Feminism and feminist theory Books
New York University Press Losing Sleep
Book SynopsisNew insights into the anxiety over infant sleep safetyNew parents are inundated with warnings about the fatal risks of co-sleeping, or sharing a bed with a newborn, from medical brochures and website forums, to billboard advertisements and the evening news. In Losing Sleep, Laura Harrison uncovers the origins of the infant sleep safety debate, providing a window into the unprecedented anxieties of modern parenthood. Exploring widespread rhetoric from doctors, public health experts, and the media, Harrison explains why our panic has reached an all-time high. She traces the way safe sleep standards in the United States have changed, and shows how parents, rather than broader systems of inequality that impact issues of housing and precarity, are increasingly being held responsible for infant health outcomes. Harrison shows that infant mortality rates differ widely by race and are linked to socioeconomic status. Yet, while racial disparities in infant mortality point to systemic and structTrade ReviewLosing Sleep is a superb contribution to the literature on infant risk, maternal responsibility, and reproductive justice. Framing infant safe sleep as a social construct, Harrison analyzes the ways safe sleep campaigns reproduce inequalities and fail to account for structural causes of infant death. The book is insightful, engaging, and timely. * Monica J. Casper, author of Babylost: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z *Losing Sleep has an impressive scope and dynamic analysis....Harrison artfully draws on scholarship across sociology, feminist theory, feminist science studies, and reproductive justice to showcase how medical, political, legal, and public policy approaches work together to reward some parents (primarily mothers) and punish others....Harrison invites readers to reflect on taken-for-granted parenting advice about infant sleep to demonstrate the social and political dimensions of it, an absorbing read. * Laury Oaks, author of Giving Up Baby: Safe Haven Laws, Motherhood, and Reproductive Justice *
£66.60
New York University Press Losing Sleep
Book SynopsisNew insights into the anxiety over infant sleep safetyNew parents are inundated with warnings about the fatal risks of co-sleeping, or sharing a bed with a newborn, from medical brochures and website forums, to billboard advertisements and the evening news. In Losing Sleep, Laura Harrison uncovers the origins of the infant sleep safety debate, providing a window into the unprecedented anxieties of modern parenthood. Exploring widespread rhetoric from doctors, public health experts, and the media, Harrison explains why our panic has reached an all-time high. She traces the way safe sleep standards in the United States have changed, and shows how parents, rather than broader systems of inequality that impact issues of housing and precarity, are increasingly being held responsible for infant health outcomes. Harrison shows that infant mortality rates differ widely by race and are linked to socioeconomic status. Yet, while racial disparities in infant mortality point to systemic and structTrade Review"Losing Sleep is a superb contribution to the literature on infant risk, maternal responsibility, and reproductive justice. Framing infant safe sleep as a social construct, Harrison analyzes the ways safe sleep campaigns reproduce inequalities and fail to account for structural causes of infant death. The book is insightful, engaging, and timely." * Monica J. Casper, author of Babylost: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z *"Losing Sleep has an impressive scope and dynamic analysis....Harrison artfully draws on scholarship across sociology, feminist theory, feminist science studies, and reproductive justice to showcase how medical, political, legal, and public policy approaches work together to reward some parents (primarily mothers) and punish others....Harrison invites readers to reflect on taken-for-granted parenting advice about infant sleep to demonstrate the social and political dimensions of it, an absorbing read." * Laury Oaks, author of Giving Up Baby: Safe Haven Laws, Motherhood, and Reproductive Justice *
£23.74
New York University Press Embodied Avatars
Book SynopsisHow black women have personified art,expression,identity, and freedom through performanceWinner, 2016 William Sanders Scarborough Prize, presented by the Modern Language Association for an outstanding scholarly study of African American literature or cultureWinner, 2016 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, presented by the American Society for Theatre ResearchWinner, 2016 Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American theater, drama, and/or performance studies, presented by the American Society for Theatre ResearchTracing a dynamic genealogy of performance from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, Uri McMillan contends that black women artists practiced a purposeful self-objectification, transforming themselves into art objects. In doing so, these artists raised new ways to ponder the intersections of art, performance, and black female embodiment.McMillan reframes the conceTrade Review"Uri McMillans magisterial debut book engages while naming a two-century-long tradition of black womens performance art in the United States, intervening in the problematic racialization and gendering of particular art historical traditions buttressed by the presumed absence of black womens aesthetic and political enactments." * Theatre Journal *"Uri McMillan's magisterial debut book engages while naming a two-century-long tradition of black women's performance art in the United States...Part of the greatness of this book is its complicated engagement with racialized, gendered, and sexualized objecthood as method, the risk-taking practices whereby the historically unfree recalculate the possibilities objecthood for smuggling in liberatory alternatives." * Theatre Journal *"Embodied Avatarsdestabilizes the boundaries between art, objecthood, and survival within the last two centuries [....] Readers are left with the reverberating echoes of not only the black women artists profiled, but the resonances of their multiple avatars, becoming a fierce atonal chorus. Performing objecthood becomes a transformative human strategy in the face of searing dehumanization. Rather than arguing for another iteration of the human as a salvageable category, McMillans innovative scholarship illuminates a complex and obstinate way of being, a being that strikingly prefers not to." * Women & Performance *"Roll over Joseph Beuys, tell Yves Klein the news! Embodied Avatarsradically disrupts prevailing histories, definitions, and genealogies of performance art by focusing on black women who, over the course of two centuries, sought to turn their degraded bodies into dissident tools of emancipation and social critique. Recognizing the first modern stage of black performativity as the auction block, Uri McMillan reveals how black women turned objectification into objecthood, enabling them to remake, disguise, remold the self into an object of resistance, an embodied nightmare to the American dream. Full of eye-popping analytical turns and thrilling theoretical high wire acts, this book is both brilliant scholarship and a performance to be reckoned with." -- Robin D. G. Kelley,author of Thelonious Monk"Embodied Avatarspresents a sweeping and charismatic investigation of the ways in which Black women have strategically staged versions of 'themselves as modes of public, personal, and critical performance and as interventions in art, expression, identity, identification, and freedom.This vibrant and energetic study of art, performance, and embodiment is far-reaching, profound, lively, and engaging." -- Stephanie Leigh Batiste,author of Darkening Mirrors"Uri McMillan takes us on a journey to unexpected terrain. With powerful alchemy, he reveals how black women performance artists work on multiple registersthrough seduction, trickery, the comfort of the seemingly familiarto enact possibility, or what he theorizes as performance & in the service of a certain type of freedom. Meticulously researched and rigorously theorized, Embodied Avatarsis a model of interdisciplinary scholarship grounded in archival work and impressive textual analysis. This book is certain to forge new paths of inquiry and debate in performance, gender and sexuality studies, and black cultural studies." -- Nicole R. Fleetwood,author of Troubling Vision"AlthoughEmbodied Avatarsis an art historical text, the author displays an admirable dexterity across discipline and epistemologies: the mixture of art history, disability studies, object-oriented ontology, and discourses of black subjectivity is deft and, at times, dazzling." * QED *"Uri McMillans Embodied Avatars is a masterfully multilayered exposition of black womens performance art from the nineteenth century to the present. McMillan not only centers black women within traditional and feminist performance art, but also challenges black hegemonic ideas about objectification in performance." * Journal of African American History *Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Performing Objects 1 1. Mammy Memory: The Curious Case of Joice Heth, the Ancient Negress 23 2. Passing Performances: Ellen Craft's Fugitive Selves 65 3. Plastic Possibilities: Adrian Piper's Adamant Self-Alienation 95 4. Is This Performance about You? The Art, Activism, and Black Feminist Critique of Howardena Pindell 153 Conclusion: "I've Been Performing My Whole Life" 197 Notes 227 Index 275 About the Author 283 McMillan_i_283.indd 9 7/30/15 9:04 AM
£70.30
New York University Press Gilded Suffragists
Book SynopsisNew York City's elite women who turned a feminist cause into a fashionable revolutionIn the early twentieth century over two hundred of New York's most glamorous socialites joined the suffrage movement. Their namesAstor, Belmont, Rockefeller, Tiffany, Vanderbilt, Whitney and the likecarried enormous public value. These women were the media darlings of their day because of the extravagance of their costume balls and the opulence of the French couture clothes, and they leveraged their social celebrity for political power, turning women's right to vote into a fashionable cause. Although they were dismissed by critics as bored socialites trying on suffrage as they might the latest couture designs from Paris, these gilded suffragists were at the epicenter of the great reforms known collectively as the Progressive Era. From championing education for women, to pursuing careers, and advocating for the end of marriage, these women were engaged with the swirl of change that swept through the sTrade Review"Setting the record straight on the driving forces in the early-20th-century fight for women's suffrage . . . Neuman counters the popular opinion that these women were merely bored socialites trying on suffrage as they might the latest couture designs from Paris," and she makes a solid case . . . Neuman concisely explains how thesegildedwomen have been airbrushed out of history, resented by those who felt exploited, but thankfully, they succeeded, and women vote today because of them." * Kirkus Reviews *"This flowing account of women, whose financial contributions, celebrity, style, and innovative strategies revitalized a cause and changed history, will be welcomed by all readers." * Library Journal *"First impressions, 'that unconscious cue that forms a feeling or opinion.' Fashion, style, dress, all non-verbal signals to society about ones social status, occupation or heritage. Dr. Neuman brilliantly explores how the doyennes of Americas elite used their wardrobe and homes to lure a movement and promote an ideology. These political socialites made the Red Carpet their runway for the cause of womens suffrage and promote a fashionable trend under the label 'Votes for Women Campaign.'" -- Norine Fuller,Executive Director, The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, FIDM"Imagine, if you will, you've managed an invitation to a society event in Gilded Age Manhattan. In her compelling study of personality and social power, Johanna Neuman introduces you to the women in the room, all fashionable, most wealthy beyond imagination, and yet all politically powerless. These are not the women we think of as leaders in the fight for women's right to vote, yet here they are in this fascinating study, dressed to the nines, disarming to the patriarchy, and determined. Both socialites and activists, they shaped an age when fashion and celebrity became weapons of radical change." -- Marc Pachter,Director Emeritus, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution"In this fast-paced and important book, Johanna Neuman reminds us of the enormous mobilizations--the rallies and speeches and campaignsthat women of all classes engaged in to build one of the most consequential social movements in American history. Elite women from New York City, Neuman emphasizes, played a central role in these mobilizations. They entered the political fray at considerable risk and used their resources, influence and cultural capital to move the nation towards equal voting rights." -- Sven Beckert,author of Monied Metropolis"With its rollicking narratives of determined personalities and rancorous barbs, Gilded Suffragists makes the story of winning woman suffrage encompass the several determined and super-wealthy New York women whose leadership, social cachet and fashionable presence injected new liveliness and power into the movement at crucial junctures." -- Nancy F. Cott,Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, Harvard University
£16.14
New York University Press Pain Generation
Book SynopsisExplores the perils and promise of feminist social media activismSocial media has become the front-and-center arena for feminist activism. Responding to and enacting the political potential of pain inflicted in acts of sexual harassment, violence, and abuse, Asian American and Asian Canadian feminist icons such as rupi kaur, Margaret Cho, and Mia Matsumiya have turned to social media to share their stories with the world. But how does such activism reconcile with the platforms on which it is being cultivated, when its radical messaging is at total odds with the neoliberal logic governing social media?Pain Generation troubles this phenomenon by articulating a neoliberal self(ie) gaze through which these feminist activistssee and storify the self on social media as good neoliberal subjects who are appealing, inspiring, and entertaining. This book offers a fresh perspective on feminist activism by demonstrating how the problematic neoliberal logic governing diTrade ReviewDeeply researched and meticulously reasoned, Pain Generation offers an incisive and thought-provoking new direction in thinking about the context, challenges, and possibilities for feminist activism in the neoliberalized digital space. The book provides us with a thorough, intimate, and nuanced analysis of an uneasy and complex relationship between feminism and neoliberalism as they are entangled with each other in social media. And by so doing, it not only exposes the underlying neoliberal structure of social media that controls and limits feminist activism, but also helps us imagine an alternative pathway for more critical, reflective, and reflexive social media practices for doing feminist activism online. * Merlyna Lim, Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society. *A committed and engaged account of how neoliberal logics limit and shape feminist activism on social media. The book offers tantalizing concepts to use in feminist media studies, chief among them the ‘neoliberal self(ie)gaze.’ While Ayu Saraswati sees the trouble in turning to social media to do feminist work, she nevertheless locates a space to engage in collective acts of resistance, solidarity, self-love, and accountability through what she calls ‘vigilant eco-love.’ The book itself is an act of ‘vigilant eco-love’ —thinking about how social media platforms and their ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’ limit intersectional feminist and anti-racist work and channel our pain toward self-care and personal responsibility over accountability and structural change. While passionately non-judgmental and attentive to how these pitfalls challenge our feminist work, Pain Generation provides a framework for doing feminist work online as vigilant eco-loving warriors. * Krista Lynes, author of Primatic Media, Transnational Circuits: Feminism in a Globalized Present *The analyses are incisive and the theories applicable far beyond the specific examples, especially for those promoting social activism in digital spaces. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals. -- CHOICE * CHOICE *This book is a compelling read for scholars interested in feminism, digital media, online activism, and for activists themselves. It reveals that many online practices or expressions used by activists – such as self-love for example –, have been neoliberalized. Ayu Sarawasti provides new concepts to think about the challenges of online feminist activism, and she suggests clear directions, solutions, and hope for social justice, so that feminist activism will not be exploited by the neoliberal machine. What makes this book very engaging is its thorough focus on the role of neoliberalism, but one might wonder if some of the complex dynamics described in the book might not be linked to other issues than only neoliberalism, for example the way that sexual violence is viewed as an individual issue and not a systemic one. The comprehensive study of the all-encompassing impact and influence of neoliberalism is nonetheless absolutely nuanced and definitely illuminating. -- InMedia Journal * InMedia Journal *
£19.79
New York University Press Pain Generation
Book SynopsisExplores the perils and promise of feminist social media activismSocial media has become the front-and-center arena for feminist activism. Responding to and enacting the political potential of pain inflicted in acts of sexual harassment, violence, and abuse, Asian American and Asian Canadian feminist icons such as rupi kaur, Margaret Cho, and Mia Matsumiya have turned to social media to share their stories with the world. But how does such activism reconcile with the platforms on which it is being cultivated, when its radical messaging is at total odds with the neoliberal logic governing social media?Pain Generation troubles this phenomenon by articulating a neoliberal self(ie) gaze through which these feminist activistssee and storify the self on social media as good neoliberal subjects who are appealing, inspiring, and entertaining. This book offers a fresh perspective on feminist activism by demonstrating how the problematic neoliberal logic governing digital spaces like Instagram aTrade Review"Deeply researched and meticulously reasoned, Pain Generation offers an incisive and thought-provoking new direction in thinking about the context, challenges, and possibilities for feminist activism in the neoliberalized digital space. The book provides us with a thorough, intimate, and nuanced analysis of an uneasy and complex relationship between feminism and neoliberalism as they are entangled with each other in social media. And by so doing, it not only exposes the underlying neoliberal structure of social media that controls and limits feminist activism, but also helps us imagine an alternative pathway for more critical, reflective, and reflexive social media practices for doing feminist activism online." * Merlyna Lim, Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society. *"A committed and engaged account of how neoliberal logics limit and shape feminist activism on social media. The book offers tantalizing concepts to use in feminist media studies, chief among them the ‘neoliberal self(ie)gaze.’ While Ayu Saraswati sees the trouble in turning to social media to do feminist work, she nevertheless locates a space to engage in collective acts of resistance, solidarity, self-love, and accountability through what she calls ‘vigilant eco-love.’ The book itself is an act of ‘vigilant eco-love’ —thinking about how social media platforms and their ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’ limit intersectional feminist and anti-racist work and channel our pain toward self-care and personal responsibility over accountability and structural change. While passionately non-judgmental and attentive to how these pitfalls challenge our feminist work, Pain Generation provides a framework for doing feminist work online as vigilant eco-loving warriors." * Krista Lynes, author of Primatic Media, Transnational Circuits: Feminism in a Globalized Present *"The analyses are incisive and the theories applicable far beyond the specific examples, especially for those promoting social activism in digital spaces. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- Choice * Choice *"This book is a compelling read for scholars interested in feminism, digital media, online activism, and for activists themselves. It reveals that many online practices or expressions used by activists – such as self-love for example –, have been neoliberalized. Ayu Sarawasti provides new concepts to think about the challenges of online feminist activism, and she suggests clear directions, solutions, and hope for social justice, so that feminist activism will not be exploited by the neoliberal machine. What makes this book very engaging is its thorough focus on the role of neoliberalism, but one might wonder if some of the complex dynamics described in the book might not be linked to other issues than only neoliberalism, for example the way that sexual violence is viewed as an individual issue and not a systemic one. The comprehensive study of the all-encompassing impact and influence of neoliberalism is nonetheless absolutely nuanced and definitely illuminating. " -- InMedia Journal * InMedia Journal *
£66.60
New York University Press The Color of Kink
Book SynopsisWinner of the MLA''s 2016 Alan Bray Prize for Best Book in GLBTQ Studies How BDSM can be used as a metaphor for black female sexuality. The Color of Kink explores black women''s representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the 1930s to the present, revealing the ways in which they illustrate a complex and contradictory negotiation of pain, pleasure, and power for black women. Based on personal interviews conducted with pornography performers, producers, and professional dominatrices, visual and textual analysis, and extensive archival research, Ariane Cruz reveals BDSM and pornography as critical sites from which to rethink the formative links between Black female sexuality and violence. She explores how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, criticTrade ReviewThe Color of Kink breaks entirely new ground in the study of pornography and sexual cultures. Prioritizing the depathologization of black female sexuality and kink cultural practices, this book is a refreshing breakthrough in black feminist and queer theories of sex. Ariane Cruz offers usable theories that unleash the imagination and lubricate the way we think about black sexual politics. -- Mireille Miller-Young,author of A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in PornographyAn exciting contribution to sexuality studies and a much-needed corrective to how we think about BDSM. With beautiful and sharp analysis, Ariane Cruz draws from a dazzling array of sources to parse out the pleasures of abjection that make BDSM an apt metaphor for thinking through black female sexuality. A wonderful, provocative book. -- Amber Jamilla Musser,author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism
£66.60
New York University Press Keeping the March Alive
Book SynopsisHow activist groups across the country adapted their strategies and tactics to their local contexts to keep the protests aliveOn January 21, 2017, the day after Trump's inauguration, feminist activists and allies across many progressive movements assembled across the United States to express their displeasure with the new President and his agenda. These marches were unprecedented in size, bringing together as many as 5.3 million Americans, with at least 408 protests in cities and towns across the country. These protests were large and dramatic, and had an outsized impact. But, they do not tell the whole story of this wave of contention. Keeping the March Alive follows thirty-five progressive groups founded after the Women's March across ten cities from Amarillo and Atlanta to Pasadena and Pittsburgh to tell the whole story of how some social movement organizations survive and thrive while others falter. Catherine Corrigall-Brown explains how activists navigate their local context andTrade ReviewPenetrating cross-sectional analysis of how different grassroots networks formed and endured through the challenges of the Trump years. This is a book both for the moment and – given the enduring challenges to American democracy – for the future. * Sidney Tarrow, author of Movements and Parties: Critical Connections in American Political Development *A terrific contribution to our understanding of the strategic choices that affect the ongoing mobilization of social movements. The book provides an impressive model of multi-method research and demonstrates the importance of tactics, coalition work, recruitment techniques, and online technologies in keeping the movement alive. * Suzanne Staggenborg, author of Grassroots Environmentalism *With great nuance and an impressive trove of quantitative and qualitative data, Corrigall-Brown’s deep dive into grassroots activism shows how local contexts fueled and shaped mobilization during an intense period of resistance. Not only an empirically rich and engaging read, Keeping the March Alive is also a welcome theoretical achievement in terms of movement context and survival, tactics, coalitions, and online mobilization. * Alison Dahl Crossley, author of Finding Feminism: Millennial Activists and the Unfinished Gender Revolution *
£62.90
New York University Press Scarred
Book SynopsisPROSE Award Winner for Biography and AutobiographyNamed one of Library Journal's Best Books of 2023Winner, Next Generation Indie Book Awards - Women's NonfictionOffers thought-provoking theories and life-transforming ways to deal with painWhat can we ask of pain? How can we be more creative and courageous in carrying pain in our lives? In this genre-bending work that is equal parts memoir and scholarly criticism, L. Ayu Saraswati provides thought-provoking theories and life-transforming ways to understand pain, specifically in relation to feminism. Arguing that pain is not merely a state we are in, Scarred reframes pain as a transnational feminist object, something that we can carry across international borders. Drawing on her own experience traveling across twenty countries within just over a year, Saraswati aims to bring readers along on her journey so that they might ask themselves, How can I live with pain differently?By using pain as a lens of feminist analysis, Scarred allows us Trade Review"How do we create new conversations with and about pain–conversations that are humane, enchanting, and subversive? How do we cultivate new, life-sustaining relationships with pain–rather than reject, repress, or in other ways deny it? (And why would we even want to do so?) How do we address both the private/personal and the social/systemic/political dimensions of pain? Traveling with and through pain, L. Ayu Saraswati explores these and related questions. She risks the personal, offering invaluable lessons and additional perspectives into the complex entanglement of feminist theory/praxis, healing, embodiment, enchantment, and pain." * AnaLouise Keating, author of The Anzaldúan Theory Handbook *"An intimate tour de force. Scarred is a necessary intervention into the human quest to understand pain and its im/possibilities. Indeed, even more so in this neoliberal world that encourages pain's suppression and elimination. From yoga retreats in Costa Rica, to the feminist practice of ‘gibberish’ in the mountains of Nepal, to experiences of ‘feminist enchantment’ in Ecuador, Iceland, and Catalonia, this book—part memoir, part ethnographic analysis—is a transdisciplinary and transcontinental fete of feminist cultural studies scholarship. Its theoretical insights, display of feminist autoethnographic fieldwork, and writing craft will have a lasting influence." * Devika Chawla, author of Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition *"Saraswati artfully weaves memoir and auto-ethnography; theorizing and storytelling; and self-reflection and critical analysis to create a beautiful meditation on her feminist journey through pain. This methodologically innovative and theoretically provocative text is a must-read for anyone seeking insight into how we can live with pain differently." * Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, author of Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach *"Drawing on her travels across 20 countries in just over a year, Saraswati, a professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies, shines a feminist light on pain. Her book fuses several modes of storytelling, including memoir, academic theory, ethnography, and criticism, and aims to reframe the reader’s understanding of pain and the female body." * Publishers Weekly *"Theoretically astute yet intensely readable, this book suggests that all of us carry pain—and that everyone also inherently possesses the ability to work with pain instead of fighting against it. The book emphasizes that pain is integral to people; it’s not an incidental feature of circumstances. An exceptional discussion of strategies for processing pain with and through the body." * Library Journal (starred) *"With her latest book, L. Ayu Saraswati offers readers an original, inclusive and intimate examination of pain through a feminist lens. As rigorous as it is readable, Scarred seeks to reframe our relationships to pain, healing, embodiment and enchantment." -- Karla Strand * Ms. Magazine *
£62.90
New York University Press Queer Forms
Book SynopsisHow do we represent the experience of being a gender and sexual outlaw? In Queer Forms, Ramzi Fawaz explores how the central values of 1970s movements for women's and gay liberationincluding consciousness-raising, separatism, and coming out of the closetwere translated into a range of American popular culture forms. Throughout this period, feminist and gay activists fought social and political battles to expand, transform, or wholly explode definitions of so-called normal gender and sexuality. In doing so, they inspired artists, writers, and filmmakers to invent new ways of formally representing, or giving shape to, non-normative genders and sexualities. This included placing women, queers, and gender outlaws of all stripes into exhilarating new environmentsfrom the streets of an increasingly gay San Francisco to a post-apocalyptic commune, from an Upper East Side New York City apartment to an all-female version of Earthand finding new ways to formally render queTrade Review"This is the book I have been waiting for: fearless, brilliant, and filled with love for feminist and queer cultural forms. Rather than fetishizing formlessness as the pinnacle of freedom, Ramzi Fawaz assembles and mines a rich and moving archive of feminist and queer cultural forms that have given us tools to practice intimacy, radical vulnerability, friendship, and worldmaking. Queer Forms was written out of a deep affection for the visionary work of feminist and queer cultural producers, offering us a blueprint for allowing feminist and queer worlds to take shape." * Jennifer C. Nash, author of Birthing Black Mothers *"An invigorating work of queer feminist political theory and imagination. Defying the received demand that instances of nonnormative gender identity remain fluid and formless, Ramzi Fawaz dares to present subversive examples of gender and sexual outlaws whose actions track an unfinished project of freedom. In a range of brilliant readings across political movements and cultural texts, he advances new figures of the thinkable and democratic worldmaking that inspire free action in the present." * Linda Zerilli, University of Chicago *"Parting ways with queer theory’s preference for the ephemeral, Queer Forms feels the touch and re-touch of shapeshifting forms as it sets queer studies in new and dynamic relation to its objects in the world. In one of his signal claims, Fawaz uses the materiality of form to rethink the pervasive and privileged association of queerness with formlessness and fluidity. Thus, he argues that feminist and queer ideas become meaningful as they take material shape within the realm of popular cultural production, where they change audiences in ways that neither a pedantic politics nor a moralizing theory can." * Matt Brim, author of Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University *"An inspirational history of queer and feminist cultural politics forged in the 1970s and extending to the 1990s. Ramzi Fawaz brilliantly maps the forms of relationality that feminist, lesbian, and gay communities invented to visualize themselves and their futures. In an argument that is both crystalline and capacious, he has discerned patterns across a wide range of popular cultural texts, objects, and images, and he demonstrates how radical change has been—and can be—imagined and enacted. Queer Forms is generously both history and manifesto. It calls on us to ask with each other how we want to see our future take shape." * David J. Getsy, author of Abstract Bodies: Sixties Sculpture in the Expanded Field of Gender *"With Queer Forms, Ramzi Fawaz has examined gender and sexual formlessness illustrated by queer and feminist film, literature and visual culture. This 'shapeshifting' allows for greater evolution, authenticity and intimacy for all." -- Karla Strand * Ms. Magazine *"Including detailed footnotes, a thorough bibliography, and illustrative images, this volume will interest and engage those working in the field of women's and gender studies." -- R. Stone (Mt. St. Joseph University) * CHOICE *
£66.60
New York University Press Gilded Suffragists
Book SynopsisNew York City's elite women who turned a feminist cause into a fashionable revolutionIn the early twentieth century over two hundred of New York's most glamorous socialites joined the suffrage movement. Their namesAstor, Belmont, Rockefeller, Tiffany, Vanderbilt, Whitney and the likecarried enormous public value. These women were the media darlings of their day because of the extravagance of their costume balls and the opulence of the French couture clothes, and they leveraged their social celebrity for political power, turning women's right to vote into a fashionable cause. Although they were dismissed by critics as bored socialites trying on suffrage as they might the latest couture designs from Paris, these gilded suffragists were at the epicenter of the great reforms known collectively as the Progressive Era. From championing education for women, to pursuing careers, and advocating for the end of marriage, these women were engaged with the swirl of change that swept through the sTrade Review"Setting the record straight on the driving forces in the early-20th-century fight for women's suffrage . . . Neuman counters the popular opinion that these women were merely bored socialites trying on suffrage as they might the latest couture designs from Paris," and she makes a solid case . . . Neuman concisely explains how thesegildedwomen have been airbrushed out of history, resented by those who felt exploited, but thankfully, they succeeded, and women vote today because of them." * Kirkus Reviews *"This flowing account of women, whose financial contributions, celebrity, style, and innovative strategies revitalized a cause and changed history, will be welcomed by all readers." * Library Journal *"First impressions, 'that unconscious cue that forms a feeling or opinion.' Fashion, style, dress, all non-verbal signals to society about ones social status, occupation or heritage. Dr. Neuman brilliantly explores how the doyennes of Americas elite used their wardrobe and homes to lure a movement and promote an ideology. These political socialites made the Red Carpet their runway for the cause of womens suffrage and promote a fashionable trend under the label 'Votes for Women Campaign.'" -- Norine Fuller,Executive Director, The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, FIDM"Imagine, if you will, you've managed an invitation to a society event in Gilded Age Manhattan. In her compelling study of personality and social power, Johanna Neuman introduces you to the women in the room, all fashionable, most wealthy beyond imagination, and yet all politically powerless. These are not the women we think of as leaders in the fight for women's right to vote, yet here they are in this fascinating study, dressed to the nines, disarming to the patriarchy, and determined. Both socialites and activists, they shaped an age when fashion and celebrity became weapons of radical change." -- Marc Pachter,Director Emeritus, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution"In this fast-paced and important book, Johanna Neuman reminds us of the enormous mobilizations--the rallies and speeches and campaignsthat women of all classes engaged in to build one of the most consequential social movements in American history. Elite women from New York City, Neuman emphasizes, played a central role in these mobilizations. They entered the political fray at considerable risk and used their resources, influence and cultural capital to move the nation towards equal voting rights." -- Sven Beckert,author of Monied Metropolis"With its rollicking narratives of determined personalities and rancorous barbs, Gilded Suffragists makes the story of winning woman suffrage encompass the several determined and super-wealthy New York women whose leadership, social cachet and fashionable presence injected new liveliness and power into the movement at crucial junctures." -- Nancy F. Cott,Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, Harvard University
£66.60
New York University Press Feminist Manifestos
Book SynopsisA wide-reaching collection of groundbreaking feminist documents from around the worldFeminist Manifestos is an unprecedented collection of 150 documents from feminist organizations and gatherings in over 50 countries over the course of three centuries. In the first book of its kind, the manifestos are shown to contain feminist theory and recommend actions for change, and also to expand our very conceptions of feminist thought and activism. Covering issues from political participation, education, religion and work to reproduction, violence, racism, and environmentalism, the manifestos together challenge simplistic definitions of gender and feminist movements in exciting ways. In a wide-ranging introduction, Penny Weiss explores the value of these documents, especially how they speak with and to each other. In addition, an introduction to each individual document contextualizes and enhances our understanding of it. Weiss is particularly invested in how communities work together toward Trade ReviewFeminist Manifestos provides an impressive and unprecedented archive of feminist activism. This rich compendium includes feminist petitions, manifestos, resolutions, charters and declarations from fifty countries, starting in 1642 and ending in 2017. Each selection is accompanied by informative introductions. Ive been waiting for a book like this and cant wait to assign it in my courses -- Amrita Basu,Author of Violent Conjunctures in Democratic IndiaThis inspiring collection is breathtaking in its originality and daring in its premise. Reading the words collectively authored when feminists come together in struggle conveys the passion that inspires activism. Feminists thinking together in these manifestos provide hopeful and energizing answers to the question of what feminism is, challenging the categories and waves into which such variety is often awkwardly packaged. -- Myra Marx Ferree,Author of Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics In Global PerspectiveThis extensive, rich, and diverse anthology of collective feminist declarations is a vital source for understanding the long, global history of feminism. -- Estelle B. Freedman,Author of No Turning Back and The Essential Feminist Reader
£35.15
New York University Press Male Femininities
Book SynopsisInnovative essays that explore how men perform femininity and what femininity looks like without womenWhat counts as male femininity? Is it simply men behaving in effeminate ways or is it the absence of masculinity? Male Femininities presents a nuanced, critical collection of essays that highlight the extent to which male femininities are neither an imitation of femaleness nor an emptying of masculinity. These innovative essays focus on both gay and straight men, and transmasculine and genderqueer people in their construction and performance of femininity, thereby revealing the possibilities that open up when we critically examine femininity without women. Male Femininities asks, What does femininity look like for men?The contributorshighly regarded scholars and rising starscover a range of topics, including drag queens, cosmetic enhancements, trans fertility, and gender-non-conforming childhoods. Male Femininities illuminates what happens wheTrade Review"Rigorously and playfully complicating its core concepts, Male Femininities takes a sociological tour through the spaces where male bodies and male subjectivities encounter, embrace, disavow, and inhabit the feminine. Expansive in its empirical and theoretical scope, this book is a must-have for scholars and students of gender studies." * Jane Ward, author of The Tragedy of Heterosexuality *"Male Femininities explores the political potential of gender boundary crossing and encourages readers to see gender as distinct from sex and sexuality. Focusing on what happens when social rules are broken, each chapter reveals the variety of spaces in which gender can look different from what we might expect." * Kristen Barber, author of Styling Masculinity *"Kudos to the editors for bringing together such engaging work – including compelling first-person narratives and theoretically- and historically-grounded ethnographic research – that illustrates a range of male femininities in action." * Wendy Simonds, author of Hospital Land USA *
£73.80
New York University Press Embodied Avatars
Book SynopsisHow black women have personified art,expression,identity, and freedom through performanceWinner, 2016 William Sanders Scarborough Prize, presented by the Modern Language Association for an outstanding scholarly study of African American literature or cultureWinner, 2016 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, presented by the American Society for Theatre ResearchWinner, 2016 Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American theater, drama, and/or performance studies, presented by the American Society for Theatre ResearchTracing a dynamic genealogy of performance from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, Uri McMillan contends that black women artists practiced a purposeful self-objectification, transforming themselves into art objects. In doing so, these artists raised new ways to ponder the intersections of art, performance, and black female embodiment.McMillan reframes the conceTrade Review"Uri McMillans magisterial debut book engages while naming a two-century-long tradition of black womens performance art in the United States, intervening in the problematic racialization and gendering of particular art historical traditions buttressed by the presumed absence of black womens aesthetic and political enactments." * Theatre Journal *"Uri McMillan's magisterial debut book engages while naming a two-century-long tradition of black women's performance art in the United States...Part of the greatness of this book is its complicated engagement with racialized, gendered, and sexualized objecthood as method, the risk-taking practices whereby the historically unfree recalculate the possibilities objecthood for smuggling in liberatory alternatives." * Theatre Journal *"Embodied Avatarsdestabilizes the boundaries between art, objecthood, and survival within the last two centuries [....] Readers are left with the reverberating echoes of not only the black women artists profiled, but the resonances of their multiple avatars, becoming a fierce atonal chorus. Performing objecthood becomes a transformative human strategy in the face of searing dehumanization. Rather than arguing for another iteration of the human as a salvageable category, McMillans innovative scholarship illuminates a complex and obstinate way of being, a being that strikingly prefers not to." * Women & Performance *"Roll over Joseph Beuys, tell Yves Klein the news! Embodied Avatarsradically disrupts prevailing histories, definitions, and genealogies of performance art by focusing on black women who, over the course of two centuries, sought to turn their degraded bodies into dissident tools of emancipation and social critique. Recognizing the first modern stage of black performativity as the auction block, Uri McMillan reveals how black women turned objectification into objecthood, enabling them to remake, disguise, remold the self into an object of resistance, an embodied nightmare to the American dream. Full of eye-popping analytical turns and thrilling theoretical high wire acts, this book is both brilliant scholarship and a performance to be reckoned with." -- Robin D. G. Kelley,author of Thelonious Monk"Embodied Avatarspresents a sweeping and charismatic investigation of the ways in which Black women have strategically staged versions of 'themselves as modes of public, personal, and critical performance and as interventions in art, expression, identity, identification, and freedom.This vibrant and energetic study of art, performance, and embodiment is far-reaching, profound, lively, and engaging." -- Stephanie Leigh Batiste,author of Darkening Mirrors"Uri McMillan takes us on a journey to unexpected terrain. With powerful alchemy, he reveals how black women performance artists work on multiple registersthrough seduction, trickery, the comfort of the seemingly familiarto enact possibility, or what he theorizes as performance & in the service of a certain type of freedom. Meticulously researched and rigorously theorized, Embodied Avatarsis a model of interdisciplinary scholarship grounded in archival work and impressive textual analysis. This book is certain to forge new paths of inquiry and debate in performance, gender and sexuality studies, and black cultural studies." -- Nicole R. Fleetwood,author of Troubling Vision"AlthoughEmbodied Avatarsis an art historical text, the author displays an admirable dexterity across discipline and epistemologies: the mixture of art history, disability studies, object-oriented ontology, and discourses of black subjectivity is deft and, at times, dazzling." * QED *"Uri McMillans Embodied Avatars is a masterfully multilayered exposition of black womens performance art from the nineteenth century to the present. McMillan not only centers black women within traditional and feminist performance art, but also challenges black hegemonic ideas about objectification in performance." * Journal of African American History *Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Performing Objects 1 1. Mammy Memory: The Curious Case of Joice Heth, the Ancient Negress 23 2. Passing Performances: Ellen Craft's Fugitive Selves 65 3. Plastic Possibilities: Adrian Piper's Adamant Self-Alienation 95 4. Is This Performance about You? The Art, Activism, and Black Feminist Critique of Howardena Pindell 153 Conclusion: "I've Been Performing My Whole Life" 197 Notes 227 Index 275 About the Author 283 McMillan_i_283.indd 9 7/30/15 9:04 AM
£23.74
New York University Press Feminist Manifestos
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewFeminist Manifestos provides an impressive and unprecedented archive of feminist activism. This rich compendium includes feminist petitions, manifestos, resolutions, charters and declarations from fifty countries, starting in 1642 and ending in 2017. Each selection is accompanied by informative introductions. Ive been waiting for a book like this and cant wait to assign it in my courses -- Amrita Basu,Author of Violent Conjunctures in Democratic IndiaThis inspiring collection is breathtaking in its originality and daring in its premise. Reading the words collectively authored when feminists come together in struggle conveys the passion that inspires activism. Feminists thinking together in these manifestos provide hopeful and energizing answers to the question of what feminism is, challenging the categories and waves into which such variety is often awkwardly packaged. -- Myra Marx Ferree,Author of Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics In Global PerspectiveThis extensive, rich, and diverse anthology of collective feminist declarations is a vital source for understanding the long, global history of feminism. -- Estelle B. Freedman,Author of No Turning Back and The Essential Feminist Reader
£89.10
New York University Press Fight Like a Girl Second Edition
Book SynopsisA blueprint for the next generation of feminist activists Fight Like a Girl offers a vision of the past, present, and future of feminism. With an eye toward what it takes to create actual change and a deep understanding of women's history and the key issues facing girls and young women today, Megan Seely offers a pragmatic introduction to feminism. Written in an upbeat and personal style, Fight Like a Girl offers an overview of feminism, including historical roots, myths and meanings, triumphs and shortcomings. Sharing personal stories from her own experience as a young activist, as a mother, and as a teacher, Seely offers a practical guide to getting involved, taking action, and waging successful events and campaigns. The second edition addresses more themes and topics than before, including gender and sexuality, self-esteem, reproductive health, sexual violence, body image and acceptance, motherhood and family, and intersections of identities, such as race, gender, class, and sexualiTrade Review"Feeling angry about how women are treated? Fight Like a Girl is perfect for women of all ages, with thoughtful analysis, helpful advice, and useful resources." -- Cindy Pearson,Executive Director of National Women's Health Network (NWHN)
£66.60
New York University Press The Mary Daly Reader
Book SynopsisMakes key excerpts from Daly's work accessible to readers who are seeking to access the essence of her thought in a single volume. Outrageous, humorous, inflammatory, Amazonian, intellectual, provocative, controversial, and a discoverer of Feminist word-magic, Mary Daly's influence on Second Wave feminism was enormous. She burst through constraints to articulate new ways of being female and alive. This comprehensive reader offers a vital introduction to the core of Daly's work and the complexities secreted away in the pages of her books. Her major theoriesBio-philia, Be-ing as Verb, and the life force within wordsand major controversiesrelating to race, transgender identity, and separatismare all covered, and the editors have provided introductions to each selection for context. The text has been crafted to be accessible to a broad readership, without diluting Daly's witty but complicated vocabulary. Begun in collaboration with Daly while she was still alive, and completed after her Trade ReviewIn sum, this anthology is an intellectual gift to feminists everywhere. It reminds us to be fearlessly feminist, to uphold our diverse feminist intellectual traditions, and to collaborate with each other in ways that encourage feminist resistance to the technocratic, necrophilic, and neo-fascist threats, laws, and practice harming those performing as women. * Reading Religion *She was a great trained philosopher, theologian, and poet, and she used all of those tools to demolish patriarchy -- or any idea that domination is natural -- in its most defended place, which is religion. -- Gloria Steinem * Boston Globe, January 2010 *"Brings us face to face with the radical, groundbreaking work of a feminist philosopher whose expectations for women were only exceeded by her commitment to them. I still vividly remember my first encounter with Mary Daly's work, the exhilaration of her wordsmithery, the sense of freedom and clarity that came from having the evils of the world named and condemned, and the ensuing commitment sparked to do something with these insights - to work to dismantle structures of injustice at the root. We need these kinds of transformative encounters today and this book is up to the task... This painstakingly crafted reader invites our engagement (new or continuing) with one of the sharpest thinkers of our time, challenging us to leap into Mary Daly's originally brilliant work and to transcend beyond it." -- Xochitl Alvizo,California State University, NorthridgeTide-like, social and cultural movements flow and ebb—as do the reputations of their founders. This reader puts Daly on display in all of her life-long radical transformations, personal, theological, philosophical, rhetorical. * The Pomegranate *
£73.80
New York University Press The Political Thought of Americas Founding
Book SynopsisRecovering the powerful and influential contributions of women from the nation's formative yearsThe Political Thought of America's Founding Feminists traces the significance of Frances Wright, Harriet Martineau, Angelina and Sarah Grimké, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth in shaping American political thinking. These women understood the relationship between sexism, racism, and economic inequality; yet, they are virtually unknown in American political thought because they are considered activists, not theorists. Their efforts to expand the reach of America's founding ideals laid the groundwork not only for women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery, but for the broader expansion of civil, political, and human rights that would characterize much of the twentieth century and continues to unfold today. Drawing on a careful reading of speeches, letters and other archival sources, Lisa Pace Vetter shows the ways in which the early women's rights movement and abolTrade ReviewThe Political Thought of Americas Founding Feminists is both wide-ranging and deep. It tells us about early women's rights advocates, but it does far more than that. Lisa Pace Vetter's book bears not merely on our understanding of particular moments or issues in American political history but on our understanding of American political history itself. -- Susan McWilliams, author of Traveling Back: Toward a Global Political TheoryIn this innovative book, Vetter expands the contours of U.S. political theory. The Political Thought of Americas Founding Feminists compellingly demonstrates how feminist and critical race theory enrich the conceptualization of liberty, equality, citizenship, self-ownership, and democracy. -- Mary Hawkesworth, author of Embodied Power: Demystifying Disembodied PoliticsVetter's chapters are gems. Any of them could be assigned in a course on American political thought, and perhaps that is part of Vetter's objective of transforming the canon. * American Historical Review *Vetter looks beyond formal conventional modes of theorizing to consider womens activism, as well as their speeches, letters, and the writings of their contemporaries. She includes nontraditional perspectives, such as the religious underpinnings of their activism and philosophies. The influence of these nontraditional perspectives illustrates her point that American political theory emerged from unexpected venues and diverse voices. * Hypatia Reviews Online *The result is a well-researched and beautifully written book that weaves together discussion of the contributions of several early feminists with several long-standing theoretical debates, in a compelling and fruitful way. The book should be of serious interest to scholars of feminist theory and history, * The Review of Politics *
£23.74
University of Toronto Press Resisting Invisibility
Book SynopsisEngaging with pre-feminist and male-authored crime literature, Resisting Invisibility offers a comparative reading of women’s bodies as represented in Spanish crime literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Utilizing the twin concepts of visibility and invisibility, the book establishes a genealogy of differing viewpoints regarding women’s positions in these narratives, before and after the birth of the modern Spanish female detective. This examination of the politics of female visibility expands our understanding of the aesthetic regimes that have governed the female body from the early phases of the genre’s evolution. While most scholars understand the feminization of the crime genre as a response to second-wave feminism, Resisting Invisibility demonstrates that even in the earliest representations of delinquent women, the politics surrounding the female body are problematized and are more complex than previously conceptuaTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Detecting the Female Body in Gendered Mysteries 1. Reading the Female Delinquent in Early Spanish Crime Fiction 2. Investigating the “Eye” in Twentieth-Century Spanish Crime Novels 3. Parodying the Male Gaze in Lourdes Ortiz’s Picadura mortal 4. A New Politics of Visibility in the Lònia Guiu Series 5. Lesbianizing the Genre Conclusion: Exploring an Alternative Crime Fiction Genealogy Notes Bibliography
£47.60
University of Toronto Press Patriarchal Desire and Victorian Discourse
Book SynopsisWhile there have been studies examining Trollope from a feminist perspective, very little work has taken into consideration the questions raised by contemporary critical theory. Patriarchal Desire and Victorian Discourse is unique in that it links feminist analysis with psychoanalytic theory, and brings both to bear on an examination of Trollope’s writings. The feminist Lacanian analysis employed by Priscilla L. Walton offers a new perspective on the dominant Victorian cultural dynamic. She explains how the works serve as complex and ultimately double-edged exemplars of patriarchal desire and masculinist discourse.For most of his life Trollope sought to gain acceptance to a privileged social group, from which he was initially excluded as a result of his class. Walton begins with his situation as presents it in An Autobiography in order to place the author historically, as a man whose social position granted him a useful vantage point from which to comment on the implic
£17.99
University of Toronto Press The Disruption of the Feminine in Henry James
Book SynopsisThe women of Henry James’s novels have intrigued critics for a hundred years. Priscilla Walton brings a post-structuralist feminist perspective to James’s work. Drawing on the theories of Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray, she focuses on the constructed Otherness of the Feminine. Traditional critics of James have tried to unify and hence confine his works but in so doing they have ignored the polyvalent nature of his writings. Walton challenges such limited readings by opening up the texts to interpretation and tracing the ways in which the narratives resist closure.She contends that in James’s texts the representations of women foreground their limitations that Realist Masculine referentiality has placed on both the Feminine text and the female characters. Because women have no singular presence within Masculine ideology, they cannot be fixed and it is their Otherness which generates the plurality that is privileged
£17.99
University of Nebraska Press Intersectionality
Book SynopsisA 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleIntersectionality intervenes in the field of intersectionality studies: the integrative examination of the effects of racial, gendered, and class power on people’s lives. While “intersectionality” circulates as a buzzword, Anna Carastathis joins other critical voices to urge a more careful reading. Challenging the narratives of arrival that surround it, Carastathis argues that intersectionality is a horizon, illuminating ways of thinking that have yet to be realized; consequently, calls to “go beyond” intersectionality are premature. A provisional interpretation of intersectionality can disorient habits of essentialism, categorial purity, and prototypicality and overcome dynamics of segregation and subordination in political movements. Through a close reading of critical race theorist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s germinal texts, published more than twenty-five yeTrade Review“This is, perhaps, Carastathis’s greatest insight: she urges us to think about intersectionality as a ‘profoundly destabilizing, productively disorienting, provisional concept’ whose work remains to be done. In this account, intersectionality refers to our desire to keep dreaming of a more just social world.”—Jennifer C. Nash, American Quarterly "Intersectionality follows a clear theoretical arc and stages multiple interventions throughout, making it a resource for one well versed in the field or encountering it for the first time."—Desiree Valentine, Critical Philosophy of Race"Anna Carastathis confronts an enduring obstacle to taking up intersectionality's potential: she illustrates how an ongoing, monist fragmentation of identities, communities, politics, and perceptions buttresses power hierarchies and reinforces exclusion by design."—Vivian M. May, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy“Better theory is what Carastathis wants, and that implies for her a more fundamental critique of naturalized and essentialized groups and a ‘profoundly destabilizing, productively disorienting, provisional concept that disaggregates false unities, undermines false universalisms, and unsettles false entitlements.’”—Myra Marx Ferree, Contemporary Sociology"Carastathis’s citational practices and the subsequent conversations she generates are a vital intervention in this current moment in academia. For both novices and experts in black feminist theories, this book is a crucial review of the literature for all academics at any stage of their career, especially those scholars naming their work as 'intersectional.'"—R. Aliah Ajamoughli, Journal of Folklore Research“Anna Carastathis’s careful and sustained engagement with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work is uniquely illuminating and helpful.”—Zenzele Isoke, author of Urban Black Women and the Politics of ResistanceTable of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Intersectionality, Black Feminist Thought, and Women-of-Color Organizing 2. Basements and Intersections 3. Intersectionality as a Provisional Concept 4. Critical Engagements with Intersectionality 5. Identities as Coalitions 6. Intersectionality and Decolonial Feminism Conclusion References Index
£21.59
University of Nebraska Press Daughters of 1968
Book SynopsisTells the story of French feminism between 1944 and 1981, when feminism played a central political role in the history of France. The key women during this epoch were often leftists committed to a materialist critique of society and were part of a postwar tradition that produced widespread social change.Trade Review"In an entanglement of opinions and assumptions, Greenwald thoroughly iterates the principal arguments and struggles of this time and any scholar researching feminism, or perhaps simply a curious reader, would do well to pick up this book."—Celina Vargas, French Review"Scholars of twentieth-century feminist history on both sides of the Atlantic will want to take note of Lisa Greenwald's comprehensive account of the ideological debates that underpinned feminist-led public policy changes in postwar France."—Sandra Reineke, American Historical Review“‘Femininity and womanhood had long been expressions of women’s power and the root of their identity in French society,’ writes Lisa Greenwald. Her lively, smart, and thoroughly researched book shows how those terms—and the power arrangements and identities they stood for—were revised, reinterpreted, and repudiated. . . . The fiftieth anniversary of May ’68 will direct new attention to its powerful aftershocks. Feminism was one of those aftershocks, and Greenwald’s book will be part of our reappraisal of this historical moment.”In an entanglement of opinions and assumptions, Greenwald thoroughly iterates the principal arguments and struggles of this time and any scholar researching feminism, or perhaps simply a curious reader, would do well to pick up this book. Judith G. Coffin, associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin“Lisa Greenwald introduces anglophone audiences to the breadth and depth of second-wave feminism in France. Her bold analysis encompasses much more than theory by restoring to us the complexity of the activist components of the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes.”—Karen Offen, senior scholar, Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University“Finally! In her remarkable book on the history of French feminism after World War II, Lisa Greenwald restores overlooked feminist activists of the 1950s and 1960s to their rightful place. Embedding them in their changing historical context, Greenwald follows feminism through upheaval and fracture after 1968, exploring both the unresolved dilemmas and the profound changes feminists brought about.”—Sarah Fishman, associate dean for undergraduate studies, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Houston“A solid and well-documented investigation into the Women’s Liberation Movement in France: its actions, its components, its relations with previous generations, and its painful internal conflicts. It reveals the very important role played by radical and materialist feminists. It is an effective antidote against the invention of ‘French feminism’ by some American scholars.”—Sylvie Chaperon, professor of contemporary and gender history at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, Laboratory FRAMESPA“This is the book you need in order to grasp the complex history of French Second-Wave Feminism.”—Bibia Pavard, senior lecturer in history, Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Analysis of Media (CARISM) at the University Paris II"In the United States, there remains the belief that French feminism of the second wave is only a literary and/or theoretical movement, leaving in the shadow its political struggles, internal conflicts, and their real impacts. The novelty of this work is to place the women's liberation movement in the historical and intellectual contexts in which it emerged and grew . . . Lisa Greenwald's book will therefore be of interest in more than one way: not only does it offer, for the first time on the other side of the Atlantic, a history of the women's liberation movement in France and highlights—in a comparative perspective with the United States movement by example—the peculiarities that cross it. It also lets us French readers see a new approach to second wave feminism by placing it in a longer time frame—by linking it to the French political and intellectual context and to the first writings and first actions of women (mainly since the end of World War II)."—Archives du Feminisme"Daughters of 1968: Redefining French Feminism and the Women's Liberation Movement, is the story of modern-day French feminism which was both impactful and full of intellectual and personal conflict."—Marshal Zeringue, Page 99 TestTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Reigniting French Feminism for the Twentieth Century 1. Liberation and Rethinking Gender Roles: 1944–1950 2. Reform and Consensus: Feminism in the 1950s and 1960s 3. The May Events and the Birth of Second-Wave Feminism: 1968–1970 4. New Feminist Theory and Feminist Practice: The Early 1970s 5. The Mouvement de Libération des Femmes and the Fight for Reproductive Freedom: 1970–19796. Takeover? Feminists In and Out of Party Politics: The Late 1970s 7. Who Owns Women’s Liberation? The Campaigns for French Women Not a Conclusion: The Socialist Party’s Ascendancy and French Feminism’s Second Wave Appendix: The Feminist Press in France, 1968–1981 Notes Bibliography Index
£21.59
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi She Damn Near Ran the Studio The Extraordinary
Book SynopsisBest known as the woman who “ran MGM”, Ida Koverman served as talent scout, mentor, executive secretary, and confidant to American movie mogul Louis B. Mayer for twenty-five years. This book offers the first full account of Koverman's life and the story of how she became a formidable politico and a creative powerhouse during Hollywood's Golden Era.Trade Review“Historian Braitman illuminates the woman behind one of Golden Age Hollywood’s most powerful moguls in this revealing biography…Both women’s history and film buffs will be fascinated by Braitman’s account.” —Publishers Weekly
£27.96
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi TwentyFirst Century Feminisms in Childrens and
Book SynopsisOver twenty years after the publication of her groundbreaking work, Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels, Roberta Seelinger Trites returns to analyse how literature for the young still provides one outlet in which feminists can offer girls an alternative to sexism.
£77.35
University Press of Mississippi TwentyFirstCentury Feminisms in Childrens and Adolescent Literature
Book SynopsisOver twenty years after the publication of her groundbreaking work, Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels, Roberta Seelinger Trites returns to analyze how literature for the young still provides one outlet in which feminists can offer girls an alternative to sexism. Supplementing her previous work in the linguistic turn, Trites employs methodologies from the material turn to demonstrate how feminist thinking has influenced literature for the young in the last two decades. She interrogates how material feminism can expand our understanding of maturation and gender--especially girlhood--as represented in narratives for preadolescents and adolescents.Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature applies principles behind material feminisms, such as ecofeminism, intersectionality, and the ethics of care, to analyze important feminist thinking that permeates twenty-first-century publishing for youth. The structure moves from
£26.10
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi The Savvy Sphinx How Garbo Conquered Hollywood
Book SynopsisIncluding over a hundred beautiful images, The Savvy Sphinx charts Greta Garbo’s rise and her long self-imposed exile as the queen who abdicated her Hollywood throne. Garbo was the paramount star produced by the Hollywood studio system, and by the time of her death her legendary status was assured.
£29.71
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Barbara Stanwyck
Book SynopsisBarbara Stanwyck rose from the ranks of chorus girl to become one of Hollywood’s most talented leading women - and America’s highest-paid woman in the mid-1940s. This book positions Stanwyck where she belongs - at the very top of her profession - and offers a close, sympathetic reading of her performances in all their range and complexity.
£18.86
Cornell University Press Our Unions Our Selves
Book SynopsisIn Our Unions, Our Selves, Anne Zacharias-Walsh provides an in-depth look at the rise of women-only unions in Japan, an organizational analysis of the challenges these new unions face in practice, and a firsthand account of the ambitious, occasionally contentious, and ultimately successful international solidarity project that helped to spark a new feminist labor movement. In the early 1990s, as part of a larger wave of union reform efforts in Japan, women began creating their own women-only labor unions to confront long-standing gender inequality in the workplace and in traditional enterprise unions. These new unions soon discovered that the demand for individual assistance and help at the bargaining table dramatically exceeded the rate at which the unions could recruit and train members to meet that demand. Within just a few years, women-only unions were proving to be both the most effective option women had for addressing problems on the job and in serious danger ofTrade ReviewA very useful introduction to understanding the gender relations, working culture, and condition of women in Japan.... It also serves as a handbook for activists to work with Japanese activists in the future in order to understand their styles of working and meeting. Meanwhile, the accessible language and engaging narrative do help readers from various fields to enjoy this book. * Global Labour Journal *Teasing out implicit assumptions behind labour organizing models, logics, and strategies of a wide variety of US and Japanese activism groups, the book would make a stimulating addition to graduate and advanced undergraduate discussions of transnational activism and social movements in social sciences, labour studies, and gender studies classrooms. * Pacific Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Part 1 JAPANESE WOMEN'S UNIONS 1. A Union of One’s Own 2. A Tale of Two Activists 3. Women’s Union Tokyo in Practice Part 2 US- JAPAN CROSSBORDER COLLABORATION 4. First, We Drink Tea 5. Under the Microscope 6. Crisis of Difference 7. Made in Japan 8. A Movement Transformed Conclusion: Lessons for Building Crossborder Collaborations Appendix A: Characteristics of Common Nonregular Forms of Employment Appendix B: Curriculum Wish Lists Appendix C: Why Japanese Women "Can’t" Organize
£97.20
Cornell University Press Our Unions Our Selves
Book SynopsisIn Our Unions, Our Selves, Anne Zacharias-Walsh provides an in-depth look at the rise of women-only unions in Japan, an organizational analysis of the challenges these new unions face in practice, and a firsthand account of the ambitious, occasionally contentious, and ultimately successful international solidarity project that helped to spark a new feminist labor movement. In the early 1990s, as part of a larger wave of union reform efforts in Japan, women began creating their own women-only labor unions to confront long-standing gender inequality in the workplace and in traditional enterprise unions. These new unions soon discovered that the demand for individual assistance and help at the bargaining table dramatically exceeded the rate at which the unions could recruit and train members to meet that demand. Within just a few years, women-only unions were proving to be both the most effective option women had for addressing problems on the job and in serious danger ofTrade ReviewA very useful introduction to understanding the gender relations, working culture, and condition of women in Japan.... It also serves as a handbook for activists to work with Japanese activists in the future in order to understand their styles of working and meeting. Meanwhile, the accessible language and engaging narrative do help readers from various fields to enjoy this book. * Global Labour Journal *Teasing out implicit assumptions behind labour organizing models, logics, and strategies of a wide variety of US and Japanese activism groups, the book would make a stimulating addition to graduate and advanced undergraduate discussions of transnational activism and social movements in social sciences, labour studies, and gender studies classrooms. * Pacific Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Part 1 JAPANESE WOMEN'S UNIONS 1. A Union of One’s Own 2. A Tale of Two Activists 3. Women’s Union Tokyo in Practice Part 2 US- JAPAN CROSSBORDER COLLABORATION 4. First, We Drink Tea 5. Under the Microscope 6. Crisis of Difference 7. Made in Japan 8. A Movement Transformed Conclusion: Lessons for Building Crossborder Collaborations Appendix A: Characteristics of Common Nonregular Forms of Employment Appendix B: Curriculum Wish Lists Appendix C: Why Japanese Women "Can’t" Organize
£27.54
Cornell University Press Feminist Theory Womens Writing
Book SynopsisIn this rewarding book, Laurie A. Finke challenges assumptions about gender, the self, and the text which underlie fundamental constructs of contemporary feminist theory. She maintains that some of the key concepts structuring feminist literary criticism need to be reexamined within both their historical context and the larger framework of current theory concerning language, representation, subjectivity, and value.Trade ReviewThis remarkable book argues for what the author calls a ‘feminist theory of complexity,’ which offers a dialogical materialism capable of explaining how traditionally marginalized women writers challenge established notions of literature and criticism; a way out of the impasse between Anglo-American feminists’ emphasis on ‘female oppression,’ ‘women’s experience,’ ‘women’s languages,’ on one hand, and the political paralysis often attributed to Continental poststructuralist theory, on the other; and a dismantling of established literary periodization by treating medieval literary texts alongside modern ones. -- E. Jane Burns * Speculum *
£16.13
Cornell University Press The Other Side of the Story
Book SynopsisAccording to Molly Hite, a number of influential contemporary women novelistsnotably Jean Rhys, Doris Lessing, Alice Walker, and Margaret Atwoodattempt innovations in narrative form that are more radical in their implications than the dominant modes of fictional experimentation characterized as postmodernist. In The Other Side of the Story, Hite makes the point that these innovations, which distinguish the genre she calls contemporary feminist narrative, are more radical precisely because their context is the critique of a culture and a literary tradition apprehended as profoundly masculinist.Trade ReviewHite’s inclusion of a chapter on Alice Walker (which addresses Walker’s intertextual relation to Zora Neale Hurston) multiplies and complicates the category of other insofar as it assumes female characters of color as the subject of postmodern fictions. Hite does an excellent job of making readers aware of the fact that postmodern feminist critics are not always white, or even always women. -- Frances Bartkowski * SubStance *
£16.13
Cornell University Press Sex Love and Letters
Book SynopsisWhen Judith G. Coffin discovered a virtually unexplored treasure trove of letters to Simone de Beauvoir from Beauvoir''s international readers, it inspired Coffin to explore the intimate bond between the famed author and her reading public. This correspondence, at the heart of Sex, Love, and Letters, immerses us in the tumultuous decades from the late 1940s to the 1970sfrom the painful aftermath of World War II to the horror and shame of French colonial brutality in Algeria and through the dilemmas and exhilarations of the early gay liberation and feminist movements. The letters also provide a glimpse into the power of reading and the power of readers to seduce their favorite authors.The relationship between Beauvoir and her audience proved especially long, intimate, and vexed. Coffin traces this relationship, from the publication of Beauvoir''s acclaimed The Second Sex to the release of the last volume of her memoirs, offering an unfamiliar perspective on one oTrade ReviewCoffin opens up a new perspective onto a major writer, and makes a convincing case for her continuing intellectual relevance. * Publisher's Weekly *The title of Judith Coffin's book evokes, for those of us old enough to remember it, Steven Soderbergh's 1989 hit movie, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, whose main argument, according to the late and great Roger Ebert, was that "conversation is better than sex—more intimate, more voluptuous."[1] * H-France Review *This beautifully written, frequently moving book is a crucial addition to the scholarship on Simone de Beauvoir. * Kirkus Reviews *[Coffin] writes engagingly about... historic developments while paying strict attention to the vivid immediacy of those letters that range far and wide across the categories of sentiment, education, and motive, revealing personalities that run the gamut from the elegant to the crude, the appreciative to the demanding. * Boston Review *Several years ago, Coffin had the great fortune to be the first researcher to open an uncataloged Beauvoir archive.... No less fortunately, she had the great intelligence and skill to translate these letters into English for us and cast them in a lucid and fascinating account of Beauvoir's relationship to her readers then and since. * Los Angeles Review of Books *Sex, Love, and Lettersis a highly engaging book that provides an excellent contribution to the field ofBeauvoir scholarship. Coffin provides readers with an exceptionally rich picture of the cultural landscape of France and beyond in the decades after World War II, which is indispensable for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Beauvoir's work. * Simone de Beauvoir Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Intimate Life of the Nation: Reading The Second Sex in 1949 2. Beauvoir, Kinsey, and Midcentury Sex 3. Readers and Writers 4. The Algerian War and the Scandal of Torture 5. Shame as Political Feeling 6. Second Takes on The Second Sex 7. Couple Troubles 8. Sexual Politics and Feminism Conclusion
£23.39
Cornell University Press Millennial Feminism at Work
Book SynopsisIn Millennial Feminism at Work, volume editor Jane Juffer brings together recently graduated students from across the US to reflect on the relevance of their feminist studies programs in their chosen career paths. The result is a dynamic collection of voices, shaking up preconceived ideas and showing the positive influence of gender and sexuality studies on individuals at work.Encompassing five areascorporate, education, nonprofit, medical, and media careersthese engaging essays use personal experiences to analyze the pressure on young adults to define themselves through creative work, even when that job may not sustain them financially. Obstacles to feminist work conditions notwithstanding, they urge readers to never downplay their feminist credentials and prove that gender and sexuality studies degrees can serve graduates well in the current marketplace and prepare them for life outside of their alma mater. Emphasizing the importance of inTrade ReviewJuffer's excellent introduction argues for undergraduate programs to more deliberately prepare students to take theory beyond the classroom, preparing them to traverse a fluctuating economy marked by gig work. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Feminist Studies and the Millennial Workforce, by Jane Juffer 1. Affective Exertions at the Humanitarian Frontlines: Engendering Recognition of Gendered Labor and Mutuality through Feminist and Queer Theory, by Kate Poor Part 1: NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS 2. Subjugated Knowledge: Listening to LGBTQ Homeless Youths, by Sassafras Lowrey 3. The Patriarchal Roots of Philanthropy, by Lauren Danzig Part 2: THE BUSINESS WORLD 4. "Woman, You Are the One Doing It Wrong": A Decolonial Conceptualization of Colombian Working-Class Femininity, by Laura Ramos-Jaimes 5. How to Market Anticapitalist Feminism: The Making of an Online Socialist Agenda, by Alissa Medina 6. The Perils of Perfection Feminism, by Stephanie Newman 7. Circuitous Paths from University to Work, and Finding Feminist Willfulness along the Way, by Jael Goldfine Part 3: PEDAGOGY 8. Letter to a White Supremacist, by Addie Tsai 9. Praise to Our School We Love So Dear—or Maybe Not: Status Quo and Safe Spaces in High School, by Hayley Zablotsky 10. Love the Killjoy, by Justine Parkin Part 4: HEALTH AND MEDICINE 11. Acts of Defiance: The Power of Anger and Sadness in the Workplace, by Rose Al Abosy 12. #MyBirthToo: The Patriarchy of the Modern Obstetric System, by Savannah Medley Taylor 13. Navigating Feminism and Vulnerability in the Medical Workplace, by Lily Pierce Part 5: MEDIA 14. Where Are the Queer Politics? #MeToo, Robin Wright, and Celebrity PR Work, by Samuel Naimi 15. The Immanence of Social Media Labor? The Struggle to Find a Feminist Dwelling, by Sadaf Ferdowsi 16. Finding "the Trouble with Normal" in Journalism, by Rachel Cromidas 17. "No Place to Be, Except with Each Other": How Women's Studies Taught Me to Be Unionized, by Reina Gattuso
£81.00
Cornell University Press Unfinished Spirit
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewUnfinished Spirit is a bracing work of scholarly devotion. Alongside plenty of original readings and fresh interpretation, Kennedy-Epstein manages the uncanny trick of presenting us with Rukeyser at work, thinking and feeling her way through the catastrophes of her epoch. The reader comes away from the book enlivened and encouraged and enraged. * Women: A Cultural Review *Adventurous, painstaking, and thought-provoking, Unfinished Spirit will draw students of Rukeyser and twentieth-century American culture to think outside familiar literary historical boxes. * Modern Philology *Rukeyser's intervention in modernism with this avant-garde novel—and the obstruction of her career by misogynist expectations for women writers—are increasingly the focus of scholars eager to work on something new about the modernist novel and/or the Spanish Civil War. * Feminist Modernist Studies *A work of bold originality and personal, passionate scholarship Rukeyser's archival writing provides an invaluable perspective on our times and a guide to moving forward (particularly in our era of revived book banning) with her characteristic belief in possibility, in process and potential. * The Muriel Rukeyser Living Archive *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Waste/Archives/Feminism Part I: Novel Proliferations: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1974 1. Costa Brava 2. Her Symbol Was Civil War: Recovering Savage Coast 3. Mother of Exiles: Spanish Civil War Writing Part II: Being Process Itself: Feminism, Collaboration, and Influence 4. Bad Influence and Willful Subjects: The Life of Poetry, "Many Keys," and Sunday at Nine 5. So Easy to See: The Unfinished Collaboration with Berenice Abbott 6. Pillars of Process: Franz Boas, Birth, and Indigenous Thought Conclusion: The Rukeyser Era
£23.39
Cornell University Press Sweet Deal Bitter Landscape
Book SynopsisSweet Deal, Bitter Landscape brings us to the mid-2000s, when the Tanzanian government struck a deal with a foreign investor to convert more than 20,000 hectares of long-settled coastal land to establish a sugarcane plantation. Ten years on, the deal was abruptly abandoned. Popularly deemed a case of hubristic global development, critics classified this project another in a line of failed modern resource grabs. Youjin B. Chung argues such tidy accounts conceal myriad and profound implications: not only how gender, history, and culture shaped the project''s trajectory, but also how, even in its stalled state, the deal upended social life on the land by setting in motion incomplete processes of development and dispossession. With rich ethnographic detail and visual storytelling, Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape traces the lived experiences of diverse rural women and men as they struggled for survival under a seemingly endless condition o
£97.20
Cornell University Press Sweet Deal Bitter Landscape
Book SynopsisSweet Deal, Bitter Landscape brings us to the mid-2000s, when the Tanzanian government struck a deal with a foreign investor to convert more than 20,000 hectares of long-settled coastal land to establish a sugarcane plantation. Ten years on, the deal was abruptly abandoned. Popularly deemed a case of hubristic global development, critics classified this project another in a line of failed modern resource grabs. Youjin B. Chung argues such tidy accounts conceal myriad and profound implications: not only how gender, history, and culture shaped the project''s trajectory, but also how, even in its stalled state, the deal upended social life on the land by setting in motion incomplete processes of development and dispossession. With rich ethnographic detail and visual storytelling, Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape traces the lived experiences of diverse rural women and men as they struggled for survival under a seemingly endless condition o
£22.49
Stanford University Press Whisper Tapes: Kate Millett in Iran
Book SynopsisKate Millett was already an icon of American feminism when she went to Iran in 1979. She arrived just weeks after the Iranian Revolution, to join Iranian women in marking International Women's Day. Intended as a day of celebration, the event turned into a week of protests. Millett, armed with film equipment and a cassette deck to record everything around her, found herself in the middle of demonstrations for women's rights and against the mandatory veil. Listening to the revolutionary soundscape of Millett's audio tapes, Negar Mottahedeh offers a new interpretive guide to Revolutionary Iran, its slogans, habits, and women's movement—a movement that, many claim, Millett never came to understand. Published with the fortieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and the women's protests that followed on its heels, Whisper Tapes re-introduces Millett's historic visit to Iran and lays out the nature of her encounter with the Iranian women's movement.Trade Review"Lyrical, intelligent, and passionately written,Whisper Tapes reignites a long dormant conversation about the urgency of global feminism. This book is intensely relevant as we continue to assess the aftermath of revolutions throughout the Middle East, and the ways they have been fueled by women's rage on the one hand and unfulfilled hope for gender equity on the other." -- Shilyh Warren * University of Texas at Dallas *"Whisper Tapes is a fascinating book that illuminates the muddled state of affairs that unfolded in Iran at the celebration of International Women's Day in 1979. In offering a deeply contingent history, Negar Mottahedeh beautifully shows Kate Millett's simultaneous closeness to and distance from the events surrounding her." -- Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi * Princeton University *"By embedding her analysis in responsible histories of Iran and its place on the international stage, Mottahedeh masterfully deconstructs the biases of American feminism and how they have influenced Millett's understanding of the experiences of Iranian women in a postrevolutionary society. Lyrical in style and poetic in meaning, Whisper Tapes challenges readers to adopt an intersectional view of Iranian feminist movements while adding layers and dimensionality to Millett's preexisting literature."––Aisha Jitan, The Middle East Journal"Mottahedeh's illuminating study complements [Kate] Millett's work and offers a more nuanced reading of a historic moment." -- Lucy Popescu * Times Literary Supplement *
£13.94
Stanford University Press What Pornography Knows: Sex and Social Protest
Book SynopsisWhat Pornography Knows offers a new history of pornography based on forgotten bawdy fiction of the eighteenth century, its nineteenth-century republication, and its appearance in 1960s paperbacks. Through close textual study, Lubey shows how these texts were edited across time to become what we think pornography is—a genre focused primarily on sex. Originally, they were far more variable, joining speculative philosophy and feminist theory to sexual description. Lubey's readings show that pornography always had a social consciousness—that it knew, long before anti-pornography feminists said it, that women and nonbinary people are disadvantaged by a society that grants sexual privilege to men. Rather than glorify this inequity, Lubey argues, the genre's central task has historically been to expose its artifice and envision social reform. Centering women's bodies, pornography refuses to divert its focus from genital action, forcing readers to connect sex with its social outcomes. Lubey offers a surprising take on a deeply misunderstood cultural form: pornography transforms sexual description into feminist commentary, revealing the genre's deep knowledge of how social inequities are perpetuated as well as its plans for how to rectify them.Trade Review"What if pornography built the body as we know it and can also help dismantle it? In What Pornography Knows, Kathleen Lubey tracks texts like a detective across centuries as they hide on secret library shelves, analyzes them with verve, and shows us, brilliantly, how pornography doesn't just celebrate endless sex but in fact constructed sex as we know it, and with more ambivalence than we'd realized. A masterful rethinking of the history of pornography."—Whitney Strub, author of Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right"Kathleen Lubey's dazzling study makes available an astounding new history of pornographic narrative––or, rather, of pornographic dilation, since 'narrative' is among the categories of representation we will have to rethink in response to this landmark study, along with 'knowledge,' 'embodiment,' and 'sexuality.' This book will make a lasting impact in a number of scholarly fields––and it is sorely needed: a non-phobic, but characteristically skeptical, treatment of a pornography as a far more complex genre than hitherto perceived."—Grace Lavery, author of Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis"With analysis that is nothing short of astonishing, Lubey offers a dramatic, eloquent cultural history of pornography with an ingenious throughline in a single much-transformed text. What Pornography Knows offers significant new information about literary fields from the eighteenth century to the present and makes available new insights about the social hierarchies in which they participated."—Frances Ferguson, University of Chicago, author of Pornography, The Theory: What Utilitarianism Did To Action"Lubey's greater argument, that pornography places sex in a discursive whirl that assesses how culture and sex refract each other, remains useful for porn studies and histories of erotic literature. This monograph will feel especially interesting to researchers working on porn's reception history and the intersection of eighteenth century book history with spheres of erotic production."—Gabriel Ojeda-Sague, Critical Inquiry"What Pornography Knows is a rare achievement in that it balances serious archival acumen and book history with theoretical sophistication and, in the end, a consequential presentism which left me thinking differently about a period and topic that I have long researched. It is as much a virtuoso literary history as it is a roadmap for the exciting directions that eighteenth-century scholarship can take."—Jason S. Farr, Eighteenth-Century FictionTable of ContentsIntroduction: Pornography Without Sex 1. Genital Parts: Detachable Properties in the Eighteenth Century 2. Feminist Speculations: Penetration and Protest in Pornographic Fiction 3. The Victorian Eighteenth Century: Publishing an Erotics of Inequity 4. Uncoupling: Pornography and Feminism in the Countercultural Era Coda: A Mindful Pornography
£64.80
Stanford University Press Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States
Book SynopsisA stirring account of the experiences of migrant domestic workers, and what freedom, abuse, and power mean within a vast contract labor system. In the United Arab Emirates, there is an employment sponsorship system known as the kafala. Migrant domestic workers within it must solely work for their employer, secure their approval to leave the country, and obtain their consent to terminate a job. In Unfree, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas examines the labor of women from the Philippines, who represent the largest domestic workforce in the country. She challenges presiding ideas about the kafala, arguing that its reduction to human trafficking is, at best, unproductive, and at worst damaging to genuine efforts to regulate this system that impacts tens of millions of domestic workers across the globe. The kafala system technically renders migrant workers unfree as they are made subject to the arbitrary authority of their employer. Not surprisingly, it has been the focus of intense scrutiny and criticism from human rights advocates and scholars. Yet, contrary to their claims, Parreñas argues that most employers do not abuse domestic workers or maximize the extraction of their labor. Still, the outrage elicited by this possibility dominates much of public discourse and overshadows the more mundane reality of domestic work in the region. Drawing on unparalleled data collected over 4 years,this book diverges from previous studies as it establishes that the kafala system does not necessarily result in abuse, but instead leads to the absence of labor standards. This absence is reflected in the diversity of work conditions across households, ranging from dehumanizing treatment, infantilization, to respect and recognition of domestic workers. Unfree shows how various stakeholders, including sending and receiving states, NGOs, inter-governmental organizations, employers and domestic workers, project moral standards to guide the unregulated labor of domestic work. They can mitigate or aggravate the arbitrary authority of employers. Parreñas offers a deft and rich portrait of how morals mediate work on the ground, warning against the dangers of reducing unfreedom to structural violence.Trade Review"Challenging standard interpretations of migrant women's powerlessness and oppression, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas offers a pathbreaking account of Filipino domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates. A compelling contribution not only to studies of migration and labor but also to economic sociology."—Viviana A. Zelizer, Princeton University"I have long been impressed by the distinctive ways in which Parreñas generates her analysis of diverse social conditions. These analytic modes emerge once again in her latest book Unfree, one phrase that contains a vastness of meanings. This is a must-read."—Saskia Sassen, Columbia University"In this impressive ethnography, Parreñas illuminates moral harms associated with 'unfree labor' and offers new insights into the quandary that arises when redress for those harms lays well beyond the laws of sending states, receiving states, and international organizations."—Mary Hawkesworth, Rutgers UniversityBased on the republican conceptualization of unfreedom, [Unfree] paves the way for understanding a wide range of experiences and conditions of migrant domestic workers in the UAE. This study... both acknowledges the positive experiences of domestic workers in thekafalasystem and includes them in the analysis by complicating the story of exploitation unlike the previous studies on domestic work in the region."—Canan Uçar, International Migration"Locating unfreedom in the sponsorship system that gives free reign to sponsors over their employees,Unfree lays a critical foundation for future scholarly, legal, and policy interventions in migrant domestic work, both in the Arab world and beyond. Excellent for anyone working on labor and migration. Highly Recommended."—J. Alkorani, CHOICE"Unfree guides us through the transnational mobility of these domestic workers and their subsequent economic immobility. Using relatively plain language, the book is accessible to academic and non-academic audiences from disparate disciplinary backgrounds who are interested in understanding Filipino domestic work in the UAE beyond victimhood."—Estella Carpi, Mashriq & Mahar"A powerful, pathbreaking book that upends many (Orientalist) assumptions about migrant domestic work in Arab states, Unfree is set to become a classic."—Victoria Reyes, American Journal of Sociology"Without doubt, [Unfree] sets a new direction for us to understand the work environment of migrant domestic workers and should be read by all who are interested in the topic."—Eric Fong, Social Forces
£68.00
Stanford University Press Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States
Book SynopsisA stirring account of the experiences of migrant domestic workers, and what freedom, abuse, and power mean within a vast contract labor system. In the United Arab Emirates, there is an employment sponsorship system known as the kafala. Migrant domestic workers within it must solely work for their employer, secure their approval to leave the country, and obtain their consent to terminate a job. In Unfree, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas examines the labor of women from the Philippines, who represent the largest domestic workforce in the country. She challenges presiding ideas about the kafala, arguing that its reduction to human trafficking is, at best, unproductive, and at worst damaging to genuine efforts to regulate this system that impacts tens of millions of domestic workers across the globe. The kafala system technically renders migrant workers unfree as they are made subject to the arbitrary authority of their employer. Not surprisingly, it has been the focus of intense scrutiny and criticism from human rights advocates and scholars. Yet, contrary to their claims, Parreñas argues that most employers do not abuse domestic workers or maximize the extraction of their labor. Still, the outrage elicited by this possibility dominates much of public discourse and overshadows the more mundane reality of domestic work in the region. Drawing on unparalleled data collected over 4 years,this book diverges from previous studies as it establishes that the kafala system does not necessarily result in abuse, but instead leads to the absence of labor standards. This absence is reflected in the diversity of work conditions across households, ranging from dehumanizing treatment, infantilization, to respect and recognition of domestic workers. Unfree shows how various stakeholders, including sending and receiving states, NGOs, inter-governmental organizations, employers and domestic workers, project moral standards to guide the unregulated labor of domestic work. They can mitigate or aggravate the arbitrary authority of employers. Parreñas offers a deft and rich portrait of how morals mediate work on the ground, warning against the dangers of reducing unfreedom to structural violence.Trade Review"Challenging standard interpretations of migrant women's powerlessness and oppression, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas offers a pathbreaking account of Filipino domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates. A compelling contribution not only to studies of migration and labor but also to economic sociology."—Viviana A. Zelizer, Princeton University"I have long been impressed by the distinctive ways in which Parreñas generates her analysis of diverse social conditions. These analytic modes emerge once again in her latest book Unfree, one phrase that contains a vastness of meanings. This is a must-read."—Saskia Sassen, Columbia University"In this impressive ethnography, Parreñas illuminates moral harms associated with 'unfree labor' and offers new insights into the quandary that arises when redress for those harms lays well beyond the laws of sending states, receiving states, and international organizations."—Mary Hawkesworth, Rutgers UniversityBased on the republican conceptualization of unfreedom, [Unfree] paves the way for understanding a wide range of experiences and conditions of migrant domestic workers in the UAE. This study... both acknowledges the positive experiences of domestic workers in thekafalasystem and includes them in the analysis by complicating the story of exploitation unlike the previous studies on domestic work in the region."—Canan Uçar, International Migration"Locating unfreedom in the sponsorship system that gives free reign to sponsors over their employees,Unfree lays a critical foundation for future scholarly, legal, and policy interventions in migrant domestic work, both in the Arab world and beyond. Excellent for anyone working on labor and migration. Highly Recommended."—J. Alkorani, CHOICE"Unfree guides us through the transnational mobility of these domestic workers and their subsequent economic immobility. Using relatively plain language, the book is accessible to academic and non-academic audiences from disparate disciplinary backgrounds who are interested in understanding Filipino domestic work in the UAE beyond victimhood."—Estella Carpi, Mashriq & Mahar"A powerful, pathbreaking book that upends many (Orientalist) assumptions about migrant domestic work in Arab states, Unfree is set to become a classic."—Victoria Reyes, American Journal of Sociology"Without doubt, [Unfree] sets a new direction for us to understand the work environment of migrant domestic workers and should be read by all who are interested in the topic."—Eric Fong, Social Forces
£18.89
Stanford University Press Feminine Singularity: The Politics of
Book SynopsisWhat happens if we read nineteenth-century and Victorian texts not for the autonomous liberal subject, but for singularity—for what is partial, contingent, and in relation, rather than what is merely "alone"? Feminine Singularity offers a powerful feminist theory of the subject—and shows us paths to thinking subjectivity, race, and gender anew in literature and in our wider social world. Through fresh, sophisticated readings of Lewis Carroll, Christina Rossetti, Charles Baudelaire, and Wilkie Collins in conversation with psychoanalysis, Black feminist and queer-of-color theory, and continental philosophy, Ronjaunee Chatterjee uncovers a lexicon of feminine singularity that manifests across poetry and prose through likeness and minimal difference, rather than individuality and identity. Reading for singularity shows us the ways femininity is fundamentally entangled with racial difference in the nineteenth century and well into the contemporary, as well as how rigid categories can be unsettled and upended. Grappling with the ongoing violence embedded in the Western liberal imaginary, Feminine Singularity invites readers to commune with the subversive potentials in nineteenth-century literature for thinking subjectivity today.Trade Review"Ambitious, theoretically sophisticated, and original, Feminine Singularity shows us the importance of literary texts in theorizing alternative political ways of being in the world."—Zarena Aslami, Michigan State University"Chatterjee desegregates Victorian studies and erases the field's boundaries, brilliantly reading 19th-century literature with third-wave feminism, Black radicalism, and continental theory. A compelling and exhilaratingly learned call to think fearlessly, as if our future depended on it."—Elaine Freedgood, New York University"[a] theoretically sophisticated volume which successfully and insightfully charts a vision to help us rethink racial and gendered subjectivity not only in Victorian studies but in current Western culture which despite its historical ideology of individuation, continues to be defined by otherness, violence, and difference."—Jolene Zigarovich, Nineteenth-Century Gender StudiesTable of Contentsn/a: Introduction 1. Lewis Carroll's Alice Books and the Ones and Twos of Femininity 2. Charles Baudelaire and Feminine Singularity 3. Precarious Lives: Christina Rossetti and the Form of Likeness 4. Seriality, Singularity, Sociality: The Case for Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White Epilogue
£45.90
Stanford University Press In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure: Feminist
Book SynopsisIncluding women in the global South as users, producers, consumers, designers, and developers of technology has become a mantra against inequality, prompting movements to train individuals in information and communication technologies and foster the participation and retention of women in science and technology fields. In this book, Firuzeh Shokooh Valle argues that these efforts have given rise to an idealized, female economic figure that combines technological dexterity and keen entrepreneurial instinct with gendered stereotypes of care and selflessness. Narratives about the "equalizing" potential of digital technologies spotlight these women's capacity to overcome inequality using said technologies, ignoring the barriers and circumstances that create such inequality in the first place as well as the potentially violent role of technology in their lives. In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure examines how women in the Global South experience and resist the coopting and depoliticizing nature of these scripts. Drawing on fieldwork in Costa Rica and a transnational feminist digital organization, Shokooh Valle explores the ways that feminist activists, using digital technologies as well as a collective politics that prioritize solidarity and pleasure, advance a new feminist technopolitics. Trade Review"Given the pandemic, rising inequality and the amplification of care work – all of which have had disproportionate negative impact on women, In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure serves as a nuanced mapping of the spectrum of discursive practices that have shaped the way aid agencies view women as instruments of economic expansion and problematizes empowerment as neoliberal tools."—Payal Arora, Erasmus University"Shokooh Valle provides a deeply grounded critique of the tech inclusion narrative, unpacks the neoliberal 'Third World Technological Woman,' and reorganizes our understanding of the politics of care. She simultaneously surfaces the many ways that transnational feminist networks re-appropriate digital technologies for pleasure, play, and decolonial power. Required reading for anyone interested in feminist technopolitics."—Sasha Costanza-Chock, Harvard UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Feminist Technopolitics and Development 1. The Politics of Discourse 2. Solidarity 3. Pleasure 4. Uneasy Alliances Conclusion: A Feminist Technological Otherwise Appendix: On Methods
£79.20
Stanford University Press Academic Outsider: Stories of Exclusion and Hope
Book SynopsisMany enter the academy with dreams of doing good; this is a book about how the institution fails them, especially if they are considered "outsiders." Tenure-track, published author, recipient of prestigious fellowships and awards—these credentials mark Victoria Reyes as somebody who has achieved the status of insider in the academy. Woman of color, family history of sexual violence, first generation, mother—these qualities place Reyes on the margins of the academy; a person who does not see herself reflected in its models of excellence. This contradiction allows Reyes to theorize the conditional citizenship of academic life—a liminal status occupied by a rapidly growing proportion of the academy, as the majority white, male, and affluent space simultaneously transforms and resists transformation. Reyes blends her own personal experiences with the tools of sociology to lay bare the ways in which the structures of the university and the people working within it continue to keep their traditionally marginalized members relegated to symbolic status, somewhere outside the center. Reyes confronts the impossibility of success in the midst of competing and contradictory needs—from navigating coded language, to balancing professional expectations with care-taking responsibilities, to combating the literal exclusions of outmoded and hierarchical rules. Her searing commentary takes on, with sensitivity and fury, the urgent call for academic justice. Trade Review"This courageous and visionary work boldly reclaims space for women of color and others who have been excluded and devalued by academia. It invites us to reimagine and remake the academy with practices of love, care, and justice."—Crystal Marie Fleming, author of Rise Up!"Blending sociological analysis, feminist of color critique, and memoir, Reyes offers a blueprint for transforming the academy. Academic Outsider is the book I never knew I needed until I read it."—Anthony Christian Ocampo, author of Brown and Gay in LA"This book will be painfully familiar to many in the academy. It reveals how little progress has been made in the age of multiculturalism and diversity. A must-read for junior and senior faculty alike!"—Mary Romero, author of The Maid's Daughter"This book brings a level of authenticity to academia, and sociology in particular, that is a breath of fresh air. It works as an important intervention within how we see academia and who we see as exemplar academics. I praise the author for their vulnerability and their conviction—we need to better humanize scholarship and this book does just that."—Whitney Pirtle, co-editor of Black Feminist Sociology"A challenging and critical collection, Academic Outsider offers a timely analysis that interrogates the foundation of the "academic citizenship" that leaves many of us questioning our value rather than the logics of belonging embedded in the whiteness and wealth of academia. By weaving together personal and professional stories and sociological analysis, these incisive essays will surely spark conversation and serve as a balm for the many outsiders navigating their own pathway."—Zakiya Luna, author of Reproductive Rights as Human Rights"An urgent, candid, and path-breaking book. Academic Outsider uncovers the hidden curricula of academic gate-keeping practices and demonstrates how they are upheld by racial capitalism and racialized gender inequities. Without falling into a romanticized view of the margins, Reyes exposes the raw gritty effects of such practices on working-class women of color in the academy. She deftly unmasks the material conditions that make these women's lives impossible, begging the question: who belongs in academia and who does not? With careful attention to how the personal is always political, Reyes unapologetically deploys women of color feminisms to expose the normalized structures of gendered, classed, and racialized violences cloaked by disciplinary metrics of success. This page-turner of a book will resonate with those who are marginalized by the academy and those who are complicit with its operations. This book embodies intersectional public scholarship at its finest."—Ghassan Moussawi, author of Disruptions Situations"Not everyone is an equal citizen in the country of academia. Writing from within the borderlands of higher education in Academic Outsider, sociologist and professor Victoria Reyes describes with courage, insight, and heart about what the Ivory Tower's shadow hides. This book is must-read for anyone who truly cares about equality and inclusiveness in the academy."—Grace Talusan, author of The Body Papers"Academic Outsider is the kind of book that sticks with you. The kind of book that forces you to notice inequities and that would give you side-eye if you saw those inequities and tried to look away. The essays in Academic Outsider are poignant and sometimes painful to read. Yet, they are also poignant and painful in a way that leaves room for hope. The book inspires readers to recognize and embrace opportunities to resist the oppressive structures within academia and the oppressive structures that academia helps to perpetuate."—Jessica Calarco, author of A Field Guide to Grad School and Negotiating Opportunities"Reyes captures with poignant honesty the ways the pandemic made unavoidable the truth that we had never experienced the social world, or academia for that matter, the same way. More importantly, Reyes shows that without reckoning with these deep inequalities and the systems that exacerbate them, they will only continue to deepen their reach.... At its core, Academic Outsider offers us far more than a window into a broken system. Academic Outsider is an invitation to reimagine the world together."—Hajar Yazdiha, Social Forces"This is a must-read book for fellow outsiders navigating the labyrinth of academic culture, and for any academic who aspires to challenge inequity. Essential."—M. F. Jones, CHOICE"At a time when there is a plethora of books intended to guide graduate students and faculty through the academic world—what Reyes refers to in her book as sorts of navigational capital and unspoken rules of academic citizenship—Academic Outsider remains unique in the way that it is less a 'how-to' guide and more of a 'how does' guide. By this, I mean that Reyes's book draws on her experiences to explain to us how the academy keeps working as it does despite growing recognitions that the academic world is shaped by fundamental inequalities of racism, sexism, classism, and ableism. Reyes's book thus encompasses a range of discussions—from the politics of citation through to 'overlapping shifts' as a mother during the pandemic, academia's 'motherhood penalty,' and reimbursement culture—to show us precisely how, in personal detail, the academy remains a space of deep inequality."—Ali Meghji, Contemporary SociolgyTable of Contents1. Academic Outsider 2. On Love and Worth 3. Conditional Citizenship 4. Living in Precarity 5. Overlapping Shifts and COVID-19 6. Academic Justice
£13.94
Stanford University Press Sensitive Witnesses: Feminist Materialism in the
Book SynopsisKristin M. Girten tells a new story of feminist knowledge-making in the Enlightenment era by exploring the British female philosophers who asserted their authority through the celebration of profoundly embodied observations, experiences, and experiments. This book explores the feminist materialist practice of sensitive witnessing, establishing an alternate history of the emergence of the scientific method in the eighteenth century. Francis Bacon and other male natural philosophers regularly downplayed the embodied nature of their observations. They presented themselves as modest witnesses, detached from their environment and entitled to the domination and exploitation of it. In contrast, the author-philosophers that Girten takes up asserted themselves as intimately entangled with matter—boldly embracing their perceived close association with the material world as women. Girten shows how Lucy Hutchinson, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, and Charlotte Smith took inspiration from materialist principles to challenge widely accepted "modest" conventions for practicing and communicating philosophy. Forerunners of the feminist materialism of today, these thinkers recognized the kinship of human and nonhuman nature and suggested a more accessible, inclusive version of science. Girten persuasively argues that our understanding of Enlightenment thought must take into account these sensitive witnesses' visions of an alternative scientific method informed by profound closeness with the natural world.Trade Review"Girten demonstrates, thoroughly and convincingly, that materialism constituted an alternative conception of early science to the mainstream, Baconian view. This is an important book, very much part of one of the central conversations currently unfolding in science and literature studies."—Jess Keiser, Tufts University"Sensitive Witnesses is a fluently written and well-researched study that moves nimbly between philosophical sources and a wide range of literary genres to enrich our understanding of Enlightenment ways of knowing."—Sarah Tindal Kareem, University of California, Los Angeles"A figure for our own time, Girten's sensitive witness emerges as the unashamed hero of a history of scientific passions."—Wendy Anne Lee, New York University
£49.30
Stanford University Press In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure: Feminist
Book SynopsisIncluding women in the global South as users, producers, consumers, designers, and developers of technology has become a mantra against inequality, prompting movements to train individuals in information and communication technologies and foster the participation and retention of women in science and technology fields. In this book, Firuzeh Shokooh Valle argues that these efforts have given rise to an idealized, female economic figure that combines technological dexterity and keen entrepreneurial instinct with gendered stereotypes of care and selflessness. Narratives about the "equalizing" potential of digital technologies spotlight these women's capacity to overcome inequality using said technologies, ignoring the barriers and circumstances that create such inequality in the first place as well as the potentially violent role of technology in their lives. In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure examines how women in the Global South experience and resist the coopting and depoliticizing nature of these scripts. Drawing on fieldwork in Costa Rica and a transnational feminist digital organization, Shokooh Valle explores the ways that feminist activists, using digital technologies as well as a collective politics that prioritize solidarity and pleasure, advance a new feminist technopolitics. Trade Review"Given the pandemic, rising inequality and the amplification of care work – all of which have had disproportionate negative impact on women, In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure serves as a nuanced mapping of the spectrum of discursive practices that have shaped the way aid agencies view women as instruments of economic expansion and problematizes empowerment as neoliberal tools."—Payal Arora, Erasmus University"Shokooh Valle provides a deeply grounded critique of the tech inclusion narrative, unpacks the neoliberal 'Third World Technological Woman,' and reorganizes our understanding of the politics of care. She simultaneously surfaces the many ways that transnational feminist networks re-appropriate digital technologies for pleasure, play, and decolonial power. Required reading for anyone interested in feminist technopolitics."—Sasha Costanza-Chock, Harvard UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Feminist Technopolitics and Development 1. The Politics of Discourse 2. Solidarity 3. Pleasure 4. Uneasy Alliances Conclusion: A Feminist Technological Otherwise Appendix: On Methods
£21.59
Stanford University Press Wombs of Empire: Population Discourses and
Book SynopsisJapan's contemporary struggle with low fertility rates is a well-known issue, as are the country's efforts to bolster their population in order to address attendant socioeconomic challenges. However, though this anxiety about and discourse around population is thought of as relatively recent phenomenon, government and medical intervention in reproduction and fertility are hardly new in Japan. The "population problem (jinko mondai)" became a buzzword in the country over a century ago, in the 1910s, with a growing call among Japanese social scientists and social reformers to solve what were seen as existential demographic issues. In this book, Sujin Lee traces the trajectory of population discourses in interwar and wartime Japan, and positions them as critical sites where competing visions of modernity came into tension. Lee destabilizes the essentialized notions of motherhood and population by dissecting gender norms, modern knowledge, and government practices, each of which played a crucial role in valorizing, regulating, and mobilizing women's maternal bodies and responsibilities in the name of population governance. Bringing a feminist perspective and Foucauldian theory to bear on the history of Japan's wartime scientific fascism, Lee shows how anxieties over demographics have undergirded justifications for ethnonationalism and racism, colonialism and imperialism, and gender segregation for much of Japan's modern history.Trade Review"The pronatalist slogan, Umeyo! Fuyaseyo! (Give birth! Grow [the Nation]!), was ubiquitous during the heyday of Japanese imperialism, and the targeted population of 100 million was reached a half century later in 1970. Today, Japan has one of the fastest aging and shrinking populations among post-industrial countries, and the postwar democratic state can no longer exercise autocratic control over citizens' reproductive lives. Through her careful analysis of early 20th century birth-control 'research societies' and their discursive matrices, Lee complicates the socio-political construction of marriage, motherhood, and modernity in Japan that continues to shape the intersecting discourses of demography today in Japan."—Jennifer Robertson, University of Michigan"Sujin Lee's Wombs of Empire provides a brilliant analysis of interwar and wartime Japan's biopolitics with a focus on the discourse on birth-control and its pivotal role in the problematization of population. Deftly interweaving a Foucauldian analysis and the intricacies of modern Japanese history,Lee illuminates the centrality of biopolitics for Japan's modernity or modernity at large. A tour de force."—Katsuya Hirano, University of California, Los Angeles"Wombs of Empire is a compelling and rigorous study of the politics of population control offering a multi-scalar analysis that traverses discourses of gendered and racialized sexual practices, linking individualized morality and hygiene to national population control through eugenics policies and the criminalization of birth control. With erudition and eloquence, Sujin Lee forwards an illuminating and fascinating analysis of Japanese biopolitics within a transnational context which spans debates ranging from neo-Malthusianism, leftist birth control movements, eugenic feminism and calls for proletarian birth strikes."—Setsu Shigematsu, University of California, RiversideTable of ContentsIntroduction: Population: A Discursive Site of En-gendering Life 1. The Population Problem and Utopian Remedies 2. Voluntary Motherhood: The Feminist Politics of Birth Control 3. Scientific and Imperialist Solutions to Overpopulation 4. Building a Biopolitical State: The Mobilization of Health for Total War 5. "Fertile Womb Battalion": The Gender and Racial Politics of Motherhood Epilogue: The Continued Politics of the "Population Problem"
£79.20
Stanford University Press Wombs of Empire: Population Discourses and
Book SynopsisJapan's contemporary struggle with low fertility rates is a well-known issue, as are the country's efforts to bolster their population in order to address attendant socioeconomic challenges. However, though this anxiety about and discourse around population is thought of as relatively recent phenomenon, government and medical intervention in reproduction and fertility are hardly new in Japan. The "population problem (jinko mondai)" became a buzzword in the country over a century ago, in the 1910s, with a growing call among Japanese social scientists and social reformers to solve what were seen as existential demographic issues. In this book, Sujin Lee traces the trajectory of population discourses in interwar and wartime Japan, and positions them as critical sites where competing visions of modernity came into tension. Lee destabilizes the essentialized notions of motherhood and population by dissecting gender norms, modern knowledge, and government practices, each of which played a crucial role in valorizing, regulating, and mobilizing women's maternal bodies and responsibilities in the name of population governance. Bringing a feminist perspective and Foucauldian theory to bear on the history of Japan's wartime scientific fascism, Lee shows how anxieties over demographics have undergirded justifications for ethnonationalism and racism, colonialism and imperialism, and gender segregation for much of Japan's modern history.Trade Review"The pronatalist slogan, Umeyo! Fuyaseyo! (Give birth! Grow [the Nation]!), was ubiquitous during the heyday of Japanese imperialism, and the targeted population of 100 million was reached a half century later in 1970. Today, Japan has one of the fastest aging and shrinking populations among post-industrial countries, and the postwar democratic state can no longer exercise autocratic control over citizens' reproductive lives. Through her careful analysis of early 20th century birth-control 'research societies' and their discursive matrices, Lee complicates the socio-political construction of marriage, motherhood, and modernity in Japan that continues to shape the intersecting discourses of demography today in Japan."—Jennifer Robertson, University of Michigan"Sujin Lee's Wombs of Empire provides a brilliant analysis of interwar and wartime Japan's biopolitics with a focus on the discourse on birth-control and its pivotal role in the problematization of population. Deftly interweaving a Foucauldian analysis and the intricacies of modern Japanese history,Lee illuminates the centrality of biopolitics for Japan's modernity or modernity at large. A tour de force."—Katsuya Hirano, University of California, Los Angeles"Wombs of Empire is a compelling and rigorous study of the politics of population control offering a multi-scalar analysis that traverses discourses of gendered and racialized sexual practices, linking individualized morality and hygiene to national population control through eugenics policies and the criminalization of birth control. With erudition and eloquence, Sujin Lee forwards an illuminating and fascinating analysis of Japanese biopolitics within a transnational context which spans debates ranging from neo-Malthusianism, leftist birth control movements, eugenic feminism and calls for proletarian birth strikes."—Setsu Shigematsu, University of California, RiversideTable of ContentsIntroduction: Population: A Discursive Site of En-gendering Life 1. The Population Problem and Utopian Remedies 2. Voluntary Motherhood: The Feminist Politics of Birth Control 3. Scientific and Imperialist Solutions to Overpopulation 4. Building a Biopolitical State: The Mobilization of Health for Total War 5. "Fertile Womb Battalion": The Gender and Racial Politics of Motherhood Epilogue: The Continued Politics of the "Population Problem"
£21.59
