This book opens up a new field at the intersections of transnational, feminist, and media studies. The collection brings feminist theories to bear on the discourses of transnationality embedded in a range of recent films and video art from diverse locations in North Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Paying particular attention to new frontiers of migration, an increasing vigilance vis-a-vis the foreign, and the gendered and racialized representations of mobility, the book charts innovative feminist strategies for the interpretation of contemporary visual cultures. This ambitious volume will be an important guide for scholars and students interested in approaching global media cultures from transnational feminist perspectives

Go back to where it all began with the dystopian novel behind the award-winning TV series.

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known as the United States. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford - her assigned name, Offred, means 'of Fred'. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire.

As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.

Masterfully conceived and executed, this haunting vision of the future places Margaret Atwood at the forefront of dystopian fiction.

Across societies and throughout time, women have been traditionally classified as caregivers and relationship builders. However, as we enter the future, the roles of girls and women are changing. "Who Cares?" offers investigations from theoretical and empirical perspectives into the ever changing views about the responsibilities of women. Contributions from current, outstanding feminist theorists examine the view that the ethic of care is gender related. The contributors explore the arguments for and against the traditional view that the ethic of care is associated with girls and women and the ethic of justice with boys and men. "Who Cares?" presents the work of scholars from philosophy, theology, psychology, and education who critically examine the questions surrounding the ever changing roles of women.

The book begins with an historical discussion of caring as described by women philosophers of the past two millenia. Further chapters discuss the ethic of care; the gender relatedness of care; the political and psychological price of attributing care to women; the socialization experiences that shape and develop the caring response and the caring self; the relationship between care and rationality and between care and justice; the distinction between a theory of care based on the norms of society and moral philosophy; ethical framework of Black, Third World, and pink collar women. This book is a must for students, educators, researchers, and professionals in women's studies.

As the Victorian era drew to a close, American culture experienced a vast transformation. In many ways, the culture changed even more rapidly and profoundly for women. The "new woman," the "new freedom," and the "sexual revolution" all referred to women moving out of the Victorian home and into the public realm that men had long claimed as their own.

Modern middle-class women made a distinction between emotional styles that they considered Victorian and those they considered modern. They expected fulfillment in marriage, companionship, and career, and actively sought up-to-date versions of love and happiness, relieved that they lived in an age free from taboo and prudery.

Drawing on the diaries, letters, and memoirs of women from a wide range of backgrounds and geographic regions, this volume offers insights into middle-class women's experiences of American culture in this age of transition. It documents the ways in which that culture--including new technologies, advertising, and movies--shaped women's emotional lives and how these women appropriated the new messages and ideals. In addition, the authors describe the difficulties that women encountered when emotional experiences failed to match cultural expectations.

This volume seeks to spur a lively discussion on Marxist feminist analysis of biblical texts. Marxism and feminism have many mutual concerns, and the combination of the two has become common in literary criticism, cultural studies, sociology and philosophy. So it is high time for biblical studies to become interested. This collection is the first of its kind in biblical studies, bringing together a mixture of newer and more mature voices. It falls into three sections: general concerns (Milena Kirova, Tamara Prosic and David Jobling); Hebrew Bible (Gale Yee and Avaren Ipsen); New Testament (Alan Cadwallader, Jorunn Okland, Roland Boer and Jennifer Bird). Thought-provoking and daring, the collection includes: the history of Marxist feminist analysis, the work of Bertolt Brecht, the voices of prostitute collectives, and the possibilities for biblical criticism of the work of Rosemary Hennessy, Simone de Beauvoir, Juliet Mitchell, Wilhelm Reich and Julia Kristeva. All of which are brought to bear on biblical texts such as Proverbs, 1 Kings, Mark, Paul's Letters, and 1 Peter.

Far from being a conservative writer endorsing women's domestic role, Agatha Christie's book depicts women as adventurous, independent women who renegotiate sexual relationships along more equal lines. Women are also allowed the dangerous competency to disrupt society and yet the texts refuse to see them as double deviant because of their femininity. This detailed textual analysis of her oeuvre demonstrates exactly how quietly innovatory Christie was in relation to gender, beginning in nineteen twenty and concluding in the early seventies.

Gender as a social class along with its concomitant heteronormative gender coercion seem to be intransigent across time and cultures. But across these cultures we also see a degree of nonconforming behaviour which very often carries significant multi-dimensions of stigma and risk; because the exception proves the rule, an understanding of gender nonconformity sheds light on the normative operation of gender in society. A Feminist Post-transsexual Autoethnography attempts to demythologise trans and gender diversity by conducting an in-depth critical analysis of the life choices of the autoethnographic subject (the author), who was so uncomfortable with their culturally allocated masculinity that they chose to live an apparently normal female life. The research is post-transsexual in that the subject forgoes passing in their affirmed gender to ensure the integrity of the data. A Feminist Post-transsexual Autoethnography may primarily appeal to students and researchers interested in the Sociology of Gender and Sociology of Trans and Gender Diversity, as well as the broader areas of embodiment and power differentials based on gender, class, nationality, location, temporality, sexuality and gender (non)conformity. This insightful volume may also be of interest to those within the fields Health Promotion and Education, Human Rights, Social Justice and Equity or the Social and Cultural Anthropology of Gender.

Classical Presences
Series Editors: Lorna Hardwick, Professor of Classical Studies, Open University, and James I. Porter, Professor of Greek, Latin, and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan
The texts, ideas, images, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome have always been crucial to attempts to appropriate the past in order to authenticate the present. They underlie the mapping of change and the assertion and challenging of values and identities, old and new. Classical Presences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and practice of such use, and abuse, of the classical past.
Laughing with Medusa explores a series of inter-linking questions, including: Does history's self-positioning as the successor of myth result in the exclusion of alternative narratives of the past? How does feminism exclude itself from certain historical discourses? Why has psychoanalysis placed myth at the center of its explorations of the modern subject? Why are the Muses feminine? Do the categories of myth and politics intersect or are they mutually exclusive? Does feminism's recourse to myth offer a script of resistance or commit it to an ineffective utopianism? Covering a wide range of subject areas including poetry, philosophy, science, history, and psychoanalysis as well as classics, this book engages with these questions from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. It includes a specially commissioned work of fiction, "Iphigeneia's Wedding," by the poet Elizabeth Cook.

In reading The Lesbian Polyamory Reader: Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy, and Casual Sex, you'll quickly discover that the steps toward love and happiness are as easy as 1, 2, 3, and maybe even 4 or 5. And you'll find that if your own lesbian relationship lies outside the "traditional monogamous couple" model, you're definitely not alone. You'll explore many multifaceted and multifarious love relationships, each one applicable to your own liking, if you so choose. You'll find successful models of relationship styles--regardless of your own orientation--from cover to cover, and you'll discover the pleasing polyphony in the many, many female voices of authorities on love and love relationships.Whereas other similar studies project the limited view of one or two authors, The Lesbian Polyamory Reader calls upon a broad scope of writers, professional women and academics alike. You'll see that outside the gay rights movement that currently pushes for a traditional, monogamous marriage model of gay couplehood, there lies pleasing multiplicity in the arms and hearts of lesbians worldwide. Specifically, this collection offers: "first person" articles--stories that describe a variety of lesbian experiences relating to multiple lovers in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s "how-to" articles--descriptions of the various polyamorous relationship configurations, including ways of dealing with jealousy "theoretical" pieces--the history of multiple relationships, the social implications of practicing a love style other than monogamous coupling, and safer sex considerations Much, much more than a book on personal satisfaction, The Lesbian Polyamory Reader also focuses on the social implications of this love phenomenon, bringing it into a more inclusive circle of discussion for lesbians, educators, and students of sociology and sexology. You'll find satisfaction in seeing the love so many lesbian women have achieved by not mimicking the "marriage model" of living.

The epidemic of mass rape in the former Yugoslavia has illustrated once again, and in particularly brutal fashion, the inextricable relationship between national politics, sexual politics, and body politics. The nexus of these three forces is highly charged in any culture, at any time in history, but especially so among cultures in which rapid, even cataclysmic, changes in material realities and national self-conceptions are eroding or overwhelming previously secure boundaries.
The postcommunist moment in the so-called Second World--Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union--has dramatically exposed the opportunities and dangers that arise when the political, cultural, and economic foundations of a society are de- and then re-structured. Gender roles and relations, expressions of sexuality or attempts to recontain them, representations of the body, especially the female body, and the larger, cultural meanings it assumes, are particularly marked sites to witness the performance of complex national dramas of crisis and change.
This groundbreaking volume turns its attention to the Second World, specifically to such subjects as the birth of the sex media and porn industry in Russia; Russian women and alcoholism; cinema in post-communist Hungary; patriotism and gender in Poland; sexual dissidence in Eastern Europe; and women in the former Yugoslavia.

go to the Genders website ]

In their new monograph, Gender and Short Fiction: Women's Tales in Contemporary Britain, Jorge Sacido-Romero and Laura M Lojo-Rodriguez explain why artistically ambitious women writers continue turning to the short story, a genre that has not yet attained the degree of literary prestige and social recognition the novel has had in the modern period. In this timely volume, the editors endorse the view that the genre still retains its potential as a vehicle for the expression of female experience alternative to and/or critical with dominant patriarchal ideology present at the very onset of the development of the modern British short story at the turn of the nineteenth century.

This new study explores the role the Unitarians played in female emancipation. Many leading figures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were Unitarian, or were heavily influenced by Unitarian ideas, including: Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Florence Nightingale. Ruth Watts examines how far they were successful in challenging the ideas and social conventions affecting women. In the process she reveals the complex relationship between religion, gender, class and education and her study will be essential reading for those studying the origins of the feminist movement, nineteenth-century gender history, religious history or the history of education.

This study, by two leading scholars in the field, draws on feminist theory and science and technology studies to uncover a basic injustice for the human rights of drug-using women: most women who need drug treatment in the US and UK do not get it. Why not?

Femininity, Time and Feminist Art explores feminist art of the 1970s through the lens of contemporary art made by women. In a series of original readings of artworks by, amongst others, Tracey Emin, Vanessa Beecroft, Hannah Wilke and Carolee Schneemann, Clare Johnson argues that femininity can be understood as a relationship to time. Each chapter analyses one or more artworks through different forms of time, taking the reader on a journey through a range of issues including maternal loss and desire, narratives of escape and failed femininity. Femininity, Time and Feminist Art argues for an inter-generational approach to art history, which is unafraid to include art considered marginal to feminism.

Concentrating on female modernists specifically, this volume examines spiritual issues and their connections to gender during the modernist period. Scholarly inquiry surrounding women writers and their relation to what Wassily Kandinsky famously hoped would be an 'Epoch of the Great Spiritual' has generated myriad contexts for closer analysis including: feminist theology, literary and religious history, psychoanalysis, queer and trauma theory. This book considers canonical authors such as Virginia Woolf while also attending to critically overlooked or poorly understood figures such as H.D., Mary Butts, Rose Macaulay, Evelyn Underhill, Christopher St. John and Dion Fortune. With wide-ranging topics such as the formally innovative poetry of Stevie Smith and Hope Mirrlees to Evelyn Underhill's mystical treatises and correspondence, this collection of essays aims to grant voices to the mostly forgotten female voices of the modernist period, showing how spirituality played a vital role in their lives and writing.

Women on the Move: Body, Memory and Feminity in Present-day Transnational Diasporic Writing explores the role of women in the current globailized era as active migrants. Silvia Pellicer-Ortin and Julia Kuznetski have brought together a collection of essays from scholars in diaspora, migration and gender studies to take a look at the female experince of migration and globalization by covering topics such as vulnerability, empowerment, trauma, identity, memory, violence and gender contruction, which will continue to shape contemporary literature and the culture at large.

Imagination in Theory focuses on Mich le Barrett's long-standing interest in cultural questions and shows how it informs her analysis of current developments in social and feminist theory. Taking culture, theory, and writing as its themes, the book "translates" across the barriers between the humanities and social sciences, raising a number of important-and controversial-issues.

Despite its place in the humanities, the career prospects and numbers of women in philosophy much more closely resemble those found in the sciences and engineering. This book collects a series of critical essays by female philosophers pursuing the question of why philosophy continues to be inhospitable to women and what can be done to change it. By examining the social and institutional conditions of contemporary academic philosophy in the Anglophone world as well as its methods, culture, and characteristic commitments, the volume provides a case study in interpretation of one academic discipline in which women's progress seems to have stalled since initial gains made in the 1980s. Some contributors make use of concepts developed in other contexts to explain women's under-representation, including the effects of unconscious biases, stereotype threat, and micro-inequities. Other chapters draw on the resources of feminist philosophy to challenge everyday understandings of time, communication, authority and merit, as these shape effective but often unrecognized forms of discrimination and exclusion. Often it is assumed that women need to change to fit existing institutions. This book instead offers concrete reflections on the way in which philosophy needs to change, in order to accommodate and benefit from the important contribution women's full participation makes to the discipline.

This book brings feminist theories and concepts to the sociology of risk in an attempt to carve out a framework for intersectional risk theories in times of ambivalence. The authors purport that risk is pervasive in the Global North, and is fast becoming a hegemonic governing principle. In order to understand this crucial aspect of society, sociological risk theories and risk analysis must go beyond power and social inequalities, to incorporate an intersectional risk approach that takes into account gender, race and other critical perspectives. Their proposed framework will provide the tools to assess how risk is situated in different configurations of power, revealing cracks and openings in the weft of power and rethinking risk governance in contemporary society. By utilising an intersectional and nuanced analysis, the everyday understanding, practices and discourses of risk can be explored and better understood. This book will be of interest to scholars and students who value the importance of establishing interdisciplinary networks between risk theory, sociology, politics and more in order to study the contemporary world.

Traces the shift in feminist interest in the household from an earlier focus on the uneven division of domestic labour to a more recent emphasis on women's caring activities within the household. The articles in this collection range from classics of the 1970s analyzing domestic labour and its effects on men's and women's employment patterns, through later studies of how women's increased labour force participation impacted on the domestic division of labour, to specifically commissioned articles that introduce some of the latest thinking on the nature of women's caring labour.

Negotiating Palestinian Womanhood: Encounters between Palestinian Women and American Missionaries, 1880s-1940s is the first analytical study to examine the American Quaker educational enterprise in Palestine since its establishment in the late nineteenth century during the Ottoman rule and into the British Mandate period. This book uses the Friends Girls School as a site of interaction between Arab and American cultures to uncover how Quaker education was received, translated, internalized, and responded to by Palestinian students in order to change their position within their society's structural power relations. It examines the influence of Quaker education on Palestinian women's views of gender and nationalism. Quaker education, in addition to ongoing social and political transformations, produced mixed results in which many Palestinian women showed emancipatory desires to change their roles and responsibilities in either radical, moderate, or conservative ways. As many of their writings in the 1920s and 1930s illustrate, Quaker ideals of internationalism, peace, and nonviolent means in conflict resolution influenced the students' advocacy for cultural nationalism, Arab unity across tribal and religious lines, and responsible citizenship.

What has been the impact of this age of transformation on women's lives in China? This wide ranging and interdisciplinary collection brings together scholars from China and the West to examine the many dimensions of debate around gender issues in contemporary China. The experiences of women in education, employment, marriage and the family, in rural and urban areas are analyzed and assessed. Published at a time when there is more open acknowledgement in China of the discrepancy between the language of equality, and experiences of discrimination and inequality.

This volume is an engaging and provocative collection of essays on contemporary feminist biblical studies. Drawing upon their own social, cultural, and religious backgrounds and experiences, contributors read the New Testament as feminists, placing it in the context of globalization. These biblical interpretations cast gender, race, class, and power relationships as issues inherent in both the content and context of scripture. Calling into question feminist social engagement that does not extend beyond academic halls, churches, and Christians, Feminist New Testament Studies offers new directions for future research and teaching in feminist biblical studies.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Preface. View the Author's website!

aA useful antidote to the widespread attitude of the many young women that passivity and resignation are the only rational responses to the enormous cultural, religious, political and media forces arrayed against feminism....This book could be a useful supplement to Womenas Studies courses.a
--Susan B. Hansen, University of Pittsburgh

aAn accessible overview of the womenas movement, including timelines, suggested reading and numerous ways for young people to get active and make a difference.a
--"Newsday," aRead-worthy How-to Book of the Weeka

"With her guide addressed to a generation of girls who have grown up 'denying feminism but embracing its rewards, ' the youngest woman ever elected president of the California chapter of NOW seeks to make feminism palatable for a generation put off by outmoded images of unshaven legs and burning bras. . . . This is a thorough, thought-provoking introduction."
--"Publishers Weekly"

a...Seely dispels the notion that there are secrets to successful organizing by creating a step by step, compelling manual that challenges even the cynical.a
--"Feminist Review"

aThe so-called athird wavea -- the newest generation involved in the women's movement -- faces an uphill battle in getting people to listen up, partly because of knee-jerk negative reactions to the f-word: afeminist.a In fact, says Seely, aI'm not a feminist, but . . . a has become a common qualifier among young people who support the principles of equality but don't want to be associated with words like amilitanta or abutch.a Seely addresses this stumbling block and many others, includingdiscord within the movement due to racial and generational differences. She provides an accessible overview of the women's movement, including timelines, suggested reading and numerous ways for young people to get active and make a difference.a
--"Newsday" (How-To Book of the Week)

aA primer on the womenas movement that brims with reading and film lists, web resources, and worthy reminders. . . . Textbook-y in the best way. . . . Several appendices give practical advicea]Itas the perfect gift for the burgeoning activist in your life.a
--"Bitch"

aMegan Seely is a feminist force of nature. Her book is an intelligent, volcanic eruption of facts and analysis on the status of women and girls today. It's a compelling call to take action for equality that made me feel exactly as I did thirty years ago when I first became a feminist."
--Helen Grieco, Executive Director, California National Organization for Women

aFight Like a Girl is a much-needed primer and call to action for the next generation of feminist activists. In this regressive cultural climate, it's more important than ever to speak loudly and proudly about the work we're doing and what still needs to be done.a
--Lisa Jervis, co-founder and publisher of "Bitch"

aAn amazing and comprehensive resource. . . . Serving as both an introduction to feminism and a blueprint for whatas next for the movement, Fight Like a Girl is simply invaluable.a
--"Bay Windows"

"Seely, the youngest elected president of California's chapter of the National Organization for Women, combines her own story of third-wave feminism with an overview of the feminist movement and words to guide others. Third-wave feminists are awareof both the victories won by earlier feminists and the problems of class, race, sexual orientation, and internationalism that must still be overcome. This book weaves a deep respect for the foremothers with commonsense discussion of current obstacles and suggestions for direct action, resulting in a work that reminds us of what too many activists forget-every progressive movement has a long history, few organizing tricks are new, and problems must be understood before they can be solved. Seely includes booklists, time lines, web sites, and how-to tips that will help readers over the bridge from her insights to real world activism. For midsize to larger public libraries, academic libraries, and all feminist collections."
--"Library Journal"

aServing as both an introduction to feminism and a blueprint for whatas next for the movement, Fight like a girl is simply invaluable.a
--"Bay Windows"

"Want to know what it means to be a feminist of the third wave? Megan Seely's Fight Like a Girl is the answer; thereas enough information here to make you angry and enough resources to make you an effective activist."
--Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, co-authors of "Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future"

aAlways engaging, interesting, and insightful. Fascinating and sure to engage many young women!a
--Sherrie A. Inness, editor of "Action Chicks"

aThe resources, helpful hints about organizing and working with the press, the short bios of companies and fabulous feminists are great!a
--Caryn Aviv, co-editor of "American Queer, Then and Now"

"Fight Like a Girl is packed with both information and inspiration for young women by a young woman who knows herstuff. It's a terrific practical feminist resource book with an optimistic attitude that says in clear language, 'You're in charge of your life and here's how to stay that way.'"
--Gloria Feldt, former president, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and author of "The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back"

Fight Like A Girl offers a fearless vision for the future of feminism. By boldly detailing what is at stake for women and girls today, Megan Seely outlines the necessary steps to achieve true political, social and economic equity for all. Reclaiming feminism for a new generation, Fight Like A Girl speaks to young women who embrace feminism in substance but not necessarily in name.

With an eye toward what it takes to create actual change, Seely offers a practical guide for how to get involved, take action and wage successful events and campaigns.

The book is full of valuable resources for novice and committed activists alike, including such features as aHow to Write a Press Release, a aGuidelines to a Good Media Interview, a aA Feminist Shopping Guide, a and a list of over 100 Fabulous Feminist Resources, including organizations, websites, and events to attend. Each chapter is full of ideas, both big and small, for ways to get involved, get active, and make a difference.

Exploring such issues as body image and self-acceptance, education and empowerment, health and sexuality, political representation, economic justice, and violence against women, Fight Like A Girl looks at the challenges that women and girls face while emphasizing the strength that they independently, and collectively, embody. Seely delves into the politics of the feminist movement, exploring both womenas history and current day realities with easy-to-follow lists and timelines like those on aWomen Who Made A Difference, a aChronology of the U.S. Womenas Movement, a and aDoas and Donats for Young Feminists.a

A Third Wave manifesto as well as an introduction to feminism for a new generation, Fight Like A Girl is a powerful blueprint for young women today.

This book explores the controversial social media practices engaged in by girls and young women, including sexual self-representations on social network sites, sexting, and self-harm vlogs. Informed by feminist media and cultural studies, Dobson delves beyond alarmist accounts to ask what it is we really fear about these practices.