Description
Book SynopsisFocusing on dramatic works by contemporary British and American playwrights, in conjunction with feminist political and theoretical texts, this book discusses feminist constructions of the category "Woman".
Trade Review"With a shrewd grasp of theory and a comprehensive knowledge of British and American plays, Mary Brewer homes in on controversial issues among women - pornography, rape, mothering, domesticity and work, and debates about the butch/fem model and gender-bending among lesbians." -- From the Foreword by Alan Sinfield, Professor of Literature, University of Sussex.
Table of ContentsContents: Foreword by Alan Sinfield; Introduction: Women and Representation; Contemporary Women's Theatre: The Plays; Feminist Constructions of Difference; Defining Race Organisation; Representations of Motherhood; And Who Would Call Her Mother?: Carers Without Control; Courts of Flaw: Representations of Lesbians and the Rights of Lesbian Mothers; Fortunes at Low Tide; The Politics of Lesbian Motherhood: Strategies for Resistance; Conformity or Rebellion: Lesbian Families at Risk; OtherMothers; The Sexgender/Racegender System; Survival as Resistance: Black Women and the Family; Black Women and the Race: Lifting as We Climb'; Re-constructing the Chitlin-Circuit': Race, Representation, and OtherMothers; Friedan's Daughters: Representations of Woman' at Work; The Return of the Happy Housewife: Feminists Re-forming Woman'; Resurrecting the Cult of Domesticity; Who's On Top? White Women, Work, and the Family; Power Feminism: The Genderquake; Working Across the Racial Divide: Imitating Anita; Woman' as Object; Universal Woman': The Trojan Horse of Feminism; Colourising Joan of Arc: Radicalised Femininity and the Politics of Appearance; The Pornography of Representation: Sex, Gender, Race, and Rape; Erotophobes; Black Women and the Sexual Politics of Rape; Woman' as Subject: Negotiating Multiple Identities; A Movement Out of Step With Itself; Women on the Borders of Womanhood': Negotiating Race, Sex, and Gender(s); Difference: What Makes a House a Home; Learning to Dance as Sisters; Infiltrating Woman': Butch/Fem Lesbian Subjectivity; Woman as Discursive Subject; The Butch/Fem Debate; Signs and Seduction; Butch, Fem, and the Mask of Womanliness; Performing Gender(s); Conclusion: Toward a Progressive Feminist Politics; A House of Difference; Index.
