Women's mobility is central to understanding cultural constructions of gender. Regarding ancient cultures, including ancient Greece, a re-evaluation of women's mobility within the household and beyond it is currently taking place. This invites an informed analysis of female mobility in Greek myth, under the premise that myth may open a venue to social ideology and the imaginary. Female Mobility and Gendered Space in Ancient Greek Myth offers the first comprehensive analysis of this topic. It presents close readings of ancient texts, engaging with feminist thought and the 'mobility turn'. A variety of Olympian goddesses and mortal heroines are explored, and the analysis of their myths follows specific chronological considerations. Female mobility is presented in quite diverse ways in myth, reflecting cultural flexibility in imagining mobile goddesses and heroines. At the same time, the out-of-doors spaces that mortal heroines inhabit seem to lack a public or civic quality, with the heroines being contained behind 'glass walls'. In this respect, myth seems to reproduce the cultural limitations of ancient Greek social ideology on mobility, inviting us to reflect not only on the limits of mythic imagination but also on the timelessness of Greek myth.

This important book offers valuable insights into the way in which social policies and welfare state arrangements interact with family and gender models. It presents the most up-to-date research in the field, based on a variety of national and comparative sources and using different theoretical and methodological approaches. The authors address different forms of support (care, financial, emotional) and employ a bi-directional perspective, exploring both giving and receiving across generations. They illustrate that understanding how generations interact in families helps to reformulate the way issues of intergenerational equity are discussed when addressing the redistributive impact of the welfare state through pensions and health services. Encompassing a wide number of European countries as well as migrant groups, this book will greatly appeal to graduate students interested in sociology, social policy and social psychology. Researchers and policy makers in the fields of demography and sociology will also find the book an invaluable resource.

Renowned subject experts Michele A. Paludi and J. Harold Ellens lead readers through a detailed exploration of the feminist methods, issues, and theoretical frameworks that have made women central, not marginal, to religions around the world. At a conference in 2013, Gloria Steinem noted that religion is the "biggest problem" facing feminism today. In this insightful volume, a team of researchers, psychologists, and religious leaders led by editors Michele A. Paludi and J. Harold Ellens supply their expertise and informed opinions to examine the problems, spur understanding, and pose solutions to the conflicts between religion and women's rights, thereby advocating a global interest in justice and love for women. Examples of subjects addressed include the pro-life/pro-choice debate, feminism in new age thought, and the complex intersections of religion and feminism combined with gender, race, and ethnicity. The contributed work in this unique single-volume book enables a better understanding of how various religions view women-both traditionally and in the modern context-and how feminist thinking has changed the roles of women in some world religions. Readers will come away with clear ideas about how religious cultures can honor feminist values, such as family-friendly workplace policies, reproductive justice, and pay equity, and will be prepared to engage in conversation and constructive debate regarding how faith and feminism are interrelated today. Addresses feminism in several religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, and Taoism Explores how theology speaks to women's experiences in the family, in relationships, at work, in politics, and in education, while also addressing atheist viewpoints and experiences Addresses a subject that is highly relevant in discussions focused on events in the Middle East and as the number of women becoming leaders of or top officials in various faiths continues to grow

Winner of the 2022 Research Publication Book Award from the Association of Chinese Professors of Social Sciences in the United States. Based on ethnographic research with victims of intimate partner violence since 2014, this book brings to the forefront women's experiences of, negotiations about, and contestations against violence, and men's narratives about the reasons for their violence. Using an innovative methodology - online chat groups, it foregrounds the role of history, structural inequalities, and the cultural system of power hierarchy in situating and constructing intimate partner violence. Centering on men and women's narratives about violence, this book connects intimate partner violence with invisible structural violence - the historical, cultural, political, economic, and legal context that gives rise to and perpetuates violence against women. Through examining the ways in which women's lives are constrained by various forms of violence, hierarchy, and inequality, this book shows that violence against women is a structural issue that is historically produced and politically and culturally engaged.

Branded Women in U.S. Television examines how The Real Housewives of New York City, Martha Stewart, and other female entrepreneurs create branded televised versions of the iconic U.S. housewife. Using their television presence to establish and promote their own product lines, including jewelry, cookware, clothing, and skincare, they become the primary physical representations of these brands. While their businesses are serious and seriously lucrative, especially reality television enables a certain representational flexibility that allows participants to create campy and sometimes tongue-in-cheek personas. Peter Bjelskou explores their innovative branding strategies, specifically the complex relationships between their entrepreneurial endeavors and their physical bodies, attires, tastes, and personal histories. Generally these branded women speak volumes about their contemporaneous political environments, and this book illustrates how they, and many other women in U.S. television history, are indicative of larger societal trends and structures.

The Festschrift Darkhei Noam: The Jews of Arab Lands presented to Norman (Noam) Stillman offers a coherent and thought-provoking discussion by eminent scholars in the field of both the history and culture of the Jews in the Islamic World from pre-modern to modern times. Based on primary sources the book speaks to the resilience, flexibility, and creativity of Jewish culture in Arab lands. The volume clearly addresses the areas of research Norman Stillman himself has considerably contributed to. Research foci of the book are on the flexibility of Jewish law in real life, Jewish cultural life particularly on material and musical culture, the role of women in these different societies, antisemitism and Jewish responses to hatred against the Jews, and antisemitism from ancient martyrdom to modern political Zionism.

For much of the 20th century, books for children encouraged girls to be weak, submissive, and fearful. This book discusses such traits, both blatantly and subtly reinforced, in many of the most popular works of the period. Quoting a wide variety of passages, O'Keefe illustrates the typical behaviour of fictional girls - many of whom were passive and immobile while others were actually invalids. They all engaged in approved girlish activities: deferred to elders, observed the priorities, and, in the end, accepted conventional suitors. Even feisty tomboys, like Jo in Little Women, eventually gave up on their dreams and their independence. The discussion is interlaced with moments from the author's own childhood that suggest how her developing self-interacted with these stories. She and her contemporaries, trying to reconcile their conservative reading with the changing world around them, learned ambivalence rather than confidence. Good Girl Messages also includes a discussion of books read by boys, who were depicted as purposeful, daring, and dominating.

Rich and real, BMom is one woman's mosaic of love, life and loss, and of being found among the pieces. No one piece is a whole, yet all are precious, together a masterpiece, and each a gem. It's God restoring the shattered pieces of my life and my soul. His fingerprints are all over it. The reader will laugh and the reader will cry, and in that, we will become friends. BMom begins with my relinquishing my infant son into the hands of parents I couldn't know. It moves through the intervening years until he found me, on to our reunion, and beyond. Not only was I reunited with my son, I was reunited with myself. Interspersed are various interludes that speak of lessons learned, feelings finally understood and felt, and poetry written as part of my journey. BMom is entertaining and engaging, while occasionally making a point, to be taken or not, as the reader chooses. BMom is, above all else, a good read.

In 1965, fed up with President Lyndon Johnson's refusal to make serious diplomatic efforts to end the Vietnam War, a group of female American peace activists decided to take matters into their own hands by meeting with Vietnamese women to discuss how to end U.S. intervention. While other attempts at women's international cooperation and transnational feminism have led to cultural imperialism or imposition of American ways on others, Jessica M.Frazier reveals an instance when American women crossed geopolitical boundaries to criticize American Cold War culture, not promote it. The American women Frazier studies not only solicited Vietnamese women's opinions and advice on how to end the war but also viewed them as paragons of a new womanhood by which American women could rework their ideas of gender, revolution, and social justice during an era of reinvigorated feminist agitation. Unlike the many histories of the Vietnam War that end with an explanation of why the memory of the war still divides U.S. society, by focusing on linkages across national boundaries, Frazier illuminates a significant moment in history when women formed effective transnational relationships on genuinely cooperative terms.