In this collection, continental and diasporan African women interrogate the concept "sacred text" and analyze ways oral and written religious "texts" intersect with violence against African-descended women and girls. While the sanctioned idea of a sacred text is written literature, this project interrupts that conception by drawing attention to speech and other embodied practices that have sacral authority within the social imaginary. As a volume focused on religion and violence, essays in this collection analyze religions' authorization of violence against women and girls; contest the legitimacy of some religious "texts"; and affirm other writing, especially memoir, as redemptive. Unraveling and Reweaving Sacred Canon in Africana Womanhood arises from three years of conversation of continental and diasporan women, most recently continued in the July 6-10, 2014 Consultation of African and African Disaporan Women in Religion and Theology and privileges experiences and contexts of continental and diasporan African women and girls. Interlocutors include African traditionalists, Christian Protestants and Catholics, Muslims, and women embodying hybrid practices of these and other traditions.

Fixing Patriarchy: Feminism and Mid-Victorian Male Novelists explores representations of monstrous women in mid-Victorian literature, tracing anxious male responses to the feminist movement of the era. It argues that Victorian patriarchy was a fluid theory and set of practices through which Victorian men attempted unsuccessfully to fix gender definitions and their own positions of power. In Victorian novels written by men, the thorough instability of contemporary conceptions of both masculinity and femininity is revealed, as an entire society struggled with new forms of self-awareness and new threats to traditional social structures and systems of belief.

Family stories of the ties between mothers and daughters form the foundation of Mothers and Daughters: Complicated Connections Across Cultures. Nationally and internationally known feminist scholars frame, analyze, and explore mother-daughter bonds in this collection of essays. Cultures from around the world are mined for insights which reveal historical, generational, ethnic, political, religious, and social class differences. This book focuses on the tenacity of the connection between mothers and daughters, impediments to a strong connection, and practices of good communication. Mothers and Daughters will interest those studying communication, women s studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, counseling, and cultural studies.

Addressing the contradictions surrounding modern-day femininity and its complicated relationship with feminism and postfeminism, this book examines a range of popular female and feminist icons and paradigms. It offers an innovative and forward-looking perspective on femininity and the modern female self.

This book combines the insights of enlightenment thinking and feminist theory to explore the significance of love in modern philosophy. The author argues for the importance of emotion in general, and love in particular, to moral and political philosophy, pointing out that some of the central philosophers of the enlightment were committed to a moralized conception of love. However, she believes that feminism's insights arise not from its attribution of special and distinctive qualities to women, but from its recognition of human vulernability.

Issues surrounding precarity, debility and vulnerability are now of central concern to philosophers as we try and navigate an increasingly uncertain world. Matthew R. McLennan delves into these subjects enthusiastically and sensitively, presenting a vision of the discipline of philosophy which is grounded in real, lived experience. Developing an invigorating, if at times painful, sense of the finitude and fragility of human life, Philosophy and Vulnerability provocatively marshals three disciplinary "nonphilosophers" to make its argument: French filmmaker and novelist Catherine Breillat, journalist and masterful cultural commentator Joan Didion and feminist poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde. Through this encounter, this book suggests ways in which rigorous attention to difference and diversity must nourish a militant philosophical universalism in the future.

Although Hegel and feminism seem an unlikely couple, Hegelian philosophy played a prominent part in the thinking of groundbreaking feminist philosophers from Simone de Beauvoir to Luce Irigaray. This book offers a new generation of feminist readings of Hegel from leading scholars in the both fields. Through close readings and innovative arguments, this book makes a significant contribution to the debate on gender and provides insight into philosophical method.

This impressive and original study is one of the first books to combine mainstream sociology with feminism in exploring the subject of the professions and power. This is an important addition to the corpus of feminist scholarship... It provides fresh insights into the way in which male power has been used to limit the employment aspirations of women in the middle classes. - Rosemary Crompton, University of Kent

Originally published in English in 1927, this study discusses the physical differences between men and women and how this affected the views of men and women of society. With all known information at the time, the author also details perceived mental differences between the sexes and finishes with a brief cultural history of women's place in society. This title will be of interest to students of Gender Studies and History.

This work provides a broad survey of the development of female insurgency in France between 1789 and 1871, placing particular emphasis on the conflicts of 1830-1851. The author demonstrates that a tradition of women's protest evolved from the 1789 Revolution, assuming particular forms associated with the exclusion of females from political and civil rights, and inviting both praise and vilification. The conclusions challenge the view that in 19th-century France, women retreated altogether from popular movements.

This timely book provides new insights into debates around the relationship between women and film by drawing on the work of philosopher Luce Irigaray. Arguing that female-directed cinema provides new ways to explore ideas of representation and spectatorship, it also examines the importance of contexts of production, direction and reception.

Yeltsin is certainly not the Sakharov of the Democratic Movement. Russian people sarcastically call his burning the Parliament an October Revolution of 1993. In "Women's Glasnost vs. Naglost "we finally hear the voices of the Russian women on what it means to be female and Russian in the tumultuous climate that is modern Russia. The founder of the Russian women's movement, Tatyana Mamonova was the first Russian woman exiled from the Soviet Union for publishing the underground samizdat, Woman and Russia. Now lauded as the Simone de Beauvoir of Russia, Mamonova has interviewed 17 Russian women on the subject of the C.A.S. as it relates to glasnost. Women from all walks of life are asked about changes with respect to their roles and expectations as women. Artists, professionals, dissidents, lesbians, doctors, writers, and civil servants tell their stories in candid terms showing that there is still a long road ahead. Revisions and elaborations of speeches delivered on Mamonova's American tours, poetry in her own hand, and line drawings in her own eloquent and prolific style compliment her essays and the women's interviews.

The history of the housewife is a complicated and uneasy narrative, rife with contradictions, tensions, and unanswered questions. In response to this, Sentenced to Everyday Life marks an important cross-generational moment in feminism. Challenging our previous understandings of what constitutes the housewife figure, this book tugs at a critical issue still unresolved in the contemporary world: what is the relationship between women and the home? And why are women so reluctant to call themselves housewives? Drawing on research and evidence surrounding the housewife figure of the 1940s and 1950s, Johnson and Lloyd address the question of why the housewife has been such a problematic figure in feminist debates since World War II. Starting with an exploration of why the housewife of the 1940s became associated with drudgery, this book covers such topics as the ways in which magazines and advertising attempted to articulate an innate connection between women and the domestic sphere, while later films of the 1950s explored the constantly shifting boundaries between social, family and individual desires and constraints for women in the home. Johnson and Lloyd also examine how the home has been a site of boredom, and what happens to the balance between work and family in the modern world. In moving into contemporary debates, the authors explore the uneasy tension between the construction of the modern self and women's efforts to transcend the domestic sphere. By situating their examination in a still unresolved contemporary topic, Johnson and Lloyd offer us both a backward glance and a forward-looking perspective into domesticity and the modern self.

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850 - 1928), who spent most of her life at Newnham College, Cambridge, was renowned for her work on Greek art and religion. In her application of anthropology to classical studies, she stirred up controversy amongst her academic colleagues, while, at the same time, influencing many writers, including Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. Despite many difficulties, both academic and personal, her brilliant mind and strength of character enabled her to open up new possibilities for academic women.

Silence, Feminism, Power: Reflections at the Edges of Sound interrogates the often-unexamined assumption that silence is oppressive, to consider the multiple possibilities silence enables. The equation between voice and power informs feminist theory and activism, creating an imperative that the oppressed must 'come to voice.' Alternately, this volume explores the diverse and complex ways that differently situated groups and individuals deploy power through silence. Authors engage questions like: What forms of resistance and healing do silence make possible? What alliances might be enabled by learning to read silences? Under what conditions is it productive to move between voice and silence? The book is thematically organized to explore: Intersectionality, Privilege, and Alliances; Academia and Knowledge Production; Community, Family, and Intimacy; Memory, Healing, and Power. Essays feature diverse feminist reflections on the nuanced relationship between silence and voice to foreground the creative, healing, meditative, generative and resistive power our silences engender.

'A crucial book for feminists, for sociology and the new "political anthropological historical school". It informs us how we are differently "situated" in and through social relations, which texts and images mediate, organise and construct.' Philip Corrigan, Professor of Applied Sociology, Exeter University Dorothy E. Smith is Professor of Sociology in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto. She is the author of The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology.

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"It's about time! Read this book."
"--Shere Hite, The Hite Report"

"With intelligence and flair, Gen-X feminist, journalist and playwright Kamen (Feminist Fatale) presents an exhaustive study of the sexual mores of the women in her generation. . . . Critical yet nonjudgmental, Kamen's lively book is a welcome primer on contemporary sexual ethics. . . . It's sure to be a hit among feminists of all ages even while it raises eyebrows in other camps."
"--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY"

"a]at times startling and at the very least amusinga]reading it is an education. And now we know at least some of what educated women stand to gain."
"--The New York Times Book Review"

"A refreshing surveya]Offers lucid analyses of the changing content and understanding of sex."
"-- The Chicago Tribune"

"At last, the torch has been passed! Paula Kamen follows women's struggle for sexual pleasure and self-affirmation into a new generation - and finds it healthier and more vibrant than ever. Young women will be fascinated by Her Way. Older ones will be amazed."
"--Barbara Ehrenreich"

"At last, a book about young women's sexual behavior that's actually written by a young woman! Paula Kamen documents women's sexual truths without judgment and-more important-without all the wrongheaded, double-standard-laden assumptions that all too often plague writing on this topic. Kamen brings the focus back where it should be: on women's own views, rather than others' views of them."
"--Lisa Miya-Jervis, Bitch Magazine"

"A bold new look at female sexuality in America today. Based onyears of meticulous research, Paula Kamen has produced a fascinating, important study of how young women are redefining their roles and relationships in a post-boomer world."
"--Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking"

"Lively and entertaining, honoring the intimate voices of a diversity of women, Her Way is an authoritative study of our long slow journey toward sexual autonomy. Kamen is a savvy third wave feminist who has done her homework. The book is a link between generations, and a major stepping stone toward fuller liberation. This is feminism for the 21st century!"
"--Barbara Seaman, coeditor of For Women Only: Our Guide to Health Empowerment"

"Intellectual, political, and compassionate, Her Way shows that the freedom to live and love by our own standards-with men on our good side-is the way toward the social change that, truly, begins in our social lives."
"--Lynn Harris, author of Breakup Girl to the Rescue! A Superhero's Guide to Love, and Lack Thereof"

"Gives women cause to celebrate! Her Way shows how, for perhaps the first time in history, a generation of young women is truly defining sex on its own terms. Her nuanced analysis of this quiet but undeniable trend is optimistic while not shying away from the problems that remain, including the inertia of a mainstream popular culture that insists on portraying women as sexy rather than as sexual beings in their own right."
"--Lisa Douglass, coauthor of Are We Having Fun Yet? The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Sex"

"Chronicles the complex ways young women understand and experience sexuality today. In this collection, Kamen draws on interviews, reports, and studies to weave an analysis of how Gen-X womendefine and adopt sex roles and gendered responses to an increasingly sexualized world. . . . Kamen concludes, rather convincingly, that young women are finally beginning to make their own rules, instead of blindly obeying those made by others and, as a result, are leading more fulfilling lives."
"--MS. MAGAZINE"

"If women's sexual mores become more like men's, is that progress? Paula Kamen seems to think so, based on HER WAY. . . . Kamen backs her assertions with a panoramic breadth of scholarship-pretty much every major piece of sex research for the last hundred years shows up in HER WAY, including some fascinating surveys of women born in the nineteenth century."
"--NERVE"

"Lively and entertaining, honoring the intimate voices of a diversity of women, Her Way is an authoritative study of our long slow journey toward sexual autonomy. Kamen is a savvy third wave feminist who has done her homework. The book is a link between generations, and a major stepping stone toward fuller liberation. This is feminism for the 21st century!"
--Barbara Seaman, Co-editor of "For Women Only: Our Guide to Health Empowerment"

"The next time you're having an argument with some asshole over the fact that women can have just as high a sex drive and the same ability to know their desires as men, just pull out this book. . . . It's a great book to help you get an overall feeling for the sexual attitudes of chicks these days. . . . a must-have for any feminist home."
"--BUST"

Three decades after the Sexual Revolution, women's power and status have begun to match men's, and women are finally making the rules in order to experience a more radical and truer form of liberation.

Her Waydemonstrates how and why 20- and 30-something women have evolved to act and think more like men sexually, while also creating their own distinct sexual patterns and appetites. Today's young women are now the leaders of an unreported but sweeping "Sexual Evolution," in which women take control of sex and redefine it from their perspective. In other words, do it "her way."

Paula Kamen characterizes this Sexual Evolution according to two major developments that are setting sexual patterns for future generations of women: young women's sexual profiles are now remarkably similar to those of men, in terms of age of first intercourse, and numbers of sex partners and casual encounters. They also feel less guilt or shame about their behavior, from premarital sex to having a child out of marriage to coming out of the closet to cohabiting.

Yet young women are not merely imitating men, but forging their own distinct sexual perspectives and asserting their own needs. In addition to discovering the pleasures of sex, young women are also exploring the dilemmas, challenging male-defined sexual scripts, and changing what actually goes on in bed.

Based on more than one hundred lively, unfiltered and in-depth interviews with women across the country, Her Way cuts through the sensationalism and speculation of popular discussions about young women and sex. Kamen reports the real story of today's enhanced sexual expectations and choices.

In The Ideology of Conduct, first published in 1987, scholars from various fields, from the medieval period to the present day, discuss literature in which the sole purpose is to instruct women in how to make themselves desirable. This collection investigates how middle-class writers who had long emulated the behaviour of the aristocracy began to criticise that behaviour by formulating an alternative object of desire. They did so without appearing to breed political controversy because it seemed to concern only the female. But writing for and about women in fact became a powerful instrument of hegemony as it introduced a whole new vocabulary for social relations, induced certain forms of economic behaviour as desirable in men and women respectively, and insured the reproduction of the nuclear family. It is argued, therefore, that the literature of conduct not only recorded but also assisted the production of our contemporary gender-based culture.

This is a new edition of Laura Mulvey's groundbreaking collection of essays, originally published in 1989. in an extensive introduction to this second edition, Mulvey looks back at the historical and personal contests for her famous article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, "and reassesses her theories in the light of new technologies.

The Cost of Being Female is 30 cents, say the authors of this new book on discrimination against women. They demonstrate their thesis by constructing an index that documents the costs of discrimination against women in five aspects of life: economic, political, social, education, and health. The index compares the costs for American women with those of women in Sweden, Norway, France and China, and measures the costs for three time periods: 1990s, 1950s, and the 19th century. The authors interviewed over 70 women, providing a human approach to the statistics of earnings, occupations, political participation, marriage, divorce, childrearing, education, and women's health. The women's narratives are living testimony to the experiences of the costs of being female.

This study of feminism, equity and change in the academy is based on interviews with 40 feminist academics and students in Britain, Sweden and Greece. The research attempts to decode and disentangle gendered message systems and the matrix of power relations in the academy. It consists of feminist readings of the micro processes of everyday practices. Change is interrogated in relation to feminist pedagogy, equity, organizational culture, policies and discourses of new right reform, mass expansion and new managerialism. This work is intended for departments of sociology, women's studies, education, organization studies, management studies, equal opportunities, and employment studies.

The 1840s, 50s, and 60s: three decades during which the British feminist movement saw some of its most intense activity of the nineteenth-century, and readers find some of the most monstrous, troubling representations of women by male writers in all of literary history. In Fixing Patriarchy, Donald E. Hall suggests that feminism at mid-century posed intertwined social, economic, political and psychological threats to patriarchy. Hall explores the metamorphic nature of Victorian definitions of masculinity and femininity through an analysis of male authors such as Dickens, Tennyson, Kingsley, Thackeray, Hughes, Collins, and Trollope in dialogue with Victorian feminists and other women writers.

Synthesizing historical research with pertinent queer, feminist, post-structuralist, and materialist theories, Hall locates both startling admissions of moral fallibility and violent strategies of retrenchment and containment of this perceived threat to the male social body. Fixing Patriarchytraces parallels among Victorian discourses of religion, science, economics, and aesthetics, as it explores a cultural dynamic of un-fixedness and heightened desires for fixity.

This book presents testimony of feminisms in process. The accounts are filled with tensions, not least an uneasiness with feminism itself, and the question of what exactly it means to be a feminist in education in the contemporary world. It is their respect for their own differences and the honesty with which they write that makes this such a rich text. From the Foreword by Kathleen Weiler

Educators committed to social change face the common dilemma of how to take up the work of transformation without reinscribing systems of domination. The struggle with the concept of imposition is central to the emergence of many educators' identities and provides a site for exploring the complex relationship between power, knowledge, and teacher identity. This book chronicles the collaborative efforts of five diverse women educators (Native American, European, Jewish American, rural, midwestern, working class) to grapple with the tensions of taking up a political position while honoring the cultural, social, and historical context of others. Their dialogue across feminist, critical, and postmodern theories and practices explores the process of fusing theory with political work in the world. What emerges is the continual repositioning and disruption of taken for granted meanings as central to enhancing emancipatory education.