: Issues of Theory and Political Practice" offers an essential guide to contemporary feminist thinking and practice.

Feminist theory has grown into a vast field. Feminist writers, thinkers, and activists have produced an often bewildering body of knowledge concerned with difference and diversity, identity and inequality, ethnicity, race, and class, as well as gender. Despite its growing influence, however, no single comprehensive text encompasses the past, present, and future of feminist theory.

"Contemporary Feminist Theories" was inspired by a dissatisfaction with existing introductions, which often fail to fully track change and capture diversity within feminist thought. The volume draws on the expertise of a range of Western feminists in order to reflect the breadth of feminist theory as well as shifts within it. Each chapter maps the development of feminist thought in a particular area over time, and suggests future directions.

Reflecting the diversity of feminist theory in fields from literature and linguistics to science and politics, this multi-disciplinary map of feminist thinking is an ideal classroom text.

The contributors include Lisa Adkins, Vicki Bertram, Deborah Cameron, Elizabeth Frazer, Caroline Gonda, Penelope Harvey, Maggie Humm, Kadiatu Kanneh, Mary Maynard, Sara Mills, Jane Scoular, Sue Thornham, Sue Vice, and Patricia Waugh.

This book examines contemporary relations between ethnic majority and ethnic minority women's movements in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom, and women's movements' participation in and influence on public policy that focuses on violence against women.

After 9/11/2001, gendered narratives of humiliation and revenge proliferated in the U.S. national imaginary. How is it that gender, which we commonly take to be a structure at the heart of individual identity, is also at stake in the life of the nation? What do we learn about gender when we pay attention to how it moves and circulates between the lived experience of the subject and the aspirations of the nation in war? What is the relation between national sovereignty and sovereign masculinity? Through examining practices of torture, extra-judicial assassination, and first person accounts of soldiers on the ground, Bonnie Mann develops a new theory of gender. It is neither a natural essence nor merely a social construct. Gender is first and foremost an operation of justification which binds the lived existence of the individual subject to the aspirations of the regime. Inspired by a reexamination of the work of Simone de Beauvoir, the author exposes how sovereign masculinity hinges on the nation's ability to tap into and mobilize the structure of self-justification at the heart of masculine identity. At the national level, shame is repeatedly converted to power in the War on Terror through hyperbolic displays of agency including massive aerial bombardment and practices of torture. This is why, as Mann demonstrates, the phenomenon of gender itself demands a four-dimensional analysis that moves from the phenomenological level of lived experience, through the collective life of a people expressed in the social imaginary and the operations of language, to the material relations that prevail in our times.

This book is an invitation to researchers who are committed to social change to look for ideas about transformation in an unexpected place - that is, in the data generated from empirical research. Informed by Critical Discourse Analysis and postmodern theory, it proposes a method of locating, through close grammatical analysis of everyday descriptions of the social world, the desire for alternative transformative structures. Drawing upon insightful analysis of conversational data collected over a period of 12 years from both 'marginalised' and 'mainstream' participants, it reveals innovative ways of imagining social structure. Clark proposes a view of the social world as in an embodied relationship with embodied selves.

Grassroots Russian women's organizations faced multiple challenges in the early 1990s. Like their members, they were confronted with both potentially hostile attitudes and numerous practical difficulties. Post-Soviet ideologies of gender difference produced a gender climate which was particularly unsympathetic to female activism in support of other women. This book presents a detailed study of grassroots Russian women's organizations in 1991-96, against the background of a careful analysis of gender relations and attitudes to women's place in post-Soviet Russian society.

Beyond Citizenship? Feminism and the Transformation of Belonging pushes debates about citizenship and feminist politics in new directions, challenging us to think 'beyond citizenship', and to engage in feminist re-theorizations of the experience and politics of belonging. Citizenship is a troubling proposition for feminism - promising inclusion yet always enacting exclusions. This book asks whether citizenship is a worthwhile object for feminist politics and scholarship, or whether we should find a different language to express our desires to belong, and alternative means to enact our yearnings for equality, justice and reciprocity. Grounded in feminist perspectives that emphasize the importance of affect, subjectivity, embodiment and the collective, it offers important new analyses of the state of citizenship and meanings of belonging in the contemporary globalizing world. This book is key reading for scholars and students of citizenship, social movements, and feminist and gender theory from a wide range of disciplines, including art practice, comparative literature, gender studies, philosophy, political theory, psychosocial studies, social policy, socio-legal studies, and sociology.

What are the political and aesthetic dimensions of video art, documentary, and global cinema in contemporary image culture? Here, Lynes makes visible how sites of political struggle, exploitation, and armed conflict can be theorized and interpreted through a feminist politics of location, attentive to the frictions and flows within transnational circuits of exchange. Prismatic Media, Transnational Circuits traces how formal modes of experimentation provide prismatic visions of sites of political struggle - multiple, mediated points of view - and thus open space for complex and emancipatory relations among cultural producers, activists, and viewers in a globalized present.

A funny and frock-filled story for modern children who don't just want sequins and sparkles on their dresses, from rising star Lily Murray and Waterstones Prize-winning illustrator, Jenny Lovlie. Lucy and Aunt Augusta are dress shopping. And, at the Fabulous Fashion Store, there are dresses to suit just about everyone. There are fancy dresses, frilly dresses, stripy dresses, silly dresses, sun dresses, fun dresses, blue dresses, green. . . But Lucy doesn't care about frills or lace. She wants a dress WITH POCKETS. And as she wades through the titchy dresses, witchy dresses, very, very itchy dresses, she starts to worry about where she's going to put her leaves, and nettles, and delicate petals, her magical spells and beautiful shells. . . The hunt is on: will Lucy find the dress of her dreams? A lighthearted story with a subtle feminist undertone that celebrates the joy of pockets, and how they can unleash the inquisitive, adventurous spirit of all young children.

This work explores matrophobia - the fear not of one's mother or of motherhood but of becoming one's mother - in past and present white feminist analyses of motherhood and mothering. By tracing white second wave feminism's strategic choice to organize first as sisters then as daughters, O'Brien Hallstein argues matrophobia became embedded in past and continues to linger in contemporary feminist analyses. As a result, contemporary analyses reveal crucially important but limited understandings of contemporary motherhood and mothering. This important work concludes that matrophobia can be reduced and eliminated by reorienting analyses to mutual responsiveness between sisters and daughters, second and third wave feminists.

... cover[s] the effects of the life-cycle experiences of teenage pregnancy and childbearing, divorce, and years of widowhood on women's economic status and poverty rate (the feminization of poverty). . . . Ozawa finds a conflict between women's traditional nurturing and caring roles and the development of their earning capability. Interesting statistical tables and a selected bibliography. Choice Gender, like race and ethnicity, is an increasingly important factor in assessing social policy in the U.S. For those who want to understand the role of gender in the poverty problem today, Women's Life Cycle and Economic Insecurity provides a splendid collection of articles containing new knowledge and fresh insights. Sheila B. Kamerman Columbia University School of Social Work According to a global United Nations study, women perform 66 percent of all work, but receive only 10 percent of all income and own less than 1 percent in material assets. Although the economic status of American women has been somewhat higher than that of women globally, it is increasingly apparent that the United States is facing the emerging social problem of women's economic insecurity in the midst of growing affluence. In this timely study, ten experts methodically survey every vital aspect in the life of American women, from early sex-role socialization in the home to long-term elderly care, and examine their economic implications. Ozawa's introductory chapter provides a helpful overview of the subject; her concluding chapter summarizes recommendations for change and proposes steps necessary to the establishment of economic and social equality between the sexes. In Educational Preparation of American Women, Shirley M. Clark analyzes female socialization and discusses women in higher education: enrollment trends, degrees earned, and women faculty. James P. Smith's chapter investigates Women, Mothers, and Work and considers wage prospects. Other chapters explore teenage pregnancy: patterns, consequences, and prevention strategies; divorce and child support issues, the history and effects of inheritance, old age, and care of the elderly. The text is enhanced by twenty-five tables and eight figures that present vital statistical information, including labor force participation rates of various groups of women, data relating to children and their care, fertility, income, life expectancy, and health. Women's Life Cycle and Economic Insecurity presents a comprehensive assessment of the condition of women in the United States today. This groundbreaking study provides insights and statistics that will be especially useful for research in the areas of women's studies, sociology, economics, and American history.

Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism offers compelling and intersectional religious critiques of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the normative rationality of contemporary global capitalism that orders people to live by the generalized principle of competition in all social spheres of life. Keri Day asserts that neoliberalism and its moral orientations consequently breed radical distrust, lovelessness, disconnection, and alienation within society. She argues that engaging black feminist and womanist religious perspectives with Jewish and Christian discourses offers more robust critiques of a neoliberal economy. Employing womanist and black feminist religious perspectives, this book provides six theoretical, theologically constructive arguments to challenge the moral fragmentation associated with global markets. It strives to envision a pragmatic politics of hope.

While books such as Belle de Jour's The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl and Catherine Millet's The Sexual Life of Catherine M. captured the imagination of the reading public and marked the contemporary erotic memoir as a publishing phenomenon, the genre has received comparatively scarce scholarly attention. Through examining the cultural dominance of the figure of the 'phallic girl' (or 'ladette') in the early 21st century, this pioneering study explores the conflict that arises when the female-authored erotic memoir - a genre that holds enormous feminist potential - is co-opted by postfeminist cultural praxis. By analyzing the impact of the mainstreaming of pornography and the emergence of new communication technologies on conceptualizations of intimacy, agency and feminine sexual subjectivities, Erotic Memoirs and Postfeminism presents a broad critical survey of the genre and positions contemporary women's erotic memoirs as contradictory spaces in which female sexual autonomy is both actively celebrated and perniciously disavowed. The book also offers the first sustained critical analysis of a range of contemporary memoirs, including Abby Lee's Girl with a One Track Mind, Melissa P.'s One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed and Tracy Quan's Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, amongst others.

An examination of the ways in which women challenged the British educational, employment and welfare systems after the franchise. Helen Jones explores how women adapted their strategies to confront the system from within, and what constraints were imposed on them. She also examines the active role that British women played in Continental Europe, and an important comparative chapter looks at the experience of women in France, Germany, Italy, Australia and the USA.