This volume, designed with the student reader in mind, is an indispensable blend of key essays in the field with specially commissioned new material by feminist scholars from the UK and the US. It includes a diversity of texts and feminist approaches, a substantial and very illuminating introduction by the editors, and an annotated list of Further Reading, offering preliminary guidance to the reader approaching the topic of gender and medieval literature for the first time.
Works and writers covered include:
* Chaucer
* Margery Kempe
* Christine de Pisan
* The Katherine group of Saints' Lives
* Langland's Piers Plowman
* Medieval cycle drama
Students of both medieval and feminist literature will find this an essential work for study and reference.

From the acclaimed author of Garden Awakening, We Are the ARK urgently advocates all home gardeners to bring nature back to their yards and to be an active part of positive environmental change. The loss of biodiversity is rapidly reducing the ability of the earth to maintain clean air and water and to provide food and habitat for all her creatures - including us. We must take direct action to alleviate the unjustifiable stress on the individual plants and animals and other life forms we share our planet with. But how do we do it? In We are the ARK, award-winning garden designer Mary Reynolds provides an answer: by restoring nature to our home gardens and public spaces through acts of restorative kindness (ARK). So what is an ARK? It's a restored, native ecosystem, and a thriving patch of native plants and creatures that have been allowed to re-establish in the earth's intelligent, successional process of natural restoration. Over time, this land becomes a habitat for pollinators and wild creatures who are in desperate need of support. In We Are the ARK, Reynolds details exactly how home gardeners can play a role, no matter the size of their space. Readers will be inspired to take part in positive environmental change and equipped to do so at home. AUTHOR: Mary Reynolds is a reformed internationally acclaimed landscape designer. The youngest woman in history to win a gold medal for garden design at the Chelsea flower show in 2002, she has since given that all up to be part of the solution to the crisis we are all living through, the climate and biodiversity collapse. She is the bestselling author The Garden Awakening, and a motivational speaker and founder of the global movement We Are The ARK. SELLING POINTS: . We Are the ARK is equal parts advocacy and instruction. Reynolds cogently and passionately explains how gardening can make an impact on the environment and instructs home gardeners on how to do so on their own property . Mary Reynolds is an award-winning garden designer and the author of the groundbreaking book Garden Awakening. Her passionate fans follow her on wearetheark.org. 200 colour illustrations

In recent years there has been a sustained growth of interest in medieval literary culture, and the range of critical activity within this field has expanded greatly, largely in response to the challenges of modern critical theory. Some of the most stimulating work has tackled the subject of sexual difference and gender construction in medieval texts.
Reponding to this tendency, editors Rudy Evans and Lesley Johnson have gathered a singularly effective and impressive collection of essays ranging from writing on such figures as Margery Kempe, Christine de Pisan, Langland, and Chaucer. As one of the first texts ever published on theories of sexual difference and medieval literature, Evans and Johnson contribute incisively both to the debate and discussion of sexual difference in pre-modern literature.

Diverse Spaces of Childhood and Youth focuses on the diverse spaces and discourses of children and youth globally. The chapters explore the influence of gender, age and other socio-cultural differences, such as race, ethnicity and migration trajectories, on the everyday lives of children and youth in a range of international contexts. These include the diverse urban environments of Istanbul, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Toronto, London, and Bratislava and the contrasting rural settings of Ghana and England. The analyses of children's, young people's, parents' and professionals' experiences and discourses provide critical insights into how gender and other socio-cultural differences intersect. The importance of everyday practices and performances in the formation of children's and young people's identities is revealed, through for example, friendships and everyday sociality, mobilities and movements across space in both rural and urban environments. The volume shows how discourses of childhood, particularly those associated with risk, intersect with difference. The recognition of young people's agency and participation is central to many of the chapters, whilst also raising methodological questions about how discourses of childhood and youth are researched. Overall, the book provides an original contribution to geographies of children, youth and families and research on diversity and difference in global contexts. This book was published as a special issue of Children's Geographies.

This ground-breaking book focuses on the experiences and perspectives of children and young people who care for a parent with HIV in the global North and South. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research from the UK and Tanzania, the book presents a unique insight into the similarities and differences in children's and parents' experiences across diverse socio-economic, cultural and welfare contexts. The book makes a significant contribution to the growing research evidence on children and young people with caring responsibilities ('young carers') and the impacts of HIV and AIDS on families globally. It examines caring relationships within families affected by HIV and AIDS; the outcomes of caregiving; children's and families' resilience; the factors influencing whether children become involved in care work; and local and global policy responses. It also provides insight into the perspectives of parents living with HIV and service providers working with families. This book will be of interest to policy makers and practitioners in the field of HIV and AIDS, and to researchers, academics and students concerned with international development, social policy, human geography, childhood and youth studies, social work, health and social care, education, children's services and nursing and palliative care.

Acknowledged by many feminists as the single most important theoretical work of the twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) nevertheless occupies an anomalous place in the feminist 'canon'. Yet it has had an undeniable impact, not only on the development of critiques of sexual politics but on twentieth-century western thinking about the concept of 'woman' in general. This collection of six new essays by scholars from the disciplines of French, English literature, history, cultural criticism, feminist theory and philosophy makes a valuable contribution to the task of re-reading and reassessing this enormously influential text for a new generation of feminist readers, and also for cultural theorists, for whom the question of 'the feminine' is at the centre of key debates in philosophy and postmodernity. The contributors provide a significantly new rethinking of the place of The Second Sex in cultural history and of women and representation, the role of 'fictions' and the problem of ethical agency in the work of the leading intellectual woman of this age. -- .

This ground-breaking book focuses on the experiences and perspectives of children and young people who care for a parent with HIV in the global North and South. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research from the UK and Tanzania, the book presents a unique insight into the similarities and differences in children's and parents' experiences across diverse socio-economic, cultural and welfare contexts. The book makes a significant contribution to the growing research evidence on children and young people with caring responsibilities ('young carers') and the impacts of HIV and AIDS on families globally. It examines caring relationships within families affected by HIV and AIDS; the outcomes of caregiving; children's and families' resilience; the factors influencing whether children become involved in care work; and local and global policy responses. It also provides insight into the perspectives of parents living with HIV and service providers working with families. This book will be of interest to policy makers and practitioners in the field of HIV and AIDS, and to researchers, academics and students concerned with international development, social policy, human geography, childhood and youth studies, social work, health and social care, education, children's services and nursing and palliative care.

From Joan of Arc to Britney Spears, the figure of the virgin has been the subject of considerable scholarly and popular interest. Yet virginity itself is a paradoxical condition, both perfect and monstrous, present and absent, often visible only insofar as it is under threat. Medieval Virginities traces some of the specific manifestations of virginity in late medieval culture. It shows how virginity is represented in medical, legal, hagiographical and historical texts, as well as how the seductive but dangerous figure of the virgin affects the aims and objectives of these texts. Because virginity is so often thought of as self-identical and ahistorical, Medieval Virginities aims to theorize and historicize its various manifestations and to demonstrate how representations and discussions of virginity continuously shift and change. The variety of subjects and disciplines represented here testify both to the elusiveness of virginity and to its lasting appeal and importance. Medieval Virginities shows how virginity's inherent ambiguity highlights the problems, contradictions and discontinuities lurking within medieval ideologies. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in questions of gender identity, conceptions of the body, subjectivity, truth and representation in medieval culture.

"An excellent and supremely accessible guide to some key issues in development geography" - Stuart Corbridge, London School of Economics "Provides a clearly stated, informed and strongly structured pathway through the key literatures and debates" - Jonathan Rigg, Durham University Organized around 24 short essays, Key Concepts in Development Geography is an introductory text that provides students with the core concepts that form contemporary research and ideas within the development geography discipline. Written in a clear and transparent style, the book includes: an introductory chapter providing a succinct overview of the recent developments in the field over 24 key concept entries that provide comprehensive definitions, explanations and evolutions of the subject excellent pedagogy to enhance students' understanding including a glossary, figures, diagrams, and further reading. Organized around five of the most important areas of concern, the book covers: the meanings and measurement of development; its theory and practice; work, employment and development; people, culture and development; and contemporary issues in development. The perfect companion for undergraduate and postgraduate students on geography degrees, the book is a timely look at the pressingly important field of international development studies today.

Staying Alive: A Survival Manual for the Liberal Arts fiercely defends the liberal arts in and from an age of neoliberal capital and techno-corporatization run amok, arguing that the public university's purpose is not vocational training, but rather the cultivation of what Fradenburg calls "artfulness," including the art of making knowledge. In addition to sustained critical and creative thinking, the humanities develop the mind's capacities for real-time improvisational communication and interpretation, without which we can neither thrive nor survive. Humanist pedagogy and research use play, experimentation and intersubjective exchange to foster forms of artfulness critical to the future of our species. From perception to reality-testing to concept-formation and logic, the arts and humanities teach us to see, hear and respond more keenly, and to imagine, or "model," new futures and possibilities. Innovation of all kinds, technological or artistic, depends on the enhancement of the skills proper to staying alive. Bringing together psychoanalysis, neuroscience, animal behavioral research, biology & evolutionary theory, and premodern literarature (from Virgil to Chaucer to Shakespeare), Fradenburg offers a bracing polemic against the technocrats of higher education and a vibrant new vision for the humanities as both living art and new life science. Contrary to recent polemics that simply urge the humanities to become more scientistic or technology-focused, to demonstrate their utility or even trophy their uselessness, Staying Alive does something remarkably different: it argues for the humanism of a new scientific paradigm based on complexity theory and holistic and ecological approaches to knowledge-making. It urges us to take the further step of realizing not only that we can promote and enhance neuroplastic connectivity and social-emotional cognition, but also that the humanities have always already been doing so. "Nature always exceeds itself in its expressivity" - which is to say that living is itself an art, and artfulness is necessary for living: for adaptation and innovation, for forging rich and varied relationships with other minds, bodies and things, and thus, for thriving - whether in the boardroom or the art gallery, the biology lab or the recording studio, the alley or the playground, the book or the dream. Staying Alive contains companion essays by Donna Beth Ellard (Rice University), Ruth Evans (Saint Louis University), Eileen A. Joy (BABEL Working Group), Julie Orlemanski (University of Chicago), Daniel C. Remein (New York University), and Michael D. Snediker (University of Houston). TABLE OF CONTENTS Eileen A. Joy: Prelude: Hands Off Our Jouissance: The Collaborative Risk of a Shared Disorganization // Chapter 1: Driving Education: A Crash Course // Fugue 1: Julie Orlemanski: An Army of Lovers // Chapter 2: Living the Liberal Arts: An Argument for Embodied Learning Communities // Fugue 2: Daniel C. Remein: Human-Tongued Basilisks // Chapter 3: Breathing with Lacan's Seminar X: Expression and Emergence // Fugue 3: Ruth Evans: The Object Breath // Chapter 4: Life's Reach: Territory, Display, Ekphrasis // Fugue 4: Donna Beth Ellard: Ekphrastic Beowulf: Defying Death and Staying Alive in the Academy // Coda: Michael D. Snediker: Fuzzy Thinking

Historians of sexuality have often assumed that medieval people were less interested in sex than we are. But people in the Middle Ages wrote a great deal about sex: in confessors' manuals, in virginity treatises, and in literary texts. This volume looks afresh at the cultural meanings that sex had throughout the period, presenting new evidence and offering new interpretations of known material. Acknowledging that many of the categories that we use today to talk about sexuality are inadequate for understanding sex in premodern times, the volume draws on important recent work in the historiography of medieval sexuality to address the conceptual and methodological challenges the period presents. A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages presents an overview of the period with essays on heterosexuality, homosexuality, sexual variations, religious and legal issues, health concerns, popular beliefs about sexuality, prostitution and erotica.

From Joan of Arc to Britney Spears, the figure of the virgin has been the subject of considerable scholarly and popular interest. Yet virginity itself is a paradoxical condition, both perfect and monstrous, present and absent, often visible only insofar as it is under threat.

"Medieval Virginities" traces some of the specific manifestations of virginity in late medieval culture. It shows how virginity is represented in medical, legal, hagiographical and historical texts, as well as how the seductive but dangerous figure of the virgin affects the aims and objectives of these texts. Because virginity is so often thought of as self-identical and ahistorical, "Medieval Virginities" aims to theorize and historicize its various manifestations and to demonstrate how representations and discussions of virginity continuously shift and change.

The variety of subjects and disciplines represented here testify both to the elusiveness of virginity and to its lasting appeal and importance. "Medieval Virginities" shows how virginity's inherent ambiguity highlights the problems, contradictions and discontinuities lurking within medieval ideologies. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in questions of gender identity, conceptions of the body, subjectivity, truth and representation in medieval culture.

Drawing from the diverse fields of postcolonial studies, literary studies, history, anthropology, sociology, political science, environmental studies, and development studies, among others, Gender and Sexuality in Senegalese Societies demonstrates the urgency and necessity of new research in gender and queer studies in and on Senegalese societies. By focusing on subjects that have thus far been largely neglected in national and scholarly debates, the chapters are subversive, complex, and inclusive, centering within Senegalese studies themes and elements of alternative, nonbinary, variant, and nonheteronormative gender identities, sexualities, and voices. Contributors demonstrate that nationalist and anticolonial discourses propelled by deep and lingering socioeconomic inequalities have led, in postcolonial Senegal, to vitriolic scapegoating of individuals and communities with variant sexual and gender identities. The chapters in this volume look inward to the voices and experiences of the Senegalese people to challenge nationalist representations of advocacy for the liberation of gender and sexual minorities in Senegal as a function of a Western neocolonialist agenda.

Roadworks: Medieval Britain, medieval roads is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study of roads and wayfinding in medieval England, Wales and Scotland. It looks afresh at the relationship between the road as a material condition of daily life and the formation of local and national communities, arguing that the business of road maintenance, road travel and wayfinding constitutes social bonds. It challenges the long-held picture of a medieval Britain lacking in technological sophistication, passively inheriting Roman roads and never engineering any of its own. Previous studies of medieval infrastructure tend to be discipline-specific and technical. This accessible collection draws out the imaginative, symbolic, and cultural significance of the road. The key audience for this book is scholars of medieval Britain (early and late) in all disciplines. Its theoretical foundations will also ensure an audience among scholars of cultural studies, especially those in urban studies, transport studies, and economic history. -- .