Gender studies: women and girls Books

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Book SynopsisA historical, spiritual, and literary portrait of a remarkable nineteenth-century African Muslim woman. This book provides a glimpse into the West African Muslim community at a pivotal point in its history.Trade Review"... this woman's intellectual contribution to a revolution, and her position at the heart of the military and organisational effort, deserves to be better known." -- Graham FurnissTable of ContentsPreliminary Table of Contents: PrefaceAcknowledgements1. Nana Asma'u and the Scholarly Islamic Tradition2. Qadiriyya Sufism: The Qur'an and the Sunna3. The Caliphate Community4. The Poetic Tradition5. Sokoto as Medina: Imitating the Life of the Prophet and Re-enacting History6. Caliphate Women's Participation in the CommunityAppendix: Poems by Nana Asma'uGlossaryNotesWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisA new edition of the feminist classic, with an all-new introduction exploring the role of backlash in the 2016 election and laying out a path forward for 2020 and beyondWinner of the National Book Critics Circle Award • “Enraging, enlightening, and invigorating, Backlash is, most of all, true.”—NewsdayFirst published in 1991, Backlash made headlines and became a bestselling classic for its thoroughgoing debunking of a decadelong antifeminist backlash against women’s advances. A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Susan Faludi brilliantly deconstructed the reigning myths about the “costs” of women’s independence—from the supposed “man shortage” to the “infertility epidemic” to “career burnout” to “toxic day care”—and traced their circulation from Reagan-era politics through the echo chambers of mass media, advertising, and popular culture.  As Faludi writes in a new preface for this edition, much has changed in the intervening years: The Internet has given voice to a new generation of feminists. Corporations list “gender equality” among their core values. In 2019, a record number of women entered Congress. Yet the glass ceiling is still unshattered, women are still punished for wanting to succeed, and reproductive rights are hanging by a thread. This startling and essential book helps explain why women’s freedoms are still so demonized and threatened—and urges us to choose a different future.

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Book SynopsisAn accessible, passionate indictment of the ignorance, opportunism and social indifference that enriched lawyers and a few plaintiffs, though the available scientific evidence was against them. New York Times Book Review, Notable Books of 1996Trade Review"[A] sober and rigorous examination of the controversy over silicone breast implants . . . an important statement, not just about silicone implants, but about other matters at the intersection of law, science, and opinion. [Dr. Angell’s] book is . . . a warning that rationality, like much else in the fragile porcelain of society, can be weakened by lack of vigilance." -- New York Times"An indispensable guide to the breast implant madness—litigation that will forever stand as a monument to the inability of our civil justice system to sort out latter-day Ptolemies from Galileos." -- Wall Street Journal"Marcia Angell's outstanding book explains clearly and fairly the combination of greed, fear, ignorance, junk science, and media hype that created this national litigation nightmare. Everyone interested in the tort system, science, and medicine should heed the lessons that Dr. Angell teaches." -- Shirley M. Hufstedler, former U.S. Secretary of Education

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Book SynopsisBorn in 1852 in the last years of serfdom, Vera Figner came of age as Imperial Russian society was being rocked by the massive upheaval that culminated in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. At first champion of populist causes and champion of women's higher education, Figner later became a leader of the terrorist party The People's Will.Trade ReviewHartnett clearly depicts her subject's gradual transformation from a severe ideologue into a revered martyr whose 'suffering became enshrined,' and the book revivifies a legendary socialist whose violent extremism evolved into humanitarianism on behalf of political prisoners and exiles sentenced to hard labor. * Publishers Weekly *Hartnett is an able storyteller, and the chapters portraying Figner's involvement in the People's Will, her prolonged ordeal in Schlisselburg, and her harrowing experiences during the 1917 revolution and Civil War make riveting reading. Scholars will benefit from this more expansive and thorough treatment of Figner's astonishing career in Soviet Russia, when her youthful defiance had mellowed to carefully calibrated accommodation with and resistance to a regime that was in part her legacy. * The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review *Although Figner was a famous and politically active figure throughout her life, historians have overlooked her part in the events of 1917 and after. Hartnett's biography is an excellent and comprehensive effort to correct this situation, but there is always the danger that once one book has been written about a prominent woman, no further works are published. . . . The greatest achievement of Hartnett's impressive work would be that it encourages further study of a woman who did not simply survive the Revolution, but lived it. * Slavonic & East European Review *This interesting and well-written biography . . . should be recommended for courses on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian history. It is a valuable addition to what remains quite a limited selection of accessible English-language monographs on the nineteenth-century revolutionary movement in Russia. * Slavic Review *The Defiant Life of Vera Figner is a valuable contribution to our understanding of an important Russian political figure and of broader political developments. * Journal of Modern History *Table of ContentsTable of Contents1. In the Twilight of a Fading Age 2. Age of Consciousness 3. Pioneers Diverted 4. Town and Country 5. The Tsar's Death Sentence 6. Revolutionary Iconography 7. Transformation 8. Life and Death 9. Resurrection in Exile 10. An Old Revolutionary in a New Revolution 11. Revolutionary Survivor

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Book SynopsisBased on an array of diaries and letters, this work explores the shifting experiences of adolescent girls in the late 19th century. It shows how, in leaving school, female students left an institution that had treated them more equally than any other they would encounter in their lives.

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Book SynopsisAlthough best known as a master of the formal lyric poem, Louise Bogan (1897–1970) also published fiction and what would now be called lyrical essays. A Poet’s Prose: Selected Writings of Louise Bogan showcases her devotion to compression, eloquence, and sharp truths.LouiseTrade Review“In whatever she wrote, the line of truth was exactly superimposed on the line of feeling. One look at her work—or sometimes one look at her—made any number of disheartened artists take heart and go on being the kind of dedicated creatures they were intended to be.” * The New Yorker *“I am deeply grateful for this collection of Louise Bogan’s prose. She is an American lyric master, both in prose and poetry, a critic of singular distinction and acuity. She has not been given her due, and this collection will go far to redressing the balance.”“This master lyric poet’s crisp, insightful New Yorker pieces on poetry hold up superbly to the passing of time and fashions. But beyond those brilliant reviews, here are unexpected treasures: Bogan’s fiction, letters and journal entries disclose in new ways a literary mind of distinction, wit and depth. In the unpublished poems too, there are flashes of gold. A treasure-book.”

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Book SynopsisOne of the most exciting developments in the study of Chinese literature has been the rediscovery of a rich, diverse tradition of women's writing of the imperial period. This anthology differs from previous works by offering a glimpse of women's writings not only in poetry but in essays and letters, drama, religious writing, and narrative fiction.

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Book SynopsisUnlike many studies of the family in the ancient world, this volume presents readings of mothers in classical literature, including philosophical and epigraphic writing as well as poetic texts. Rather than relying on a male viewpoint, the essays offer a female perspective on the lifecycle of motherhood.  Although almost all ancient authors are men, this book nevertheless aims to carefully unpack the role of the mother not as projected by the son or other male relations, but from a woman’s own experiences in order to better understand how they perceived themselves and their families. Because the primary interest is in the mothers themselves, rather than the authors of the texts in which they appear, the work is organized according to the lifecycle of motherhood instead of the traditional structure of the chronology of male authors. The chronology of the male authors ranges from classical Greece to late antiquity, while the motherly lifecycle ranges from preTrade Review"The chapters are successful in considering the nuances of the conceptualization of mothers in ancient sources, especially in poetry, and taken as a whole the volume achieves its aim of opening up new ways of viewing mothers in antiquity." -- Fiona McHardy, University of Roehampton * Early Modern Women *Table of Contents1. Introduction Alison Keith, University of Toronto, Mairéad McAuley, University College London, and Alison Sharrock, University of Manchester 2. Uncanny Mothers in Roman Literature Mairéad McAuley, University College London Section 1: Mothers and Young Children 3. From Body to Behaviour: Maternal Transmission in the Ancient Greek World Florence Gherchanoc, Université Paris Diderot, ANHIMA Centre 4. Νωδυνία: l’Oubli des souffrances maternelles et le chant théocritéen Florence Klein, Charles de Gaulle University 5. "Nimis mater": Mother Plot and Epic Deviation in the Achilleid Federica Bessone, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy 6. Augustan Maternal Ideology: The Blended Families of Octavia and Venus Judith P. Hallett, University of Maryland Section 2: Mothers and Their Children’s Marriages 7. Motherhood in Roman Epithalamia Henriette Harich-Schwarzbauer, Universität Basel, Switzerland 8. The Roman Mother-in-Law Alison Sharrock, University of Manchester Section 3: Mothers and Adult Children 9. maximum Thebis (Romae?) scelus/maternus amor est (Oed. 629-30): Amour de la mère et inceste chez Sénèque Jacqueline Fabre-Serris, Charles de Gaulle University 10. Mighty Mothers: Female Political Theorists in Euripides’ Suppliant Women and Phoenician Women Giulia Sissa, University of California 11. Wife, Mother, Philosopher: On the Symbolic Function of Augustine’s Monnica Therese Fuhrer, Ludwig Maximilians Universität Section 4: Mothers and the Death of Their Children 12. Virgilian Matres: From Maternal Lament to Female Sedition in the Aeneid Alison Keith, University of Toronto 13. Octavia: A Roman Mother in Mourning Valerie Hope, The Open University 14. Mothers as Dedicators Olympia Bobou, Aarhus University, Denmark

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Book SynopsisChristina Sharpe interprets Black Atlantic visual and literary texts that grapple with the sexual violence of slavery and racialized subjugation, and their present-day legacies.Trade Review“Through compelling and intricate readings of visual and written texts, Sharpe is concerned with unpacking the intersection between violence, sex, and subjectivity in post-slavery subjects. Sharpe’s work is a poignant reflection on historical time and convincingly deals with the ways that the horrors of the past continue to structure the present. . . . Sharpe’s book is an eloquent and at times challenging analysis of the construction of post-slavery subjects as subjects who are by no means ‘post’ but continue to be structured by the past that is not quite past.” - Sam McBean, Elevate Difference“This is a bold, challenging book which is unrelenting in its interpretation of slavery and the effects it has had on subsequent generations, black and white. In effect, the monstrous intimacies continue.” - Danielle Mulholland, M/C Reviews“Sharpe’s Monstrous Intimacies succeeds in illuminating the complex entanglements of desire and horror at the heart of Black and White subjectification ‘after’ slavery. More profoundly, this text powerfully balances the fact of history’s monstrous persistence and the desire for what she identifies, after Dionne Brand, as a modality of Black life unhinged to historical narrative (129).” - Sarah Cervenak, Women’s Studies“The materials in Monstrous Intimacies register as being profoundly relevant not only for African American literature, but also for studies of the history of slavery in relation to the U.S. South. Moreover, her second chapter, focusing on the literature and culture of South Africa, addresses histories of racism, colonialism, and imperialism and speaks to discourses on the global South.” - Riché Richardson, Southern Literary Journal"Overall…Sharpe successfully demonstrates the presence of "monstrous intimacies" in each chapter. Most importantly, she creates a methodology for understanding the psychological development of post-slavery subjects and the seductive story-telling that represents his or her experience." - Denia Fraser, Kritikon Litterarum“Monstrous Intimacies is a remarkable study, lucid, engaging, and thoroughly engrossing.”—Sharon Patricia Holland, author of Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity“Monstrous Intimacies is an original, enriching look at the variety of artistic forms and practices that interrogate the illness of the post-slavery subject. It is international in its scope, interdisciplinary in its approach, and consistently intelligent in its execution.”—Ashraf Rushdy, author of Remembering Generations: Race and Family in Contemporary African American Fiction“Sharpe’s Monstrous Intimacies succeeds in illuminating the complex entanglements of desire and horror at the heart of Black and White subjectification ‘after’ slavery. More profoundly, this text powerfully balances the fact of history’s monstrous persistence and the desire for what she identifies, after Dionne Brand, as a modality of Black life unhinged to historical narrative (129).” -- Sarah Cervenak * Women's Studies *“This is a bold, challenging book which is unrelenting in its interpretation of slavery and the effects it has had on subsequent generations, black and white. In effect, the monstrous intimacies continue.” -- Danielle Mulholland * M/C Reviews *“Through compelling and intricate readings of visual and written texts, Sharpe is concerned with unpacking the intersection between violence, sex, and subjectivity in post-slavery subjects. Sharpe’s work is a poignant reflection on historical time and convincingly deals with the ways that the horrors of the past continue to structure the present. . . . Sharpe’s book is an eloquent and at times challenging analysis of the construction of post-slavery subjects as subjects who are by no means ‘post’ but continue to be structured by the past that is not quite past.” -- Sam McBean * Elevate Difference *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Making Monstrous Intimacies: Surviving Slavery, Bearing Freedom 1 1. Gayl Jones's Corregidora and Reading the "Days That Were Pages of Hysteria" 27 2. Bessie Head, Saartje Baartman, and Maru Redemption, Subjectification, and the Problem of Liberation 67 3. Isaac Julien's The Attendant and the Sadomasochism of Everyday Black Life 111 4. Kara Walker's Monstrous Intimacies 153 Notes 189 Bibliography 223 Index 243

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Book SynopsisHow eighteenth-century artists created works that expressed their desire for other women.Trade Review"As its lyrical title suggests, Sister Arts, Lisa Moore's loving account of the unusual and haunting works produced by her four subjects-elegiac friendship poems, picturesque landscape designs, leaf collages and scrapbooks, collections of flowers, shells, and butterflies-at once illuminates and charms, deepening our understanding both of female–female intimacy and the elegantly subversive means women in past centuries found to express such devotion." —Terry Castle"Lisa Moore recounts the fascinating stories of four eighteenth-century women whose lesbian-like relationships were instrumental in inspiring and fostering their work as artists of the landscape. Sister Arts is an indispensible contribution to the project of establishing a readable record of lesbian desire in the historical past." —Lillian Faderman, author of Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the PresentTable of ContentsPreface: Listening to Gossip in the Queer Archives Introduction: Lesbian Genres and Eighteenth-Century Landscapes 1. Queer Gardens: Mary Delany’s Flowers and Friendships 2. A Connoisseur in Friendship: The Duchess of Portland’s Collections and Communities 3. The Voice of Friendship, Torn from the Scene: Anna Seward’s Landscapes of Lesbian Melancholy 4. The Landscape Which She Drew: Sarah Pierce and the Lesbian Georgic Conclusion. The Persistence of Lesbian Genres: A Circuit Garden Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisONE OF WASHINGTON POST''S NOTABLE NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR“Beautifully written and full of important insights,” this is a bracingly honest exploration of why there are still so few women in the hard sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer science (Washington Post)In 2005, when Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, asked why so few women, even today, achieve tenured positions in the hard sciences, Eileen Pollack set out to find the answer. A successful fiction writer, Pollack had grown up in the 1960s and ’70s dreaming of a career as a theoretical astrophysicist. Denied the chance to take advanced courses in science and math, she nonetheless made her way to Yale. There, despite finding herself far behind the men in her classes, she went on to graduate summa cum laude, with honors, as one of the university’s first two women to earn a bachelor of science degree in physics. And yet, i

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Book SynopsisAnalyzing how 1980s visual culture provided a vital space for women artists to theorize and visualize their own bodies and sexualities In 1982, the protests of antiporn feminists sparked the censorship of the Diary of a Conference on Sexuality, a radical and sexually evocative image-text volume whose silencing became a symbol for the irresolvable feminist sex wars. In Visible Archives documents the community networks that produced this resonant artifact and others, analyzing how visual culture provided a vital space for women artists to theorize and visualize their own bodies and sexualities. Margaret Galvan explores a number of feminist and cultural touchstones—the feminist sex wars, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the women in print movement, and countercultural grassroots periodical networks—and examines how visual culture interacts with these pivotal moments. She goes deep into the records to bring together a decade’s worth of research in grassroots and university archives that include comics, collages, photographs, drawings, and other image-text media produced by women, including Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, Marybeth Nelson, Roberta Gregory, Lee Marrs, Alison Bechdel, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Nan Goldin. The art highlighted in In Visible Archives demonstrates how women represented their bodies and sexualities on their own terms and created visibility for new, diverse identities, thus serving as blueprints for future activism and advocacy—work that is urgent now more than ever as LGBTQ+ and women’s rights face challenges and restrictions across the nation. Trade Review "Margaret Galvan asks all the right questions about queer and feminist visual storytelling from the 1980s: Where were these works situated? How did communities use them? How have they been archived? Both commentary upon as well as an integral part of the activist project begun by the creators themselves, In Visible Archives helps keep these remarkable works visible for us all."—Justin Hall, California College of the Arts, editor of No Straight Lines "This wonderful book demonstrates the critical importance of community-based archives. Utilizing primary source materials, Margaret Galvan has produced an original and consequential contribution to the history of the feminist sex wars, and her attention to the visual aspects of those documents provides long overdue recognition to the period’s artists, designers, and activists."—Gayle Rubin, University of Michigan Table of Contents Contents Introduction: Making Visible Archives 1. The Collage Activists: Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, and Marybeth Nelson Frame the Feminist Sex Wars 2. The Comics Visionaries: Lee Marrs’s and Roberta Gregory’s Underground Feminism 3. The Newspaper Cartoonist: Alison Bechdel’s Queer Grassroots Networks 4. The Editor and Pedagogue: Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s Public Drawing 5. The Photographer and Curator: Nan Goldin’s Witness to HIV/AIDS Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAn absorbing chronicle of a much overlooked chapter of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's life--her nineteen-year editorial career

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Book Synopsis''Whom to marry and when will it happen - these two questions define every woman''s existence.'' So begins Spinster, a revelatory look at the pleasures, problems and possibilities of living independently in the 21st century, reconsidering what it means - what it could mean - for women to ''have it all''.''I wish I could give this wise and subtle book to my thirty-year-old self; she would have taken heart . . . Bold and intelligent'' Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch''A triumph'' Malcolm Gladwell''Women of the world listen here: drop whatever you''re doing and read Kate Bolick''s marvelous meditation on what it means to be female at the dawn of the 21st century'' Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year''Moving, insightful and important'' Elif Batuman, author of The PossessedTrade ReviewBolick links her own experiences into the world of literature very well, whether it's Louisa May Alcott or Mary Oliver: 'Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' * The Bookseller *This is a memoir about what it's like to be a single woman. It's revealing and sometimes sad. There's a heartbreaking part about the death of her mother in middle age, and the loss of everything that might have come later. It's very literary - steeped in female writers * Evening Standard *Ms Bolick's is a personal story of the pleasures and challenges of being a woman at a time of changing rules and seemingly endless possibilities * Economist *

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Book SynopsisMarlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, born less than a year apart, lived so close to each other that Riefenstahl could see into Dietrich’s Berlin flat. Coming of age in the Weimar Republic, both sought fame in Germany’s silent film industry. While Dietrich’s depiction of Lola Lola in The Blue Angel catapulted her to Hollywood stardom, Riefenstahl—who missed out on the part—insinuated herself into Hitler’s inner circle and directed Nazi propaganda films, most famously, Triumph of the Will. Dietrich could never truly go home again, while Riefenstahl was contaminated by her political associations. Moving deftly between two stories never before told together, Karin Wieland contextualises these lives, chronicling revolutions in politics, fame and sexuality on a grand stage.Trade Review"Newly translated dual biography by German historian provides an illuminating look at two famous, ambitious women who reacted very differently to the Nazis...Via a fluent, often witty translation by Shelley Frisch, Wieland draws the portrait of women who were ambitious to a degree stunning in their day." -- The Guardian"In telling their stories, Karin Wieland has decided to juxtapose their lives without making the comparisons explicit. This can be very effective: she is an evocative scene setter and so it is easy to grasp the implication that both women were created by their time and place." -- Literary Review"Wieland offers abundant – and now and then overwhelming – material and produces a captivating chronological narrative that is rich in sources... The emerging story is fascinating…" -- Times Higher Education"... epic, enthralling tome about two of the 20th century's most compelling artists…" -- The Independent"...classical in scope and style. It [Dietrich & Riefenstahl] puts together cradle-to-grave biographies of two women who hardly met, offering admirably researched accounts that leave barely a telegram or plot summary unturned." -- The Telegraph

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Book SynopsisIn 2012, Anne Summers gave two landmark speeches about women in Australia, attracting more than 120,000 visits to her website. Within weeks of their delivery Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s own speech about misogyny and sexism went viral and was celebrated around the world. Summers makes the case that Australia, the land of the fair go, still hasn’t figured out how to make equality between men and women work. She shows how uncomfortable we are with the idea of women with political and financial power, let alone the reality. Summers dismisses the idea that we should celebrate progress for women as opposed to outright success. She shows what success will look like.

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Book SynopsisThis intellectual biography brings to light a complex, fascinating woman who bridged many worlds--the United States and Mexico, art and politics, professional work and family life.Trade ReviewSusannah Glusker's biography is a balanced and well-documented analysis of the middle period of her mother's life. She demonstrates that Brenner was a significant Latin American writer, a cultural hybrid and major figure in Mexico's cultural renaissance, and a political activist who sought successfully to document the dynamics of the country of her birth. This volume is informative and intriguing, and sheds light on Anita Brenner as a complex, assertive woman who, indeed, had "a mind of her own." * H-Net Reviews *Table of Contents Foreword by Carlos Monsivais Prologue An Abbreviated Chronology of Anita Brenner's Life Introduction 1. Nana Serapia 2. Mexico Welcomes Anita 3. A Family of Artists and Intellectuals 4. Sisters, Foes, and Role Models 5. Moving On 6. Harvesting Mexican Efforts 7. An Art Critic's Career Unfolds 8. Idols behind Altars 9. An Atypical Student 10. Flirtations, Relationships, and Love 11. Your Mexican Holiday 12. Identity, Commitment, and Activism 13. Full-fledged Menorah Journal Radical 14. Spain 15. Art Critic in the Thirties 16. A Radical Looks at Mexico: The Throttled Revolution 17. The Wind That Swept Mexico 18. Epilogue: New York, 1942 Appendixes Notes Anita Brenner Bibliography General Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRace, ethnicity, and the American New WomanTrade Review"Beyond the Gibson Girl is an interesting, important, and highly readable study defining the New Woman, a figure of enduring importance to both cultural and literary history. Martha Patterson looks wisely beyond any fixed perspective to show how differently this figure is conceived depending on the perspectives from which she is viewed, and the effects on this image of issues of region, race, ethnicity, and social class."--Elsa Nettels, professor of English, emeritus, College of William and Mary"Patterson's work is insightful, penetrating, and highly readable. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice"Patterson is to be lauded for problematizing the figure of the New Woman in literature and popular culture beyond what has been done in any previous studies, especially in the way she examines the competing and conflicting claims, constraints, and possibilities for women."--Journal of American History"An engaging and thought-provoking analysis of the Gibson Girl. . . . As cultural history and as literary analysis, the book succeeds in deepening our understanding of a potent American icon."--American Historical Review"Beyond the Gibson Girl reveals the great benefits of an interdisciplinary study of American culture. . . . Patterson draws heavily on literary analysis as well as on a wide variety of social commentaries, on social scientific and evolutionary theories of the period, and on contemporary visual theory. This combination of sources places what may have been perceived to be a rather simplistic ideal into a complex cultural framework that includes many of the significant issues of the period."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"In her richly archival study, Martha Patterson . . . productively complicates the American New Woman's literary and cultural history."--Modernism/modernity"Martha Patterson's Beyond the Gibson Girl has given us perfectly conceived, cogent, and insightful arguments about the role of context and geography in the development of the New Womanhood. It is high time for a book like this to appear."--Dale M. Bauer, professor of English, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Book SynopsisA pioneering, field-defining collection of essential texts exploring girlhood in the nineteenth centuryTrade Review"This sparkling reader defines the field of girls' history and gathers its emerging canon. There are no better scholars than Miriam Forman-Brunell and Leslie Paris to have a pulse on the scholarship, anticipate its future directions, and provide a model of academic collaboration."--Eileen Boris, coeditor of The Practice of U.S. Women's History: Narratives, Dialogues, and Intersections"Some of the finest scholarship in the field. . . . Highly recommended."--ChoiceTable of ContentsCredits ix Introduction 1 1. The Life Cycle of the Female Slave 15Deborah Gray White 2. "Grown Girls, Highly Cultivated": Female Education in an Antebellum Southern Family 31Anya Jabour 3. "Oh I Love Mother, I Love Her Power": Shaker Spirit Possession and the Performance of Desire" 69Susan McCully 4. Women on the Town: Sexual Exchange and Prostitution 80Christine Stansell 5. "If We Get the Girls, We Get the Race": Missionary Education of Native American Girls 104Carol Devens 6. "Rosebloom and Pure White," Or So It Seemed 120Mary Niall Mitchell 7. The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America 149Carroll Smith-Rosenberg 8. Psychosomatic Illness in History: The "Green Sickness" among Nineteenth-Century Adolescent Girls 179Nancy M. Theriot 9. The Caddie Woodlawn Syndrome: American Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century 199Anne Scott MacLeod 10. The Politics of Dollhood in Nineteenth-Century America 222Miriam Forman-Brunell 11. Inscribing the Self in the Heart of the Family: Diaries and Girlhood in Late-Victorian America 242Jane H. Hunter 12. Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text 270Barbara Sicherman Contributors 301 Index 305

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Book SynopsisArgues that within the festival of the goddess Gangamma ultimate reality is imagined as femaleTrade ReviewWhen the World Becomes Female is a great addition to the academic literature on South Asian religious, ritual, devotional, and goddess traditions. It is accessible enough for use in undergraduate courses on the same or as an example of ethnographic methodology. It is always in-depth enough for graduate courses and as a resource for scholars' and universities' libraries. * newbooks.asia *Joyce B. Flueckiger's new book When the World Becomes Female . . . is a rich and colorful analysis of the goddess Gangamma's festival and her devotees.7/3/15 * New Books in South Asian Studies *[Joyce Flueckiger addresses] directly questions of the relationships between a goddess and her devotees, and the ways that those devotees play with gender.April 2015 * H-Asia *This is a carefully crafted ethnography on the South Indian festival of the village goddess Gangamma in the pilgrimage town of Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh. . . . Recommended. * Choice *Table of ContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationIntroductionPart 1. Imaginative Worlds of Gangamma 1. An Aesthetics of Excess 2. Guising, Transformation, Recognition, and Possibility 3. Narratives of Excess and Access 4. Female-Narrated Possibilities of Relationship 5. Gangamma as Ganga River GoddessPart 2. Those Who Bear the Goddess 6. Wandering Goddess, Village Daughter: Avilala Reddys 7. Temple and Vesham Mirasi: The Kaikalas of Tirupati 8. The Goddess Served and Lost: Tattayagunta Mudaliars 9. Exchanging Talis with the Goddess: Protection and Freedom to Move 10. "Crazy for the Goddess": A Consuming RelationshipConclusion: Possibilities of a World Become FemaleGlossaryNotesReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisWhy do so many poor American youth continue to have children before they can afford to take care of them? This title offers a look at what marriage and motherhood mean to these women and provides the study of why they put children before marriage despite the daunting challenges they know lie ahead.Table of ContentsPreface to the 2011 Edition Introduction 1. "Before We Had a Baby ..." 2. "When I Got Pregnant ..." 3. How Does the Dream Die? 4. What Marriage Means 5. Labor of Love 6. How Motherhood Changed My Life Conclusion: Making Sense of Single Motherhood Acknowledgements Appendix A: City, Neighborhood, and Family Characteristics and Research Methods Appendix B: Interview Guide Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisIn the German states in the late eighteenth century, women flourished as musical performers and composers, their achievements measuring the progress of culture and society from barbarism to civilization. This title restores this earlier musical history and explores the role that women played in the development of classical music.Trade Review"A significant book, which usefully applies gender studies to a previously neglected period of music history." -- Laura Hamer Women's History Review "Head's contribution is most welcome ... for the light that it sheds on a cultural field that was every bit as significant as literature and art." -- Joachim Whaley German History "Well-written and engaging ... a significant contribution to the musicological discourse on gender." Notes "A work filled with wisdom about the "strangeness of the past" ... [a] splendid book." -- Celia Applegate Journal of Modern HistoryTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Fictions of Female Ascendance 1. Europe's Living Muses: Women, Music, and Modernity in Burney's History and Tours 2. "If the pretty little hand won't stretch": Music for the Fair Sex 3. Charlotte ("Minna") Brandes and the Beautiful Dead 4. An Evening in Tiefurt: Corona Schroter's Die Fischerin and Vegetable Genius 5. Sophie Westenholz and the Eclipse of the Female Sign 6. Beethoven Heroine: A Female Allegory of Music and Authorship in Egmont Conclusion Appendix: Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Two Prefaces to the Fair Sex Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisKaren Offen offers a magisterial reconstruction and analysis of the debates around relations between women and men, how they are constructed, and how they should be organized, that raged in France and its French-speaking neighbors from 1870 to 1920. The ''woman question'' encompassed subjects from maternity and childbirth, and the upbringing and education of girls to marriage practices and property law, the organization of households, the distribution of work inside and outside the household, intimate sexual relations, religious beliefs and moral concerns, government-sanctioned prostitution, economic and political citizenship, and the politics of population growth. The book shows how the expansion of economic opportunities for women and the drop in the birth rate further exacerbated the debates over their status, roles, and possibilities. With the onset of the First World War, these debates were temporarily placed on hold, but they would be revived by 1916 and gain momentum during France''s post-war recovery.Trade Review'No one has done more over the past forty years to establish women's history in the scholarship of the French Third Republic than Karen Offen. Now, in Debating the Woman Question, we have her chef d'oeuvre. It was worth the wait: a deeply thought-out analysis of many sides of the 'woman question' from maternity through education to religion and economics. It is a must-read for anyone interested in modern France.' Steven C. Hause, Professor Emeritus, Washington University, St. Louis and University of Missouri, St. Louis'This is a brilliant reconstruction and analysis of eight decades of heated quarrels in which feminists, female as well as male, talked back to anti-feminists, contesting male authority, in France as well as in other francophone and neighboring countries. A fascinating wealth of sources, many of them unknown heretofore, inform and contextualize the analysis which leads up to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and will certainly arouse important scholarly debates.' Gisela Bock, Freie Universität Berlin'The work of a celebrated pioneer in the history of women, Karen Offen's much anticipated history of the woman question in France, is a deeply researched, erudite study of the multifaceted debates that engaged women and men across the political spectrum during the first fifty years of the Third Republic. A variety of topics emerged: the intelligence, nature, duties, rights, and other characteristics of women that qualified them for or disqualified them from full citizenship and public responsibility. The rich debate plus the engaging cast of characters should finally discredit the cliche that French women thinkers and activists were less evolved than feminist activists elsewhere. Given the widening interest in feminism today, Offen's incomparable scholarship is a foundational resource.' Bonnie G. Smith, Rutgers University, New Jersey'It is difficult to convey how impressive Offen's two books are, and this summary cannot do justice to them. There is no historian better versed in the intricacies of the women question in France and the breadth of the scholarship on display is breathtaking. Offen also writes beautifully. The prose is clear and lucid, and every chapter demonstrates the depth of her knowledge.' Christine Adams, H-France'One finishes reading Offen's books in deep gratitude for the monumental labor that she invested in writing them. Thanks to the author's sustained, forthright pursuit of this new narrative in French history, many more topics now deserve further study … what elements of France's specificity in the contested woman question contributed to the country's slow, troubled modernization? What role, if any, did the debate have in France's overseas territories where race and ethnicity were also at play, especially in the interwar period? Such queries naturally arise from Offen's magisterial work, its shrewd insights and compelling detail …' James Smith Allen, The Journal of Modern HistoryTable of ContentsGeneral introduction: 'what do women want?' and quotations; Part I. Familiarization: Romance with the Republic, 1870s–1889: 1. Relaunching the Republican campaign for women's rights: 2. Educators, medical and social scientists, and population experts debate the woman question, 1870–1889; 3: The politics of the family, women's work, and public morality, 1870–1890; 4. The revolutionary centennial: promoting women and women's rights at the 1889 International Exposition in Paris; Part II. Encounter: the Third Republic Faces Feminist Claims, 1890–1900: Quotations and introductory remarks; 5. The birth and 'take-off' of feminism in republican France; 6: Rights or protection for working women?; 7. Must maternity be women's form of patriotism? 8. The new century greets the woman question, 1900; Part III. Climax: Mainstreaming the Woman Question, 1901–1914: Quotations and introductory remarks; 9. Building a force to reckon with the Republic: The Conseil National des Femmes Françaises and its allies, 1900–1914; 10. Defining, historicizing, contesting, and defending feminism: early 20th century developments; 11. Refocusing the state: depopulation, maternity, and the quest for a woman-friendly state; 12. Emerging labor issues: equal pay for equal work, travail à domicile, and women's right to work; 13. 'The alpha and omega of our demands' – the women's suffrage campaigns heat up, 1906–1914; Part IV. Anti-Climax: the Great War and its Aftermath: Quotations and introductory remarks; 14. The Great War and the woman question; 15. 'Half the human race': epilogue and conclusion; Afterword; Appendix: important dates for the woman question debates; Index.

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Book SynopsisHunter weaves a rich tapestry of the culture and experience of black women workers in the post-Civil War South. Using a variety of sources, she follows African-American working women from their newfound optimism and hope at the end of the Civil War to their struggles as free domestic laborers in the homes of their former masters.Trade ReviewThe Emancipation Proclamation did not bring freedom to the four million African-Americans who lived in slavery in 1863. Instead, blacks had to claim and define that freedom in tens of thousands of acts of self-assertion during the decades that followed slavery's legal demise. To 'Joy My Freedom vividly depicts one neglected aspect of that struggle by focusing on the lives of urban black women, in particular those who worked as domestic laborers in the post-Civil War South. -- Drew Gilpin Faust * New York Times Book Review *Tera Hunter's imaginative uncovering of these struggles in Atlanta challenges conventional understandings of what is work and who is a worker. It represents the best of the recent marriage of labor history and cultural studies. It builds on feminist theory, which has expanded the conception of labor to include housework, mother-work, and sex work...Grounded in Atlanta's rise from Sherman's ashes, this is no ordinary community study. It addresses a major theme in Southern history: the contestation between freedom with Emancipation and its violent restriction with disfranchisement and Jim Crow...To restore the voices of the black masses is itself a form of hard work. Hunter's genius is to read against the grain of police reports and planter diaries as well as to mine newspapers to recover stories sometimes only seen through shadows cast on white society. -- Eileen Boris * The Nation *Historian Tera W. Hunter looks at how black working-class women defined and experienced freedom between the Civil War and the World War I-era 'Great Migration' of blacks northward, a period when they were excluded from electoral politics as well as from most grass-roots union organizing. Hunter shows that these women saw their work as a means to shore up their self-ownership after slavery, rather than as an end in itself. Black women negotiatied work conditions and, when they found these unacceptable, they quit. The dramatic centerpiece of Hunter's book is a threatened strike by black Atlanta washerwomen in the summer fo 1881...To 'Joy My Freedom is a worthwhile read, powerfully evoking the chaos of the Civil War and the transition of black women workers from slave to free and from rural to urban people. It joins a growing canon that points to the development of political consciousness among black working-class women. -- Dale Edwyna Smith * Washington Post Book World *Tera Hunter's book is a meticulously researched, cogently argued analysis of the `dialectic of repression and resistance' shaping the lives of African American women in the postbellum South. Better still, it's a terrifically told story--a tale of everyday women doing the radical work of defining and demanding freedom for themselves and their communities in a country largely hell-bent on denying them their rights. -- Cynthia Dobbs * San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle *Hunter's achievement in bringing these black women's stories to life is remarkable. Scouring newspaper accounts, personal diaries, household records, government reports and political cartoons, Hunter has reconstructed the myths and stereotypes about black female workers in and around Atlanta. In the process, she sheds light on a chapter of American history and the Southern labor movement that has heretofore remained unexamined...To 'Joy My Freedom is a brilliant reconstruction of New South history...Analytical and objective as this work of history is, [it] is also written with such passion that the stories of these women and the events that shaped their lives--and American history--reads like the best fiction. Hunter's work is a tour de force, valuable and prophetic as America continues to struggle with the issues of work, fairness, sex and race. -- Paula L. Woods * Atlanta Journal/Constitution *In To 'Joy My Freedom, Tera W. Hunter charts the efforts of African-American women in Atlanta to live fulfilling lives despite an all-pervasive racism, which was most terrifying in the city's infamous race riot of 1906...One can only applaud Hunter's efforts to recover the experience of her subjects from obscurity. * Times Literary Supplement *Tera Hunter's book is an exemplary effort to illuminate the particular history of black women domestic workers in Atlanta. By painstakingly pulling together disparate sources, she fashions a story of resistance and backlash that illustrates how these women bravely attempted to achieve true freedom in the face of attacks on their femininity, the stigma of tuberculosis, and outright mob violence. Her account skillfully integrates the oppressive nature of dominant gender roles, the role of class in intraracial subordination, and disease as stigma, although the reasons for the attachment of this stigma particularly to black washerwomen remains unclear. Overall, Hunter succeeds in showing the complexities of a fifty-year struggle by black women workers, who, in their words, fought "to 'joy my freedom." -- Bayo Holsey * Transforming Anthropology *To 'Joy My Freedom is a new departure in recent written history of African American women. Here, working-class women take center stage while black middle-class and elite woman are peripheral. For those who fear tackling the history of women whose personal records are few to nonexistent, Tera W. Hunter's book is at once instructive on how to write such a history and an example of a sophisticated blend of labor, social, and cultural history...Rich in detail and told with compassion and understanding, To 'Joy My Freedom fills in the gaps between contemporary histories of slavery and middle-class female uplift reform. Hunter demonstrates that professional skill, exhaustive research, and ingenious use of sources can give voice to people who leave few personal records and who do not show up in organizational minutes. -- Deborah Gray White * Journal of American History *Tera W. Hunter has written a superb study of the lives and labors of some of the African-American women who struggled through the violent upheaval of emancipation and the crushing imposition of racial segregation in the American South from the Civil War to the 1920s. Hunter's sparkling prose, extensive reading of a wide range of texts, and layered, complex and incisive analysis reveal the work of an impressively humane, imaginative, and mature historian. Her acute descriptions of local conditions and cogent insights into the larger historical context stunningly illuminate the dynamics of race, class, and gender as they played out on the frightening, brutal terrain of southern segregation...Her text constantly engages and re-engages the reader, helping us to imagine the lives of dozens of individuals who walk through the pages of history...This study is a triumph of research, astute analysis, and engaging imagination that deserves to be widely read by students of African-American, labor, and women's studies and of American history. -- Michael Honey * American Historical Review *At the end of the Civil War newly emancipated women moved to Atlanta to find employment as household labourers and washerwomen. This is a study of the workplace experiences and everyday culture of these black working women in the period until the beginning of World War I. Tracing the ways they constructed their own world of work, culture and community organization, Professor Hunter argues that their experiences and efforts were central to the African-American struggle for freedom and justice. The implementation of Jim Crow laws and segregation from the 1880s onward, however, spurred growing numbers of black working women to migrate to the North. * International Review of Social History *Hunter offers valuable explorations into the complexities of African American feminine laborers and the contextualization of their lives. She is to be applauded for providing scholars with easier access to source materials, particularly primary sources. An important contribution to suffragist activism, feminist scholarship, and African American studies. * Library Journal *To 'Joy My Freedom is a tour de force. Moving deftly between white households and black communities, churches and blues clubs, city hall and city streets, Tera Hunter brings black domestic workers alive, body and soul, smashing all stereotypes along the way. By placing black working class women at the center of her narrative, she rewrites the history of the New South and the nation. Her vibrant, complex, beautifully rendered portrait of black working women's struggles at the dawn of the century will move you as surely as it will alter the way we write history. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, New York UniversityBy bringing to life the experiences, aspirations, and struggles of the black domestic workers of Atlanta, Tera Hunter opens a new window on the study of emancipation and its aftermath and, in so doing, tremendously enriches our understanding of Reconstruction and the New South. -- Eric Foner, Columbia UniversityTo 'Joy My Freedom is a work of utmost originality and significance. Tera Hunter brings the virtually invisible world of black working-class women to life [and then] uses those lives as a vantage point from which to reconsider the transition from slavery to freedom, the nature of southern Progressivism, the Great Migration of blacks out of the South during World War I, and the relationship and tensions between work, play, and politics in the New South. -- Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillWith great breadth, sensitivity, and intellectual integrity, Tera Hunter reorients southern history toward the urban working class. This tour de force further liberates African-American history from the need always to relate to whites. Bravo! -- Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton UniversityHunter illuminates the lives of newly emancipated Black women workers in postbellum Atlanta…This book is the story of a new world, built by Black women, with and for each other. -- Daisy Pitkin * Literary Hub *Table of ContentsPreface Prologue "Answering Bells Is Played Out": Slavery and the Civil War Reconstruction and the Meanings of Freedom Working-Class Neighborhoods and Everyday Life "Washing Amazons" and Organized Protests The "Color Line" Gives Way to the "Color Wall" Survival and Social Welfare in the Age of Jim Crow "Wholesome" and "Hurtful" Amusements "Dancing and Carousing the Night Away" Tuberculosis as the "Negro Servants Disease" "Looking for a Free State to Live In" Tables Notes Acknowledgments Index

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Book SynopsisAn urgent proclamation of what life is like for American women without the security of a financial safety netIndie icon Michelle Tea--whose memoir The Chelsea Whistle details her own working-class roots in gritty Chelsea, Massachusetts--shares these fierce, honest, tender essays written by women who can't go home to the suburbs when ends don't meet. When jobs are scarce and the money has dwindled, these writers have nowhere to go but below the poverty line. The writers offer their different stories not for sympathy or sadness, but an unvarnished portrait of how it was, is, and will be for generations of women growing up working class in America. These wide-ranging essays cover everything from selling blood for grocery money to the culture shock of "jumping" class. Contributors include Dorothy Allison, Bee Lavender, Eileen Myles, and Daisy Hernández.Trade ReviewSo raw, so fresh, so riveting... An important book for any woman who's grown up - or is growing up - in America. * Vendela Vida *

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Book SynopsisA Defense of Ignorance develops new ideas in feminist epistemology by exploring diverse and sometimes positive roles for ignorance. Cynthia Townley argues that epistemic values cannot simply be reduced to the value of increasing knowledge and that ignorance is not merely inescapable for epistemic agents, but, rather, is valuable. Townley shows that ignorance-friendly epistemology offers a better descriptive and normative account of human epistemic practices. This interpretation challenges the traditional assumption that increasing knowledge is the definitive epistemic goal. The book makes a major contribution to revisionary epistemology and to the expanding fields of social epistemology and feminist epistemology. All social scientists stand to benefit from Townley''s analysis, most of all those interested in knowledge and in feminist scholarship.Trade ReviewThis book makes a valuable contribution to feminist, anti-racist, and 'mainstream' debates in epistemology. It is especially pertinent to discussions set in motion by ground-breaking work on epistemologies of ignorance, and by feminist work in virtue epistemology which centres on issues of responsible epistemic conduct, both individual and collective. -- Lorraine Code, York University, TorontoCynthia Townley's crisply argued book offers an indispensable guide to the indispensable place of ignorance in the complex mix of goals and achievements of epistemic agents. A most welcome and inviting addition to the changing landscape in epistemology. -- Elizabeth Spelman, Smith CollegeTable of ContentsChapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Introduction: Ignorance Matters Chapter 3 Chapter 1. Epistemic Dependence: Beyond Facts Chapter 4 Chapter 2. Trust and Ignorance Chapter 5 Chapter 3. Institutional Epistemic Dependence Chapter 6 Chapter 4. Ignorance, Arrogance and Pluralism

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