Debate on the effects of class on educational attainment is well documented and typically centres on the reproductive nature of class whilst studies of the effect of class on educational aspirations also predict outcomes that see education reinforcing and reproducing a student's class background.
Despite a number of government initiatives to help raise higher education participation to 50% by 2010, for the working class numbers have altered little. Using data from an ethnographic case study of a low-achieving girls school the author explores aspirations and argues that whilst class is very powerful in explaining educational attainment, understanding educational aspirations is somewhat more complex. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to question and challenge popular assumptions surrounding class-based theory in making sense of girls aspirations and to question the usefulness of the continued over reliance of such broad categorisations by both academics and policy makers.

"Based on impressive research in a wide variety of sources, including popular literature, advertisements, true confession and physique magazines, advice columns, sex surveys, vice investigation reports, and personal letters, "The First Sexual Revolution" offers a provocative interpretation of the impact of the sexual revolution on men. White's boldly-stated criticism of sexual liberalism is sure to arouse controversy. Yet his view of men confused by new expectations of attractiveness and sexiness, threatened by women's demands for sexual satisfaction, yet essentially still in control, is compelling."
--Leila J. Rupp Ohio State University, Co-author of "Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s,"

In the early 1900s, a sexual revolution took place that was to define social relations between the sexes in America for generations. As Victorian values gradually faded, and a commercialized consumer culture emerged, the female figure of the flapper came to embody early-twentieth century femininity. Simultaneously, masculine ideals were also undergoing radical change. Who then was this New Man to accompany the New Woman? Who was the flapper's boyfriend?

In this remarkable book, Kevin White draws on a vast array of sources to examine the ideology--spread through movies, advertisements, sex confession magazines, social hygienists, sex manuals, and Freudian popularizers --that has defined modern American manhood. Examining attitudes toward masturbation, homosexuality, violence against women, feminism, free love, and the emerging dating system, "The First Sexual Revolution" shows how American men in the Jazz Age were subjected to a barrage ofinformation and advice about their sexuality that stressed not character but personality and sex appeal. Repression was out; sexual expression--performance--was in.

This New Man was more egalitarian and more sexual than the Victorian patriarch. But the diffusion to the middle class of the Victorian underworld ethos of primitivism and violence against women, and the flight from commitment to relationships, heralded instability and tensions that continues to define American sexual relations. To illustrate this point, Dr. White takes a close look--through letters and diaries--at the successes and failures of nine marriages involving actively feminist women, demonstrating the pressures that this revolution in values caused. Dr. White concludes that the return to primitivism characterized by the men's movement marks the most recent aftershock of the revolution that has shaped us all.

Filmic constructions of war heroism have a profound impact on public perceptions of conflicts. Here, contributors examine the ways motifs of gender and heroism in war films are used to justify ideological positions, shape the understanding of the military conflicts, support political agendas and institutions, and influence collective memory.

By rethinking contemporary debates regarding the politics of aesthetic forms, "Gender and Allegory in Transamerican Fiction and Performance" explores how allegory can be used to resolve the "problem" of identity in both political theory and literary studies. Examining fiction and performance from Zoe Valdes and Cherrie Moraga to Def Poetry Jam and Carmelita Tropicana, Sugg suggests that the representational oscillations of allegory can reflect and illuminate the fraught dynamics of identity discourses and categories in the Americas. Using a wide array of theoretical and aesthetic sources from the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, this book argues for the crucial and potentially transformative role of feminist cultural production in transamerican public cultures.

Genetic, hormonal, neurological, and other biological factors need to be taken into account to fully understand sexual orientation. This work represents the latest research and theory on causes of variation in sexual orientation. It looks at sexual orientation as a cross-species phenomenon with numerous determining factors.

This work is a collection of chapters by some of the leading researchers in the scientific study of sexual orientation. The theory that many genetic, hormonal, neurological, and other biological factors need to be taken into account to fully understand sexual orientation is espoused in this book. It presents much of the latest research on the causes of variation in sexual orientation and related phenomena. It views sexual orientation as a cross-species phenomenon with both biological and environmental determinants.

This monograph is the first academic work to apply a neo-Marxist approach to 20th-century Canadian social realist novels, pursuing a refreshingly (neo-)Marxist approach to such issues as Bakhtinian notions of the novelistic form and dialogism as applied to Canadian socio-political novels influenced by various socialisms, socialist-feminist concerns, economic and sexual politics, and the genre of social realism. In so doing, it demonstrates that Marxist socialism is as relevant today as it was in the 1930s, just as social realist novels continue to thrive as a critique of capitalism. Readers will find valuable insights into the social significance, formal innovations, moral sensitivity, aesthetic enrichment, and ideological complexity of Canadian social realist novels.

This book analyzes the spread of American female consumer culture to Italy and its influence on Italian women in the postwar and Cold War periods, eras marked by the political, economic, social, and cultural battle between the United States and Soviet Union. Focusing on various aspects of this culture-beauty and hygiene products, refrigerators, and department stores, as well as shopping and magazine models-the book examines the reasons for and the methods of American female consumer culture's arrival in Italy, the democratic, consumer capitalist messages its products sought to "sell" to Italian women, and how Italian women themselves reacted to this new cultural presence in their everyday lives. Did Italian women become the American Mrs. Consumer? As such, the book illustrates how the modern, consuming American woman became a significant figure not only in Italy's postwar recovery and transformation, but also in the international and domestic cultural and social contests for the hearts and minds of Italian women.

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), a pioneering gender theorist, transcendentalist, journalist, and literary critic, was one of the most well-known and highly regarded feminist intellectuals of nineteenth-century America. With her contemporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, she was one of the predominant writers of the Transcendentalist movement, and she aligned herself in both her public and private life with the European revolutionary fervor of the 1840s. She traveled to Italy as a foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune to cover the nascent revolutions, pursuing the transnational ideal awakened in her youth by a classical education in European languages and a Romantic curiosity about other cultures, traditions, and identities.
This volume is a collaboration of international scholars who, from varied fields and approaches, assess Fuller's genius and character. Treating the last several years of Margaret Fuller's short life, these essays offer a truly international discussion of Fuller's unique cultural, political, and personal achievements. From the origins and articulations of Fuller's cosmopolitanism to her examination of "the woman question," and from her fascination with the European "other" to her candid perception of imperial America from abroad, they ponder what such an extraordinary woman meant to America, and also to Italy and Europe, during her lifetime and continuing to the present.

1. Unique format (myth-busting) which emphasizes the application of empirical skepticism. 2. Broad range of topical subjects written by globally renowned academics. 3. Number of Pseudoscience in Psychology modules are on the rise, and there is a need for a core textbooks - this book seeks to fill that gap.

As literature written in Latin has almost no female authors, we are dependent on male writers for some understanding of the way women would have spoken. Plautus (3rd to 2nd century BCE) and Terence (2nd century BCE) consistently write particular linguistic features into the lines spoken by their female characters: endearments, soft speech, and incoherent focus on numerous small problems. Dorota M. Dutsch describes the construction of this feminine idiom and asks whether it should be considered as evidence of how Roman women actually spoke.

Using nine recent theatrical and cinematic productions as case studies, it considers the productive contradictions and tensions that occur when contemporary actors perform the gender norms of previous cultures. It will be of interest to theatre practitioners as well as to students of early modern drama, of performance, and of gender studies.

For many years Ruskin has seemed, at best, a conservative thinker on gender roles. At worst, his lecture On Queens' Gardens fromSesame and Lilies was read as alocus classicus of Victorian patriarchal oppression. These essays challenge such assumptions, presenting a wide-ranging revaluation of Ruskin's place in relation to gender, and offering new perspectives on continuing debates on issues of gender - in the Victorian period, and in our own.

This volume, Gender in an Urban World, brings the analysis of gender from the margin to the center of urban theory. Gender in an Urban World examines the influence of gender in shaping relations in urban spaces and places. It represents a "crack" in the landscape of urban sociology, and engages in the discourse of the field from a gendered perspective.

This volume is global in focus and includes empirical and field studies as it relates to structure, politics, policy and everyday life within an urban context. The authors investigate the ways in which the urban world is gendered, and the roles of womens and mens agency in creating and changing urban life. Reconceptualizations of various models, focusing on local, metropolitan, and international environments are also included.

Gender in an Urban World contributes innovative theoretical paradigms to the urban field. It is meant to contribute to an ongoing dialogue with regard to gender within the context of urbanism and urbanization.
* Chapters authored by leading experts from around the world
* Brings the analysis of gender from the margin to the center of urban theory

Any observer of Dominican political and literary discourse will quickly notice the prevalence of certain notions of hyper-masculinity. In this extraordinary work, Maja Horn argues that these gender conceptions became ingrained during the dictatorship (1930-1961) of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, as well as through the U.S. military occupation that preceded it. Where previous studies have focused mainly on Spanish colonialism and the sharing of the island with Haiti, Horn emphasizes the underexamined and lasting influence of U.S. imperialism and how it prepared the terrain for Trujillo's hyperbolic language of masculinity. She also demonstrates how later attempts to emasculate the image of Trujillo often reproduced the same masculinist ideology popularized by his government. Through the lens of gender politics, Horn enables readers to reconsider the ongoing legacy of the Trujillato, including the relatively weak social movements formed around racial and ethnic identities, sexuality, and even labor. She offers exciting new interpretations of such writers as Hilma Contreras, Rita Indiana Hernandez, and Junot Diaz, revealing the ways they challenge dominant political and canonical literary discourses.

In a provocative and insightful exposition, Jane Flax posits that Americans have never properly mourned slavery and its lingering effects on American subjects and politics. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book shows that a reciprocal relationship exists between unconscious processes and race/gender domination and that unless we attend to these unconscious processes, no adequate remedy for the malignant consequences of our current race/gender practices and relations can be devised. Wide-ranging, Flax supports her arguments using a variety of sources, including psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, political theory, Michel Foucault's writings, Obama's books and speeches, critical race theory, data on race/gender disparities, and analysis of contemporary films.

This book is a social critique of the cultural taboo of the female virginity in the Middle East. It highlights the unobtainability of this cultural myth and its multilevel destructive influences on various aspects of social life.

This book explores the production of Muslim youth identities, with respect to nation, religion and gender in Pakistan, Senegal, Nigeria and Lebanon. As Muslim-majority, post-colonial states with significant youth populations, these countries offer critical case studies for the exploration of the different grammars of youth identities, and 'trouble' the perceived homogeneity of Muslims in local and global imaginaries. The authors offer rigorous and detailed accounts of the local, situated and contingent ways in which youth articulate their identities and sense of belonging, and the book reflects on the importance of affect, belonging and affiliation in the construction of youth narratives of identity as well as highlighting their political and contested nature. Troubling Muslim Youth Identities will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of development studies, social and cultural studies, gender, geography, education, and peace and conflict studies.

How do Chinese, Japanese and Korean mothers in Britain make sense of their motherhood and employment? What are the intersecting factors that shape these women's identities, experiences and stories? Contributing further to the continuing discourse and development of intersectionality, this book examines East Asian migrant women's stories of motherhood, employment and gender relations by deploying interlocking categories that go beyond the meta axes of race, gender and class, including factors such as husbands' ethnicities and the locality of their settlement. Through this, Lim argues for more detailed and context specific analytical categories of intersectionality, enabling a more nuanced understanding of migrant women's stories and identities. East Asian Mothers in Britain will appeal to students and scholars across a range of disciplines and with an interest in identity, gender, ethnicity, class, migration and intersectionality.

Since the 1990 publication of Gender Trouble, Judith Butler has had a profound influence on how we understand gender and sexuality, corporeal politics, and political action both within and outside the academy. This collection, which considers not only Gender Trouble but also Bodies That Matter, Excitable Speech, and The Psychic Life of Power, attests to the enormous impact Butler's work has had across disciplines. In analyzing Butler's theories, the contributors demonstrate their relevance to a wide range of topics and fields, including activism, archaeology, film, literature, pedagogy, and theory. Included is a two-part interview with Judith Butler herself, in which she responds to questions about queer theory, the relationship between her work and that of other gender theorists, and the political impact of her ideas. In addition to the editors, contributors include Edwina Barvosa-Carter, Robert Alan Brookey, Kirsten Campbell, Angela Failler, Belinda Johnston, Rosemary A. Joyce, Vicki Kirby, Diane Helene Miller, Mena Mitrano, Elizabeth M. Perry, Frederick S. Roden, and Natalie Wilson.

A ground-breaking guide that provides men with tools to improve their mental health and well-being. Masculinity requires a redesign. Men exhibit higher rates of suicide, lower rates of help-seeking, higher rates of substance use and abuse, and higher rates of anger and violence. How can this change? In Man Kind, counseling psychologist Zachary Gerdes, PhD, provides a framework for improving men's mental health and well-being while redefining what it means to be masculine. Rather than following a traditional view of masculinity focused on stoicism, patriarchy, and self-reliance, Gerdes provides his LIFT model-a road map to help men foster collaboration, understand when and how to utilize resources, and build mental resilience and flexibility. In this empowering book, Gerdes: * helps men understand their thoughts and behaviors from a psychological perspective * provides steps to help men change behaviors that are detrimental to their health and relationships * outlines a model for healthy masculinity that incorporates psychological and relational practices for improving well-being * includes strategies for improving cognitive insight, elevating emotionality, reinvigorating relationships, and overcoming oppression and oppressiveness * illustrates how certain behaviors are not necessarily "masculine" but merely the result of social conditioning * explains the latest psychological and social science research on gender identity and masculinity to provide a scientific foundation for improving men's mental health * operates on the Leverage, Insight, Freedom, Truth (LIFT) model, which Gerdes developed as an intervention to improve various health outcomes in men Man Kind provides men with the tools they need to improve their mental health and well-being.

In this book, Al-Kohlani examines fifty-five Muslim and non-Muslim countries from 1960 to 2010 in response to "religious theory" that associates certain religions with gender inequality and "modernization theory" which downplays the role of religion on gender inequity and associates gender inequality with socioeconomic factors. The author explores both schools of thought and posits that, on average, Muslim countries have lower educational equality in comparison to non-Muslim countries with less religious constitution. An interdisciplinary study drawn from the fields of world politics, public policy in education, and political religion, this book responds not only to debates within academia, but also to larger debates in society about the role of religion in the state, the specific challenges of the relationship of Islam and the public policies, and the relationship between constitution and gender equality.

This book explores the courtship and marriage of Gwyneth Murray, an English woman, and a Canadian, Harry Logan, who wrote in the personae of their vagina (Dardanella) and penis (Peter) during World War I. Through an analysis of their extensive daily correspondence over nearly a decade, it uncovers the couple's changing attitudes to the intersection of sexuality and religion, to marriage and childrearing, as they navigated the transition from Victorian to modern values. By focusing on first-person narratives, this book enriches our understanding of gender identities revealing how porous the boundaries remained between notions of 'heterosexual' and 'same-sex' friendships. This study offers an unprecedented perspective on one couple's sexual practices, which included mutual masturbation and oral sex, and constitutes one of the most intensive examinations of female attitudes to sexual pleasure in an era of female emancipation.

This is a combination of essays from several disciplines with incisive commentary by the editor. This volume provides a unique perspective on sexual variance as a dimension of the larger social history of the United States.

Every society has had to confront the issue of sexual expression or behavior, in practice, if not in theory. It is a basic management issue which must be addressed. Theorizing about sex is a relatively recent phenomenon in American history, dating from no earlier than the beginning of the 20th century. In recent decades this interest has produced an enormous outpouring of literature of sexuality, dealing largely with what we do, how we do it, and how to do it better. Such inquiry has been, however, essentially the province of anthropology, psychology, and sociology. The historical perspective on sexuality has been less well treated. Some attention to this omission has occurred in recent years. Even so, minimal attention has been given to practices beyond the boundary of acceptable sexuality, namely sexual deviance or stigmatized sexual behavior.

The primary aim of this volume is to provide a compact and selective perspective on sexual deviance as one dimension of American societal history. It does so by examining attitudes and practices from the colonial era onward. The essays speak collectively to the history of American culture as well as to the history of variant practice. This is basic reading for all students of American social and sexual history, and gender specialized courses.

This book explores a significant lacuna in British history. Between the 1790s and the 1840s, the concept of psychological androgyny or the unsexed mind emerged as a notion of psychosexual equality, promoted by a small though influential network of heterodox radicals on the margins of Rational Dissent. Deeply concerned with the growing segregation of the sexes, supported seemingly by arbitrary and increasingly binary models of sexual difference, heterodox radicals insisted that while the body might be sexed, the mind was not. They argued that society and the prejudicial masculinist institutions of patriarchy should be reformed to accommodate and protect what one radical described as an 'infinitely varied humanity'. In placing the concept of psychological androgyny centre stage, this book offers a substantial revision to understandings of progressive debates on gender in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century in Britain.