How should feminist theories conceive of the subject? What is it to be a legal person? What part does embodiment play in subjectivity? Can there be a conception of rights which does justice to the social contexts in which rights claims are embedded? Is the way the law constitutes legal subjects a form of violence? These questions lie at the heart of contemporary feminist theory, and in this collection they are addressed by a group of distinguished international scholars working in law, philosophy and politics. The volume, in which the concerns of one author are taken up by others, advances current debate on two interconnected levels. First, it contains original and ground-breaking discussions of the questions raised above. At the same time, it contains a more reflexive strand of argument about the intellectual resources available to feminist thinkers, and the advantages and dangers of borrowing from non-feminist traditions of thought. It thus provides an exceptionally rich examination of contemporary legal and political feminist theory.

Transatlantic Footholds: Turn-of-the-Century American Women Writers and British Reviewers analyses British reviews of American women fiction writers, essayists and poets between the periods of literary domesticity and modernism. The book demonstrates that a variety of American women writers were intelligently read in Britain during this era. British reviewers read American women as literary artists, as women and as Americans. While their notion of who counted as "women" was too limited by race and class, they eagerly read these writers for insight about how women around the world were entering debates on women's place, the class struggle, religion, Indian policy, childrearing, and high society. In the process, by reading American women in varied ways, reviewers became hybrid and dissenting readers. The taste among British reviewers for American women's books helped change the predominant direction that high culture flowed across the Atlantic from east-to-west to west-to-east. Britons working in London or far afield were deeply invested in the idea of "America." "America," their responses prove, is a transnational construct.

Transatlantic Footholds: Turn-of-the-Century American Women Writers and British Reviewers analyses British reviews of American women fiction writers, essayists and poets between the periods of literary domesticity and modernism. The book demonstrates that a variety of American women writers were intelligently read in Britain during this era. British reviewers read American women as literary artists, as women and as Americans. While their notion of who counted as "women" was too limited by race and class, they eagerly read these writers for insight about how women around the world were entering debates on women's place, the class struggle, religion, Indian policy, childrearing, and high society. In the process, by reading American women in varied ways, reviewers became hybrid and dissenting readers. The taste among British reviewers for American women's books helped change the predominant direction that high culture flowed across the Atlantic from east-to-west to west-to-east. Britons working in London or far afield were deeply invested in the idea of "America." "America," their responses prove, is a transnational construct.

Freeman is best known today for her short regionalist fiction. Recently, Freeman studies have taken new turns including ecocriticism, trauma studies, the Gothic, and queer theory. The essay collection pushes these developments further. Contributors aim at revisiting and going beyond Freeman's regionalism. They challenge earlier feminist readings of the female realm by arguing that her short fiction and novels depict women and girls as violent and criminal, suffocating as well as nurturing; they bring to light questions of race and ethnicity that have been conspicuously absent from scholarship on Freeman, as well as issues of class. Because questions of women's work are central to Freeman's oeuvre, this collection discusses Freeman's acumen as a businesswoman herself, a participant as well as a castigator of turn-of-the-century US capitalism. Finally, essays reconsider the periodization of Freeman by exploring her little acknowledged post-1902 and therefore post-marriage fiction--her war stories and her urban stories.