Contemporary feminist theory and postmodernism have left significant marks on how we think about practical matters, most notably the old and new forms of gender struggles that many women confront in their daily lives. The essays collected in Gender Struggles are designed to highlight those influences by addressing the following questions: What is practical feminism in a postmodern world? How does rethinking the nature and boundaries of philosophy affect the way we understand practical issues that we confront daily? What new forms of freedom, autonomy, subjectivity, social welfare, motherhood, public and private space, and political resistance have emerged from this new philosophical sense? Together, the sixteen essays in this volume represent many different voices of feminists who boldly take up familiar, everyday concerns from unorthodox vantage points within new conceptual and theoretical frameworks. The essays in Gender Struggles address a wide range of issues in gender struggles, from the more familiar ones that, for the last thirty years, have been the mainstay of feminist scholarship, such as motherhood, beauty, and sexual violence, to new topics inspired by post-industrialization and multiculturalism, such as the welfare state, cyberspace, hate speech, and queer politics, and finally to topics that traditionally have not been seen as appropriate subjects for philosophizing, such as adoption, care work, and the home. Incorporating the latest, most 'cutting-edge' material on feminism, this volume aims at reaching a broad spectrum of readers by connecting postmodern feminist theory with concrete issues that are practical and relevant to their daily lives and experiences.

Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne's life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why does she inspire such extreme reactions? And what really was the colour of her hair? And perhaps the most provocative question concerns Anne's death, more than her life: how could Henry order the execution of his once beloved wife? Drawing on scholarship and popular culture, Bordo probes the complexities of one of history's most infamous relationships and teases out the woman behind the myths.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Once upon a time, the news was only 15 minutes long and middle-class families huddled around a tiny black-and-white screen, TV dinners on their laps, awaiting weekly sitcoms that depicted an all-white world in which mom wore pearls and heels as she baked endless pies. If this seems a distant past, that’s a measure of just how much TV has changed—and changed us. Weaving together personal memoir, social and political history, and reflecting on key moments in the history of news broadcasting and prime time entertainment, Susan Bordo opens up the 75-year-old time-capsule that is TV and illustrates what a constant companion and dominant cultural force television has been, for good and for bad, in carrying us from the McCarthy hearings and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet to Mad Men, Killing Eve, and the emergence of our first reality TV president. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

""Unbearable Weight is brilliant. From an immensely knowledgeable feminist perspective, in engaging, jargonless (!) prose, Bordo analyzes a whole range of issues connected to the body--weight and weight loss, exercise, media images, movies, advertising, anorexia and bulimia, and much more--in a way that makes sense of our current social landscape--finally! This is a great book for anyone who wonders why women's magazines are always describing delicious food as 'sinful' and why there is a cake called Death by Chocolate. Loved it!"--Katha Pollitt, Nation columnist and author of "Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (2001)

"This is a terrific book!"--Nancy J. Chodorow, author of "The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture (2001) and "The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (California, 1999)

"Susan Bordo's "Unbearable Weight is a masterpiece of complex and nuanced thinking not only about a significant problem that faces women but about our culture. A very valuable book."--Susan Griffin, author of "The Book of Courtesans: A Catalogue of their Virtues (2001)

The first collection of its kind, Provocations: A Transnational Reader in the History of Feminist Thought is historically organized and transnational in scope, highlighting key ideas, transformative moments, and feminist conversations across national and cultural borders. Emphasizing feminist cross-talk, transnational collaborations and influences, and cultural differences in context, this anthology heralds a new approach to studying feminist history. Provocations includes engaging, historically significant primary sources by writers of many nationalities in numerous genres from political manifestos to theoretical and cultural analysis to poetry and fiction. These texts range from those of classical antiquity to others composed during the Arab Spring and represent Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Western Europe, and the United States. Each section begins with an introductory essay that presents central ideas and explores connections among readings, placing them in historical, national, and intellectual contexts and concluding with questions for discussion and reflection.

The first collection of its kind, Provocations: A Transnational Reader in the History of Feminist Thought is historically organized and transnational in scope, highlighting key ideas, transformative moments, and feminist conversations across national and cultural borders. Emphasizing feminist cross-talk, transnational collaborations and influences, and cultural differences in context, this anthology heralds a new approach to studying feminist history. Provocations includes engaging, historically significant primary sources by writers of many nationalities in numerous genres from political manifestos to theoretical and cultural analysis to poetry and fiction. These texts range from those of classical antiquity to others composed during the Arab Spring and represent Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Western Europe, and the United States. Each section begins with an introductory essay that presents central ideas and explores connections among readings, placing them in historical, national, and intellectual contexts and concluding with questions for discussion and reflection.

"Bordo's sharp reading of Boleyniana and her clear affection for this proud, unusual woman make this an entertaining, provocative read."--"Boston Globe"
Part biography, part cultural history, "The Creation of Anne Boleyn" is a reconstruction of Boleyn's life and an illuminating look at her very active afterlife in the popular imagination. With recent novels, movies, and television shows, Anne has been having a twenty-first-century moment, but Bordo shows how many generations of polemicists, biographers, novelists, and filmmakers have imagined and reimagined her: whore, martyr, cautionary tale, proto-"mean girl," feminist icon, and everything in between. Drawing on scholarship and razor-sharp analysis, Bordo probes the complexities of one of history's most intriguing women, teasing out what we actually know about Anne Boleyn and what we think we know about her.
"Riveting . . . Bordo's eloquent study not only recovers Anne Boleyn for our times but also demonstrates the ways in which legends grow out of the faintest wisps of historical fact." --"Book Page"

"Engrossing . . . Ms. Bordo offers a fascinating discussion."--"New York Times"

The essays in this interdisciplinary collection share the conviction that modern western paradigms of knowledge and reality are gender-biased. Some contributors challenge and revise western conceptions of the body as the domain of the biological and 'natural, ' the enemy of reason, typically associated with women.

Considering everything from Nike ads, emaciated models, and surgically altered breasts to the culture wars and the O.J. Simpson trial, Susan Bordo deciphers the hidden life of cultural images and the impact they have on our lives. She builds on the provocative themes introduced in her acclaimed work "Unbearable Weight" - which explores the social and political underpinnings of women's obsession with bodily image - to offer a singularly readable and perceptive interpretation of our image-saturated culture. As it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between appearance and reality, she argues, we need to rehabilitate the notion that not all versions of reality are equally trustworthy. Bordo writes with deep compassion, unnerving honesty, and bracing intelligence. Looking to the body and bodily practices as a concrete arena where cultural fantasies and anxieties are played out, she examines the mystique and the reality of empowerment through cosmetic surgery. Her brilliant discussion of sexual harassment reflects on the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy as well as the film Disclosure. She suggests that sexuality, although one of the mediums of harassment, is not its essence, and she calls for the recasting of harassers as bullies rather than sex fiends. Bordo also challenges the continuing marginalization of feminist thought, in particular the failure to read feminist work as cultural criticism. Finally, in a powerful and moving essay called 'Missing Kitchens' - written in collaboration with her two sisters - Bordo explores notions of bodies, place, and space through a recreation of the topographies of her childhood. Throughout these essays, Bordo avoids dogma and easy caricature. Consistently, and on many levels, she demonstrates the profound relationship between our lives and our theories, our feelings and our thoughts.

An exciting new popular study of the male body--fresh, honest, and full of revelations

In this surprising, candid cultural analysis, Susan Bordo begins with a frank, tender look at her own father's body and goes on to perceptively scrutinize the presentation of maleness in everyday life.

Men's (and women's) ideas about men's bodies are heavily influenced by society's expectations, and Bordo helps us understand where those ideas come from. In chapters on the penis (in all its incarnations), fifties Hollywood, male beauty standards, and sexual harassment, and in discussions of topics ranging from Marlon Brando and Boogie Nights to Philip Roth and Lady Chatterley's Lover, Bordo offers fresh and unexpected insights. Always--whether she is examining Michael Jordan or Humbert Humbert, the butch phallus or her own grade-school experiences--she rejects rigid categories in favor of an honest, nuanced version of men as flesh-and-blood human beings.

Contributors are Susan Bordo, Stanley Clarke, Erica Harth, Leslie Heywood, Luce Irigaray, Genevieve Lloyd, Mario Moussa, Eileen O'Neill, Adrianna Paliyenko, Ruth Perry, Mario Saenz, Karl Stern, Thomas Wartenberg, and James Winders.