With the literary canon consisting mostly of works created by and about men, the central perspective is decidedly male. This unique reference offers alternate approaches to reading traditional literature, as well as suggestions for expanding the canon to include more gender sensitive works. Covering 96 of the most frequently taught works of fiction, essays offer teachers, librarians, and students fresh insights into the female perspective in literature. The list of titles, created in consultation with educators, includes classic works by male authors like Dickens, Faulkner, and Twain, balanced with works by female authors such as Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Also included are contemporary works by writers such as Alice Walker and Margaret Atwood that are being incorporated into the curriculum, as well as those advancing a more global view, such as Sandra Cisneros' House on Mango Street and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. The essays are expertly written in an accessible language that will help students gain greater awareness of gender-related themes. Suggestions for classroom discussions--with selected works for further study--are incorporated into the entries. The volume is organized alphabetically by title and includes both author and subject indexes. An appendix of gender-related themes further enhances this volume's usefulness for curriculum applications and student research projects.

This book reviews the state of knowledge on men and masculinities between ten European countries, emphasising both the differences and the similarities between them. The volume draws upon the outcomes of a recently-completed major research exercise undertaken by network funded by the European Commission-funded Research Network on Men in Europe. It contains contributions by some of Europe's leading scholars in the field. Special emphasis is placed on four key themes: home and work, social exclusion, violences, and health. There is also a particular focus on the fundamental changes taking place in Central and Eastern Europe in the post-socialist period; and to the questions of politics and ethnicity in contemporary Europe. Addressing politics, policy and analysis around men and masculinities in relation to these and other matters is an immensely urgent task not only for European and Trans-European political structures but also for European societies themselves. In the past, masculinity and men's powers and practices were taken for granted. Gender was largely seen as a matter of and for women. This is now changing in the face of rapid but contradictory social change. This book will be essential reading for anyone, whether academic, policymaker, or concerned citizen, who wishes to understand these social processes and their implications for the societies of Europe. Contents: Estonia Voldemar Kolga, Professor of Personality and Developmental Psychology, Head of the Women's Studies Centre, University of Tallinn Finland Jeff Hearn, Professor in the Swedish School of Economics, Helsinki; Emmi Lattu, Doctoral Student at the University of Tampere; Teemu Tallberg, Doctoral Student at the Swedish School of Economics, Helsinki; Hertta Niemi, Research Assistant and Doctoral Student at the Swedish School of Economics, Helsinki Germany Ursula Muller, Full Professor of Sociology and Director of the Interdisciplinary Women's Studies Centre, University of Bielefeld Ireland Harry Ferguson, Professor of Social Work, University of the West of England Latvia Irina Novikova, Director of the Centre for Gender Studies, University of Latvia Poland Elzbieta Oleksy, Full Professor of Humanities and Director of the Women's Studies Centre, University of Lodz and Joanna Rydzewska, Doctoral Candidate, Women's Studies Centre, University of Lodz United Kingdom Keith Pringle, Professor of Social Work, Aalborg University Bulgaria Dimitar Kambourov, Associate Professor in Literary Theory, Sofia University Czech Republic Iva Smidova, Doctoral Researcher, Sociology Department, Masaryk University Sweden Marie Nordberg, Doctoral Student in Ethnology, Goteborgs University

"Debating Gender, Debating Sexuality" incorporates many different and fruitful approaches to understanding gender and sexuality. In this collection, Nikki R. Keddie presents essays, chosen from the journal Contention, written by outstanding scholars and theorists, along with responses to them. Topics discussed include procreation and female oppression, trends in feminist theory, gender and U.S. social policy, Marxism and women's history, the male search for identity today and the works of Foucault and Freud. Contributors include Nicky Hart, Juliet Mitchell, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Barbara Laslett, Sandra Harding, Linda Gordon, Theda Skocpol, Deborah Valenze, Iris Berger, Philippa Levine, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Theodore C. Kent, Roy Porter, Mark Poster, Jeffrey Masson, Frederick Crews, and Jeffrey Prager.

Women at the Border analyzes border policing practices currently informed by paradigms of securitization against unauthorized mobility and explores the potential for a paradigm shift to a more ethical regulation of borders. By focusing on the ways women have sought to cross borders in extra -legal fashion, the book shows how border enforcement differentially impacts on some populations and makes the case that unauthorized migration requires management rather than repulsion and criminalization. When facing the emerging and future challenges of unauthorized mobility, border policing must be recast as a function of human rights that results in greater human security at the border. Examining gender and border policing across Europe, North America and Australia, this book enhances our understanding of the gendered determinants of extra -legal border crossing, border policing and the changing dynamics of unauthorized mobility.

In the vibrant field of queer Asian studies, scholars to date have paid scant attention to transgender topics. Meanwhile, despite its already sophisticated focus on gender non-conformity, Western queer studies exhibits an equally pressing problem: the conspicuous absence of empirical and theoretical investigations of transgenderism in Northeast Asian society and culture. This volume responds to the convergence of these limitations. By bringing together experts with diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the China field, from cultural studies to history to musicology, Transgender China makes a timely intervention whereby emergent Sinologists explore previously untapped terrains across mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to inaugurate the field of Chinese transgender studies.

Important new findings on sex and gender in the former Soviet Bloc! Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia is a groundbreaking look at the new sexual reality in Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe after the fall of communism. The book presents the kind of candid discussion of sexual identities, sexual politics, and gender arrangements that was often censored and rarely discussed openly before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1987. Authors from a variety of disciplines examine how the changes caused by rapid economic and social transformation have affected human sexuality and if those changes can generate the social tolerance necessary to produce a well-rooted democracy. The first theoretical and empirical body of work to sexuality in (post)transitional countries, Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia examines the effects of the profound social transformation taking place in the former Soviet Union. Through an interdisciplinary perspective, the book addresses vital issues of this transformation, including gender relations, gender roles and sex norms in transition, sexual representations in the media, patterns of adult sexual behavior, gay and lesbian issues, sex trafficking, health risks, and sex education. The book also presents a critical examination of whether the fall of communism has, in fact, induced changes in sexuality and gender relations. Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia examines the changes in sex and gender in countries in transition, including: the negative consequences of Serbia's state-directed non-development during the 1990s the causes and consequences of trafficking in women from the Russian Federation the ongoing debate over human rights for sexual minorities in Romania the effects of two Yugoslavian films released in the 1990s that feature transgender characters sexualities in transition in Croatia problems created by changes in sexual behavior among urban Russian adolescents the social and legal state of lesbians in Slovenia Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia fills in the gap in the current knowledge and understanding of the effects of the profound social changes taking place in Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe. The book is an essential read for academics and researchers working in gender studies, political science, and gay and lesbian studies. Handy tables and figures make the information easy to access and understand.

In many facets of Western culture, including archaeology, there remains a legacy of perceiving gender divisions as natural, innate, and biological in origin. This belief follows that men are naturally pre-disposed to public, intellectual pursuits, while women are innately designed to care for the home and take care of children. In the interpretation of material culture, accepted notions of gender roles are often applied to new findings: the dichotomy between the domestic sphere of women and the public sphere of men can color interpretations of new materials. In this innovative volume, the contributors focus explicitly on analyzing the materiality of historic changes in the domestic sphere around the world. Combining a global scope with great temporal depth, chapters in the volume explore how gender ideologies, identities, relationships, power dynamics, and practices were materially changed in the past, thus showing how they could be changed in the future.

This is a broad introduction to Latin America, ranging from religion and history to literature and education, with a focus on cultures and cultural change. With lively prose and a variety of informative inserts, Williamson draws the reader into the diverse realities of a continent in flux. The text is held together by a strong theoretical framework, and does not shy away from the complexity of the continent, or the degree of contingency, conflict, and turmoil at play in the region.

This anthology is a symposium on queer space and queer utopias. Through the presentation of empirical work by contemporary queer theorists this book aims to create a critical dialogue about the emergence of queer spaces and the ways in which they aim to further queer futurity. This cutting edge volume pushes current debates about the future of queer identified individuals out of the purely theoretical realm and demonstrates how queer futurity is currently being shaped by individual behavior in praxis. It celebrates the possibility that these individuals are in fact attempting to craft queer spaces where hegemonic heterosexist discourses cease to regulate bodies. As opposed to rejecting the notion that social and political organization can lead to emancipatory possibilities in the future, this text explores the ways in which figuring the potential for crafting utopic spaces is not just intellectually rewarding but can transform the lives of individuals and society at large.

This book critically examines and theorizes the process of how return migrants reintegrate into their countries of origin. The result is a new methodology for understanding the experiences of return migrants, or their 'reintegration strategies'. This approach demonstrates that reintegration strategies differ by type of return migrant, leading to variations in how far they are able to contribute to the development of their nation states. The author uses female return migration to Ethiopia as a case study, focusing on the impact of gender on reintegration strategies to analyse the connection between return migration and social change. This book will appeal to scholars of migration and refugee studies, as well as a wider audience of sociologists, anthropologists, demographers and policy makers.

Have you ever wondered? * Why it's so hard to get close to a man. * Why don't men express emotions except big ones like anger and frustration? * Why most perversion is male; why most pornography is produced by men for men? Risk taking is male; drinking, drug taking, gambling and infidelity are predominantly the preserve of men? * Why most criminal behavior is perpetrated by men? Why the vast majority of domestic abuse and violence is perpetrated by men? * Why men are so concerned with the size of their penis and its symbolic substitutes - big, powerful cars, status, big houses, big money, and big muscles? * Why can't men tolerate vulnerability? * Why men lie, don't listen, don't do housework, parenting? The answers to these questions, is the aim of this book. The author asks what it means to be a man, and what part masculinity play in men's identity. What is it like to have to spend so much time and energy in managing that identity? Adam Jukes has spent most of his professional life working with troubled and disturbed men, and in 1984 he opened one of the world's first treatment centers to address men's abusive and violent behavior towards women, from verbal and emotional abuse through to stalking and murder. In the following decades that work developed into a clinical examination of masculinity and the author now shares his insights and conclusions with the reader. Juke's conclusions about what constructs masculinity and how it develops may be unpalatable to some but it is also thought provoking and intriguing to anyone who has an interest in these issues whether professional or personal, male or female, wife or lover, sister or brother, husband or father.

Examine the cultural and political implications of male-to-female gender performance! The Drag Queen Anthology: The Absolutely Fabulous but Flawlessly Customary World of Female Impersonators examines the phenomena of male-to-female gender performance and the people who live it. This provocative collection of original essays explores the possibilities, limitations, ironies, and controversies surrounding men who perform as women to an audience that knows the truth but celebrates the illusion. The book's contributors call on extensive backgrounds in sociology, anthropology, theater, literatureeven military studiesand use a variety of approaches to address common themes and genres of presentation, performance, and style in a wide range of historical settings and cultures. The Drag Queen Anthology explores female impersonation in the past and present, addressing the often-contradictory cultural impulses found in the performance of femininity. The book examines the important issues of this unique form of gendering, including the cultural and sociopolitical implications of drag, the symbolic cultural ideals associated with women, the impact of the performer's social identities on his performance, and the reactions of the GLBT, straight, and feminist communities to drag. The book looks at traditional drag performance, challenges accepted perceptions about female impersonation, and exposes the notion of the effeminate drag queen as an outdated myth. The Drag Queen Anthology examines the important issues of male-to-female gender performance, including: how drag queen performance is used to attain situational status and power how drag queens challenge contemporary notions of gender what embodiment occurs when men undertake performances of femininity how drag queen performance is viewed as a theatrical presentation of self what representations of drag queens in film suggest about current gender relations why communities organize around drag queen performers how drag queen performance differs on-stage and off how male-to-female gendered performance intersects with performances of sexual identity, social class, race, age, and ethnicity The Drag Queen Anthology: The Absolutely Fabulous but Flawlessly Customary World of Female Impersonators is an indispensable resource on drag's core elements of performance and parody and how each affects contemporary notions of gender.

"Between Feminism and Materialism" is a bold attempt to make sense of the relationship between feminist theory and capitalism. Addressing a number of philosophical problems that have engaged feminists over the last few decades—universals and reason, nature and essentialism, identity and non-identity, sex and gender, power and patriarchy, local and global—this innovative book breaks through feminist waves and explains the paradoxes of feminist theory by demonstrating the on-going relevance of dialectics and the concepts of exploitation, ideology, and reification. Drawing on first, second, and third "waves" of feminist theory, this exciting combination of existentialism, phenomenology, and critical theory delivers a proactive feminism ready to respond to the challenges presented by our thoroughly modern times.

This volume features sociological research and theory on gender and sexuality in the workplace, and identifies how organizations can achieve a gender-balanced and sexually-diverse work force. While identifying characteristics of work organizations that have made important strides to achieving equality in the workplace, articles also detail how women and sexual minorities continue to face discrimination, harassment, and exclusion. Special attention is paid to how race and class shape the experience of discrimination for these groups. Topics discussed are wide-ranging and include: gender discrimination and the wage gap; sexual minorities (LGBT workers); homophobic and 'gay friendly' workplaces; sexual harassment; sex in the workplace; sex work and sex workers; gender equity policies; transgender workers; men and women in non-traditional jobs; occupational gender segregation; and, gender difference in work hours. "The Research in the Sociology of Work" series is proud to publish the works of new and established scholars on these important topics, including both quantitative and qualitative studies, as well as review essays that set the agenda for future sociological analysis.

An overview of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) students in our schools-what they endure, their special needs, and the programs and groups that support them. Diverse Sexuality and Schools: A Reference Handbook is an eye-opening report on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth in our schools-the isolation they feel, the hostilities they face, their unique developmental and emotional needs, and the innovative ways schools, communities, and organizations are working to support them. Author David Campos offers a compelling, often harrowing, tour of the lives of GLBT students, including what researchers have learned over the past half-century and what the schools, the courts, and the government are doing to keep them safe regardless of their sexual orientation. But perhaps the book's greatest impact comes from the way Campos gives voice to this often neglected population, providing a forum for these students' painful testimonies of harassment, violence, and despair. Directory of organizations, associations, and government agencies associated with GLBT youth Comprehensive introductory chapter providing an overview of terms and definitions, historical and legal perspectives, and demographics of the GLBT youth population

'Reprogen-ethics and the future of gender' bring together three tightly related topics, which have so far been dealt separately in bioethics: assisted reproduction, enhancing and gender. Part one in this book targets presents policies and legislature of assisted reproduction. Part two focuses on current views of the ethics of PGD and enhancing. Part three tackles the future of gender. Part four deals with artificial wombs and ectogenesis. The aim of this book is to provide a joint perspective in order to get the big picture. Contributors include John Harris, Matti Hairy, Tuija Takala, Soren Holm, David Heyd, Daniel Callahan, James Hughes, Harriet Bradley, Ekaterina Balabanova, Roy Gilbar and others. Some chapters in this book will significantly contribute to the current discussion of the topics at stake; other chapters will start a discussion on issues that have not yet been discussed. 'Reprogen-ethics and the future of gender' will certainly appeal to readers who are interested in any of the intersecting topics of assisted reproduction, genetic enhancing and gender; bioethicists, sociologists, genetic counsellors, gynaecologists, legislators, and students of the relevant disciplines.

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.

Volume 4, 2010

Gender, the Body, and Sexuality

Women and War

The first section on 'Gender, the Body, and Sexuality' explores issues that have been of fundamental importance to women's and gender studies since the 1970s. The second section brings together work on women and war, as well as contributions that focus on media representation of women during times of war with special attention paid to the Second World War.

The Forum section in this volume brings together specialists in women's and gender studies from Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Serbia/former Yugoslavia and Hungary to discuss their experiences with the establishment of academic research on women and gender as well as the current situation within the field. Lastly, this volume of "Aspasia" offers book reviews and reports, including one on the Women's Library and Archives in Turkey where a conference was held to celebrate its twentieth anniversary.

"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.

Although some progress has been made in recent decades in getting women into top positions in government, business and education, there are on-going, persisting challenges with efforts to improve the opportunities for women in leadership. The Handbook of Research on Gender and Leadership comprises the latest research from the world's foremost scholars on women and leadership, exposing problems and offering both theoretical and practical solutions on how to best strengthen the impact of women around the world. The Handbook provides a brief overview of the current state of women in global leadership, explores theories (both established and emerging) focused specifically on women, and examines with both theoretical and empirical research some of the factors that influence women's motivations to lead. The authors delineate some of the most persistent barriers to women's leadership success and conclude with the latest research findings on how to best develop women leaders to improve their status worldwide. The Handbook of Research on Gender and Leadership will appeal to scholars and advanced students in leadership and entrepreneurship. It will be essential reading for leadership coaches, practitioners and business people, particularly those who facilitate leadership programs for women. Contributors: K. Assylkhan, A.M.B. Austin, A.L. Bartels, J. Baxter, L.L. Bierema, D. Bilimoria, M. Bligh, D.L. Bray, R.J. Burke, C. Campbell, C. Clerkin, L.E. Devnew, A.B. Diehl, L. Dzubinski, C. Egan, C. Elliot, W. Fox-Kirk, R.A. Gardiner, K.R. Gibson, C. Glass, E. Goryunova, G. Grandy, C. Harman, D.M. Hatmaker, C.L. Hoyt, J. Hurst, A. Ingersoll, A. Ito, M. Janzen Le Ber, M.E. Kassotakis, K.E. Kram, S. Kumra, S. Leberman, K.A. Longman, S.R. Madsen, S. Mavin, W.M. Murphy, K. Natt Och Dag, F.W. Ngunjiri, S.J. Peterson, K. Pick, D.L. Rhode, R.T. Scribner, R. Sealy, M. Shapiro, S. Simon, A.E. Smith, V. Stead, J. Storberg-Walker, C. van Esch, J. Williams, M.S. Wilson

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolutionary origins of same-sex attraction, evaluating multiple existing evolutionary theories. It combines empirical findings with theoretical arguments in order to review evidence on the prevalence rates of same-sex attraction and determine its genetic and environmental basis. Among the topics addressed: Attitudes towards same-sex attraction across human history Assessing the weak selection pressures hypothesis of attraction Assessing the male choice hypothesis of attraction Evolution of same-sex attraction in men versus women The Evolution of Same-Sex Attraction will be of interest to academics and students of evolutionary and psychological sciences, filling a gap in literature on the origins of specifically same-sex attraction.

Based on leading empirical psychological research from around the world, this book offers valuable insights on women who sell sex. It synthesizes the extensive body of scholarly work on the topic of women selling sex from a psychological perspective in order to understand why women choose to do so. In turn, the book highlights a range of important sociocultural contexts surrounding the sale of sex that are major sources of stress, and examines how women cope with these circumstances. Illustrating the multi-faceted nature of selling sex, the book will contribute to debates on individual and societal responses to this major sociopolitical-and at the same time, deeply personal-issue. Including original case material and outlining future directions for researchers, it offers an informative and engaging resource for academics, researchers, students and professionals around the globe.

This book conceptualises the lived experience of intimacy in a world in which the terms and conditions of love and friendship are increasingly unclear. It shows that the analysis of the 'small world' of dyads can give important clues about society and its gendered makeup.

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.