“With a scholar’s commitment to accurate detail, and the heart of a lover of beauty, Kathleen B. Jones’s engaging and well-crafted parallel story is as colorful and lucid as the illuminated manuscripts at the center of her novel.� —Laurel Corona, author of The Mapmaker’s Daughter A deeply affecting dual narrative separated by several centuries, Cities of Women examines the lives of women who dare to challenge the social norms of their days, risking their reputations and livelihoods for the sake of their passions. In the twenty-first century, we meet Verity Frazier, a disillusioned history professor who sets out to prove that the artist responsible for the illuminated artwork in Christine de Pizan’s medieval manuscripts was a remarkable woman named Anastasia. As Anastasia’s story unfolds against the exquisitely-rendered medieval backdrop of moral disaster, political intrigue, and extraordinary creativity, Verity finds her career on the brink of collapse by her efforts to uncover evidence of the lost artist’s existence. Inspired by a decade of research, Jones has woven together a luminous and incisive masterpiece of historical fiction, evoking the spare joys and monumental pitfalls facing medieval women artists and a contemporary woman who becomes obsessed with medieval books.

“With a scholar’s commitment to accurate detail, and the heart of a lover of beauty, Kathleen B. Jones’s engaging and well-crafted parallel story is as colorful and lucid as the illuminated manuscripts at the center of her novel.� —Laurel Corona, author of The Mapmaker’s Daughter A deeply affecting dual narrative separated by several centuries, Cities of Women examines the lives of women who dare to challenge the social norms of their days, risking their reputations and livelihoods for the sake of their passions. In the twenty-first century, we meet Verity Frazier, a disillusioned history professor who sets out to prove that the artist responsible for the illuminated artwork in Christine de Pizan’s medieval manuscripts was a remarkable woman named Anastasia. As Anastasia’s story unfolds against the exquisitely-rendered medieval backdrop of moral disaster, political intrigue, and extraordinary creativity, Verity finds her career on the brink of collapse by her efforts to uncover evidence of the lost artist’s existence. Inspired by a decade of research, Jones has woven together a luminous and incisive masterpiece of historical fiction, evoking the spare joys and monumental pitfalls facing medieval women artists and a contemporary woman who becomes obsessed with medieval books.

Bringing together essays by a distinguished international group of leading and emerging scholars of sexuality and gender, this stimulating and accessible collection explores a range of theoretical and "real world" perspectives current in the field. Treating these approaches as complementary, Sexuality, Gender and Power fosters critical conversations about sexuality across disciplinary, cultural, national and ideological boundaries. Underpinned by a broad editorial commitment to intersectionality, the chapters deploy approaches that range from historical materialism to queer theory, and from contract theory to theories of the gendered sexual self to address recurrent questions around agency, power, identity and self-hood. Theoretical debates inform and are informed by more empirically oriented chapters focusing on topics such as gay identity in contemporary Croatia, sexual politics in the Commonwealth Caribbean, western "tango tourists," sexual violence in war, prostitution, femme fashion, changing sexual norms in China and Taiwan, and feminist politics in the 2008 US presidential campaign. Each chapter is interesting and important in its own right; taken together, they advance gender theory and research by developing a complex conception of sexuality that explores intersections between and amongst theories, levels of analysis and identities, linking case studies to international trends and theoretical debates to everyday experiences.

Bringing together essays by a distinguished international group of leading and emerging scholars of sexuality and gender, this stimulating and accessible collection explores a range of theoretical and "real world" perspectives current in the field. Treating these approaches as complementary, Sexuality, Gender and Power fosters critical conversations about sexuality across disciplinary, cultural, national and ideological boundaries. Underpinned by a broad editorial commitment to intersectionality, the chapters deploy approaches that range from historical materialism to queer theory, and from contract theory to theories of the gendered sexual self to address recurrent questions around agency, power, identity and self-hood. Theoretical debates inform and are informed by more empirically oriented chapters focusing on topics such as gay identity in contemporary Croatia, sexual politics in the Commonwealth Caribbean, western "tango tourists," sexual violence in war, prostitution, femme fashion, changing sexual norms in China and Taiwan, and feminist politics in the 2008 US presidential campaign. Each chapter is interesting and important in its own right; taken together, they advance gender theory and research by developing a complex conception of sexuality that explores intersections between and amongst theories, levels of analysis and identities, linking case studies to international trends and theoretical debates to everyday experiences.