Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage. Hartman narrates the story of this radical social transformation against the grain of the prevailing century-old argument about the crisis of the black family.In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship that were indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work.Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives recreates the experience of young urban black women who desired an existence qualitatively different than the one that had been scripted for them—domestic service, second-class citizenship, and respectable poverty—and whose intimate revolution was apprehended as crime and pathology. For the first time, young black women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives recovers their radical aspirations and insurgent desires.

    This is a no-holds-barred response to the liberal and conservative retreat from an assertive, activist, and socially transformative civil rights agenda of recent years--using a black feminist lens and the issue of  the impact of recent legislation, social policy, and welfare "reform" on black women's--especially poor black women's--control over their bodies' autonomy and their freedom to bear and raise children with respect and dignity in a society whose white mainstream is determined to demonize, even criminalize their lives.   It gives its readers a cogent legal and historical argument for a radically new , and socially transformative, definition of  "liberty" and "equality" for the American polity from a black feminist perspective.The author is able to combine the most innovative and radical thinking on several fronts--racial theory, feminist, and legal--to produce a work that is at once history and political treatise.  By using the history of how American law--beginning with slavery--has treated the issue of the state's right  to interfere with the black woman's body, the author explosively and effectively makes the case for the legal redress to the racist implications of current policy with regards to 1) access to and coercive dispensing of birth control to poor black women 2) the criminalization of parenting by poor black women who have used drugs 3) the stigmatization and devaluation of poor black mothers under the new welfare provisions, and 4) the differential access to and disproportionate spending of social resources on the new reproductive technologies used by wealthy white couples to insure genetically related offspring.The legal redress of the racism inherent in current  American law and policy in these matters, the author argues in her last chapter, demands and should lead us to adopt a new standard and definition of the liberal theory of "liberty" and "equality" based on the need for, and the positive role of government in fostering, social as well as individual justice.

    Lorde published nine volumes of poetry which, in her words, detail "a linguistic and emotional tour through the conflicts, fears, and hopes of the world I have inhabited." Included here are Lorde's early, previously unavailable works: The First Cities, The New York Head Shop and Museum, Cables to Rage, and From a Land Where Other People Live.

    Estés asks, "Did you know, you were born as the first, and the last and the best and the only one of your kind, and that eccentricity is the first sign of giftedness? These are two of the crone truths I have to offer you." If you have any doubt, come join us at the fireside of The Dangerous Old Woman for the soul-healing wisdom that will ignite your creativity and support your highest calling in life. Three decades in the writing, The Dangerous Old Woman presents part one of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés' masterwork. In six "inspire 'til you're on fire" sessions, Dr. Estés animates the archetypal patterns of the Wise Woman through her original stories, poetry, and blessings. Old While Young, and Young While Old We are born with two forces that give us every lens we need to see who we really are: the wild and ever-young force of imagination, which contains intuition and instinct, and the wise elder force of knowledge, which holds boundaries and carries the heart of the visionary. Through captivating stories and insights, Dr. Estés illustrates why this twofold way of being "old while young, and young while old" is the secret to holding and replenishing the center, thus living wildly and wisely ensouled amidst life's travails and triumphs. Your Legacy: Wild and Wise, Both "If you are not free to be who you are, you are not free," says Dr. Estés. Begin and deepen the work of bringing your one-of-a-kind legacy into the world following the trail blazed by the Dangerous Old Woman. She who stops at nothing to nourish, protect, and guide us in the offering of all our creative gifts. Stories, Poems, and Blessings Include: "The Angelic Ten": Old Guidance for One's Sanity "Standing in My Danger": The Good Meaning of the Word "Dangerous" "Snow White": When Gifts Have Been Poisoned Grandmother Wisdom: "Los Cinco Espiritus, The Five Women Spirits" "The Vashinger and the Return of the Vampires" "The Ruby Red Fox": About Seduction "Las Tres Osas, the Three Old Re-Weavers of Torn Lives" "The Man Who Hated Trees": Nature, the Unrepentant Mother "The Jealous Girls and the Old Woman Under the Lake" "When a Good Mother Dies": What Gifts Ever Remain "The Precious Museum Tree": The Hidden Life "What Did You Dream? What Did You Dream?"

    With her customary boldness and insight, Bell Hooks critically reflects on the impact of birth control and the women's movement on our lives. Resisting the notion that love and writing don't mix, she begins a fifteen-year relationship with a gifted poet and scholar, who inspires and encourages her. Writing the acclaimed book Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism at the age of nineteen, she begins to emerge as a brilliant social critic and public intellectual. Wounds of Passion describes a woman's struggle to devote herself to writing, sharing the difficulties, the triumphs, the pleasures, and the dangers. Eloquent and powerful, this book lets us see the ways one woman writer works to find her own voice while creating a love relationship based on feminist thinking. With courage and wisdom she reveals intimate details and provocative ideas, offering an illuminating vision of a writer's life.

    80 photos & drawings.

    Explains what patriarchy is (and isn't), how it works, and what gets in the way of understanding and doing something about it.

    Enduring cruel poverty, Phoolan Devi survived the humiliation of an abusive marriage, the savage killing of her bandit-lover, and horrifying gang rape to claim retribution for herself and all low-caste women of the Indian plains. In a three-year campaign that rocked the government, she delivered justice to rape victims and stole from the rich to give to the poor, before negotiating surrender on her own terms. Throughout her years of imprisonment without trial, Phoolan Devi remained a beacon of hope for the poor and the downtrodden. In 1996, amidst both popular support and media controversy, she was elected to the Parliament. On July 25, 2001, Phoolan Devi was shot dead in Delhi. The identity of her killers is unknown, but it is thought that they may include relatives of villagers killed by her gang nearly twenty years ago. For over a decade millions have found the power and scope of Phoolan Devi's myth irresistible. Here is the story of her life through her eyes and in her own voice.

    Denise Duhamel has apparently obsessed for months about the Barbie doll phenomenon: all the poems have to do with the "what if " of Barbie attempting to fit into the real world. For example, what if Barbie were codependent? What if Barbie were in therapy? What if she were a religious fanatic? Do you know why Barbie and Ken don't dress in underwear? Why Barbie joined a 12 Step Program? How can you sleep nights without delving into the mysteries of this pop culture darling with the plastic eyelashes?

    For she believes that the things we treasure, and the world we live in, can all be saved if only we will act. Beginning with an autobiographical essay about the roots of her own activism, Alice Walker then goes on to explore diverse public issues such as single parenthood, freedom of the press, civil rights and religion.

    Comprising a range of voices from both within and outside the academy, this collection draws from traditional feminisms, postmodern feminism, queer theory, and sex radicalism. It stretches the boundaries of contemporary feminism, holding accountable both traditional feminism for stigmatizing sex workers, and also the sex industry for its sexist practices.

    Odessa, supporting an extended family, exhibits almost superhuman strength and resolve. Cheri, a single mother, is a tireless advocate for the homeless. Zucchino beautifully portrays them as figures of profound courage and quiet perseverance, systematically shattering all misconceptions and stereotypes about these women and so many others like them.

    To be dominated by a power external to oneself is a familiar and agonizing form power takes. To find, however, that what “one” is, one's very formation as a subject, is dependent upon that very power is quite another. If, following Foucault, we understand power as forming the subject as well, it provides the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire. Power is not simply what we depend on for our existence but that which forms reflexivity as well. Drawing upon Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, and Althusser, this challenging and lucid work offers a theory of subject formation that illuminates as ambivalent the psychic effects of social power.If we take Hegel and Nietzsche seriously, then the "inner life" of consciousness and, indeed, of conscience, not only is fabricated by power, but becomes one of the ways in which power is anchored in subjectivity. The author considers the way in which psychic life is generated by the social operation of power, and how that social operation of power is concealed and fortified by the psyche that it produces. Power is no longer understood to be "internalized" by an existing subject, but the subject is spawned as an ambivalent effect of power, one that is staged through the operation of conscience.To claim that power fabricates the psyche is also to claim that there is a fictional and fabricated quality to the psyche. The figure of a psyche that "turns against itself" is crucial to this study, and offers an alternative to describing power as “internalized.” Although most readers of Foucault eschew psychoanalytic theory, and most thinkers of the psyche eschew Foucault, the author seeks to theorize this ambivalent relation between the social and the psychic as one of the most dynamic and difficult effects of power.This work combines social theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis in novel ways, offering a more sustained analysis of the theory of subject formation implicit in such other works of the author as Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex" and Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.

    Angela Carter is revealed here, anew, as one of the most important thinkers of twentieth-century world literature--and one of its most pungent voices."--Rick MoodyOne of contemporary literature's most original and affecting fiction writers, Angela Carter also wrote brilliant nonfiction. Shaking a Leg comprises the best of her essays and criticism, much of it collected for the first time. Carter's acute observations are spiked with her piercing matter-of-factness, her devastating wit, her penchant for mockery, and her passion for the absurd. Whether discussing films or food, feminism or fantasy, science fiction or sex, Carter consistently explores new territories and overturns old ideas. No cultural icon escapes her scrutiny; as in her fiction, Carter offers glorious evidence of the transforming power of the imagination. From delightfully wicked commentaries on Gone with the Wind, a Japanese fertility festival, and fellow writers, including Lawrence, Lovecraft, Borges, and Burroughs, to enchanting personal essays, Carter shares her thoughts and herself with glee."What a wonderful collection--sharp, funny, too decent for sarcasm but great wit and humanity, an unusual combination. But it makes us miss her, miss laughing with her, that real, intelligent, tough writing woman."--Grace Paley

    Arguing that the computer is rewriting the old conceptions of man and his world, it suggests that the telecoms revolution is also a sexual revolution which undermines the fundamental assumptions crucial to patriarchal culture. Historical, contemporary and future developments in telecommunications and in IT are interwoven with the past, present and future of feminism, women and sexual difference, and a wealth of connections, parallels and affinities between machines and women are uncovered as a result. Challenging the belief that man was ever in control of either his own agency, the planet, or his machines, this book argues it is seriously undermined by the new scientific paradigms emergent from theories of chaos, complexity and connectionism, all of which suggest that the old distinctions between man, woman, nature and technology need to be radically reassessed.

    A work that rethinks gender as a Western construction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures. Author Oyeronke Oyewumi reveals an ideology of biological determinism at the heart of Western social categories-the idea that biology provides the rationale for organizing the social world. And yet, she writes, the concept of OC woman, OCO central to this ideology and to Western gender discourses, simply did not exist in Yorubaland, where the body was not the basis of social roles. Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed and that the subordination of women is universal. The Invention of Women demonstrates, to the contrary, that gender was not constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age. A meticulous historical and epistemological account of an African culture on its own terms, this book makes a persuasive argument for a cultural, context-dependent interpretation of social reality. It calls for a reconception of gender discourse and the categories on which such study relies. More than that, the book lays bare the hidden assumptions in the ways these different cultures think. A truly comparative sociology of an African culture and the Western tradition, it will change the way African studies and gender studies proceed. "

    It challenges all our preconceived notions of what it means to be black or white, and what it means to be human.

    Carol Queen. Whether writing about the joys of being spanked into erotic bliss, performing in a red-light district peep show, partaking of the pleasures of the new safe sex clubs, or lobbying for the pro-pornography platform, Queen is an enthusiastic advocate for sexual pleasure.

    With energy and passion, this anthology of writings documents the personal and collective political struggles of Chicana feminists.

    Becoming an Ally looks for paths to justice and lays out guidelines for becoming allies of oppressed peoples when we are in the privileged role.A new chapter in this third edition offers a greatly expanded discussion of effective approaches to educating allies, which is meant for teachers of adults, particularly those who teach about diversity, equity and anti-oppression. In this chapter, Bishop examines the ways in which Western culture prevents us from recognizing our roles as members of privileged groups and explores how to challenge this with participatory exercises and group discussion. "

    Drawing attention to the political forces that have spawned, shaped, and perpetuated these misrepresentations since colonial times, Uma Narayan inspects the underlying problems which "culture" poses for the respect of difference and cross-cultural understanding.Questioning the problematic roles assigned to Third World subjects within multiculturalism, Narayan examines ways in which the flow of information across national contexts affects our understanding of issues. Dislocating Cultures contributes a philosophical perspective on areas of ongoing interest such as nationalism, post-colonial studies, and the cultural politics of debates over tradition and "westernization" in Third World contexts.

    With a new section on mother/daughter relationships, new and updated material on Israel, and new poetry and photographs.

    That debate led to ground-breaking court decisions and major shifts in corporate policies that have had a profound effect on our lives--and on Anita Hill's life. Now, with remarkable insight and total candor, Anita Hill reflects on events before, during, and after the hearings, offering for the first time a complete account that sheds startling new light on this watershed event.Only after reading her moving recollection of her childhood on her family's Oklahoma farm can we fully appreciate the values that enabled her to withstand the harsh scrutiny she endured during the hearings and for years afterward. Only after reading her detailed narrative of the Senate Judiciary proceedings do we reach a new understanding of how Washington--and the media--rush to judgment. And only after discovering the personal toll of this wrenching ordeal, and how Hill copes, do we gain new respect for this extraordinary woman.Here is a vitally important work that allows us to understand why Anita Hill did what she did, and thereby brings resolution to one of the most controversial episodes in our nation's history.

    *Translated and introduced by Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak*As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak points out in her introduction, the breast is far more than a symbol in these stories - it is the means of harshly indicting an explotative social system.In "Draupadi", the protagonist, Dopdi Mejhen, is a tribal revolutionary, who, arrested and gang-raped in custody, turns the terrible wounds of her breast into a counter-offensive,In "Breast-giver", a woman who becomes a professional wet nurse to support her family, dies of painful breast cancer, betrayed alike by the breasts that had for years been her chief identity and the dozens of 'sons' she had suckled.In "Behind the Bodice", migrant labourer Gangor's 'statuesque' breasts excite the attention of ace photographer Upin Puri, triggering off a train of violence that ends in tragedy.Spivak introduces this cycle of 'breast stories' with thought-provoking essays which probe the texts of the stories, opening them up to a complex of interpretation and meaning.

    Since the land, the forests, the oceans, and the atmosphere have already been colonized, eroded, and polluted, she argues, Northern capital is now carving out new colonies to exploit for gain: the interior spaces of the bodies of women, plants and animals.

    Newly revised and expanded, it remains the only book to chronicle the history of both tattooed women and women tattooists. As the primary reference source on the subject, it contains information from the original edition, including documentation of:•Nineteeth-century sideshow attractions who created fantastic abduction tales in which they claimed to have been forcibly tattooed.•Victorian society women who wore tattoos as custom couture, including Winston Churchill's mother, who wore a serpent on her wrist.•Maud Wagner, the first known woman tattooist, who in 1904 traded a date with her tattooist husband-to-be for an apprenticeship.•The parallel rise of tattooing and cosmetic surgery during the 80s when women tattooists became soul doctors to a nation afflicted with body anxieties.•Breast cancer survivors of the 90s who tattoo their mastectomy scars as an alternative to reconstructive surgery or prosthetics.The book contains 50 new photos and FULL COLOR images throughout including newly discovered work by Britain's first female tattooist, Jessie Knight; Janis Joplin's wrist tattoo; and tattooed pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. In addition, the updated 3rd edition boasts a sleek design and new chapters documenting recent changes to the timeline of female tattooing, including a section on: celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D, the most famous tattooist, male or female, in the world; the impact of reality shows on women's tattoo culture; and, therapeutic uses of tattooing for women leaving gangs, prisons, or situations of domestic abuse. As of 2012, tattooed women outnumber men for the first time in American history, making Bodies of Subversion more relevant than ever."In Bodies of Subversion, Margot Mifflin insightfully chronicles the saga of skin as signage. Through compelling anecdotes and cleverly astute analysis, she shows and tells us new histories about women, tattoos, public pictures, and private parts. It's an indelible account of an indelible piece of cultural history."—Barbara Kruger, artist

    Opening with a powerful cycle of elegies for her long-distant, half-brother, this major new collection by one of our bestselling poets then goes on to include both serious and funny poems about women and poems about the precarious balance of nature, ending with the beautiful, life-affirming "The Art of Blessing the Day." 160 pp.

    RuPaul is as familiar as tomato ketchup with national radio and television shows, and transgendered folk are as common to talk-shows as screaming and yelling. But if the popularization of gender bending is revealing that "male" and "female" aren't enough, where are we supposed to go from here? Cultural theorists have written loads of smart but difficult-to-fathom texts on gender, but none provide a hands-on, accessible guide to having your own unique gender. With My Gender Workbook , Kate Bornstein brings theory down to Earth and provides a practical approach to living with or without a gender.Bornstein starts from the premise that there are not just two genders performed in today's world, but countless genders lumped under the two-gender framework. Using a unique, deceptively simple and always entertaining workbook format, Bornstein gently but firmly guides you to discover your own unique gender identity. Whether she's using the USFDA's food group triangle to explain gender, or quoting one-liners from real "gender transgressors," Bornstein's first and foremost concern is making information on gender bending truly accessible. With quizzes and exercises that determine how much of a man or woman you are, My Gender Workbook gives you the tools to reach whatever point you desire on the gender continuum.Bornstein also takes aim at the recent flurry of books that attempt to naturalize gender difference, and puts books like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus squarely where they belong: on Uranus. If you don't think you are transgendered when you sit down to read this book, you will be by the time you finish it!

    From Simon & Schuster, Life and Death by Andrea Dworkin is the unapologetic writing on the continuing war against women.In this important work, Dworken gathers essays published between 1987 and 1995, in which she comments on society's ongoing and tacit approval of aggression against women that often ends in these women losing their lives.

    Matsuda offers a strikingly insightful look at how our collective experiences of race, class, and gender inform our understanding of law and shape our vision of a more just society.

    Asian & Asian American Studies. Women's Studies. For decades, Kim Hyesoon a leading figure in contemporary Korean poetry and trans-national feminist literature has represented the capabilities of a poet who works across, around, and through the borders of nations and of language itself. Many of her works have been translated, with the overwhelming support from Don Mee Choi, into English. With visceral and surreal imagery, Kim presents us her latest work in translation, Poor Love Machine, with a rippling array of pain, desire, and light."

    First published in Italian to widespread acclaim, Relating Narratives is a fascinating and challenging new account of the relationship between selfhood and narration. Drawing a diverse array of thinkers from both the philosophical and the literary tradition, from Sophocles and Homer to Hannah Arendt, Karen Blixen, Walter Benjamin and Borges, Adriana Cadarero's theory of the `narratable self' shows how narrative models in philosophy and literature can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities. By showing how each human being has a unique story that can be told about them, Adriana Cavarero inaugurates an important shift in thinking about subjectivity and identity which relies not upon categorical or discursive norms, but rather seeks to account for `who' each one of us uniquely is.

    Formations of Class & Gender demonstrates why class should be featured more prominently in theoretical accounts of gender, identity and power. Beverley Skeggs identifies the neglect of class, and shows how class and gender must be fused together to produce an accurate representation of power relations in modern society.The book questions how theoretical frameworks are generated for understanding how women live and produce themselves through social and cultural relations. It uses detailed ethnographic research to explain how `real′ women inhabit and occupy the social and cultural posit

    This second edition features 25 new essays and a new introduction by Adrien Katherine Wing.Critical Race Feminism gives voice to African American, Latina, Asian, Native American, and Arab women, both heterosexual and lesbian. Both a forceful statement and a platform for change, the anthology addresses an ambitious range of subjects, from life in the workplace and motherhood to sexual harassment, domestic violence, and other criminal justice issues. Extending beyond national borders, the volume tackles global issues such as the rights of Muslim women, immigration, multiculturalism, and global capitalism.Revealing how the historical experiences and contemporary realities of women of color are profoundly influenced by a legacy of racism and sexism that is neither linear nor logical, Critical Race Feminism serves up a panoramic perspective, illustrating how women of color can find strength in the face of oppression.

    Feminist theorists, in particular, have focused on the female body as the site where representations of difference and identity are inscribed. Drawn from a broad range of disciplines, Writing on the Body explores the tensions between women's lived bodily experiences and the cultural meanings inscribed on the female body. The volume includes classic and contemporary essays on rape, pornography, eroticism, anorexia, body building, menstruation, and maternity, and challenges racial, class and sexual categories. Complemented by the editors' introduction, Writing on the Body is a comprehensive sourcebook on the major theoretical positions and critical trends surrounding the female body.

    What they say about identity, self-esteem, the role of race in their perceptions and treatment, personal values, and their hopes for the future is both enlightening and moving. 144 pp. National pubilcity. 15,000 print.

    A book of history, theory and polemic, the authors show how, if we are to survive, economies must become needs-based, environmentally sustainable, co-operative and local. They explain how the current capitalist system is none of these things, is inherently unstable and is dependent on the exploitation of various marginalized groups, particularly women, and of the environment. They call instead for a new politics and economics based on subsistence and present examples of such a perspective in practice.

    Reviewing hate speech regulations, anti-pornography arguments, and recent controversies about gay self-declaration in the military, Judith Butler asks whether and how language acts in each of these cultural sites. Excitable Speech examines the issue of the threatening action of words. The book suggests that although language is a kind of performance which has the power to produce political effects and injuries, it is best understood as a scene of injury rather than its cause. Rather, Butler warns us against a "sovereign" view of language, in which the words we speak are construed as unequivocal forms of conduct. She shows that the repetition of injurious language can be the occasion of its redefinition. Butler illuminates the efficacy of injurious language, covering speech act therapy in both philosophical and literary traditions, Supreme Court cases, hate speech and pornography critics, and recent bans on gay speech in the military.

    

    In so doing they offer a new understanding of human development that points a way to change in all of our institutions-work, community, school, and family-and is sure to transform lives.

    In relating her own experiences she challenges the readers to protect what has been won, and to confront the tasks that remain.

    The quintessential examination of women, gynecology is not simply the study of women’s bodies, but also serves to define and constitute them. Any critical analysis of gynecology is therefore, as Kapsalis affirms, an investigation of what it means to be female. In this respect she considers the public exposure of female "privates" in the performance of the pelvic exam. From J. Marion Sims’s surgical experiments on unanesthetized slave women in the mid-nineteenth century, to the use of cadavers and prostitutes to teach medical students gynecological techniques, Kapsalis focuses on the ways in which women and their bodies have been treated by the medical establishment. Removing gynecology from its private cover within clinic walls and medical textbook pages, she decodes the gynecological exam, seizing on its performative dimension. She considers traditional medical practices and the dynamics of "proper" patient performance; non-traditional practices such as cervical self-exam; and incarnations of the pelvic examination outside the bounds of medicine, including its appearance in David Cronenberg’s film Dead Ringers and Annie Sprinkle’s performance piece "Public Cervix Announcement." Confounding the boundaries that separate medicine, art, and pornography, revealing the potent cultural attitudes and anxieties about women, female bodies, and female sexuality that permeate the practice of gynecology, Public Privates concludes by locating a venue from which challenging, alternative performances may be staged.

    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

    "This collection is a major contribution to the reconstruction of gender balance in African-American history" --Manning Marable, Columbia University

    Jones, Cleveland Ballet Dancing Wheels, Zab Maboungou, David Dorfman, Marie Chouinard, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and others, have helped establish dance as a crucial discourse of the 90s. These dancers, Ann Cooper Albright argues, are asking the audience to see the body as a source of cultural identity -- a physical presence that moves with and through its gendered, racial, and social meanings.Through her articulate and nuanced analysis of contemporary choreography, Albright shows how the dancing body shifts conventions of representation and provides a critical example of the dialectical relationship between cultures and the bodies that inhabit them. As a dancer, feminist, and philosopher, Albright turns to the material experience of bodies, not just the body as a figure or metaphor, to understand how cultural representation becomes embedded in the body. In arguing for the intelligence of bodies, Choreographing Difference is itself a testimonial, giving voice to some important political, moral, and artistic questions of our time.

    The first release from author jessica Care moore, The Words Don't Fit In My Mouth is a thematically, multi-various collage of poems on love and lost, relationships, racism, sexism, and identity that says: "..we exist, yes we do. It's a fact." In the words of editor Tony Medina, this collection is full of tom-boy muscle and tender sister love caresses. She coos and curses and condems- all in one breath, all in one poem, one book.

    Suffragettes to She-Devils captures the excitement of women's revolutionary campaigns and movements from the vibrant visual identity of the militant suffragettes, through the humour and sniping of the cartoons of Women's Lib in the sixties, to the virtual-reality explorations of end-of-the-century cyberfeminists. It studies the developing role of graphics and related media in the struggle for women's liberation, focusing on the way women have used graphics as a tool for their empowerment - finding a voice through visual or graphic means.

    We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing. It is as important as breathing, too. History shapes our self-definition and our relationship to community; it locates us in time and place and helps to give meaning to our lives. History can be the vital thread that holds a nation together, as demonstrated most strikingly in the case of Jewish history. Conversely, for women, who have lived in a world in which they apparently had no history, its absence can be devastating. In Why History Matters, Lerner brings together her thinking and research of the last sixteen years, combining personal reminiscences with innovative theory that illuminate the importance of history and the vital role women have played in it. Why History Matters contains some of the most significant thinking and writing on history that Lerner has done in her entire career--a summation of her life and work. The chapters are divided into three sections, each widely different from the others, each revelatory of Lerner as a woman and a feminist. We read first of Lerner's coming to consciousness as a Jewish woman. There are moving accounts of her early life as a refugee in America, her return to Austria fifty years after fleeing the Nazis (to discover a nation remarkable both for the absence of Jews and for the anti-Semitism just below the surface), her slow assimilation into American life, and her decision to be a historian. If the first section is personal, the second focuses on more professional concerns. Included here is a fascinating essay on nonviolent resistance, tracing the idea from the Quakers (such as Mary Dyer), to abolitionists such as Theodore Dwight Weld (the most mobbed man in America), to Thoreau's essay Civil Disobedience, then across the sea to Tolstoy and Gandhi, before finally returning to America during the civil rights movement of the 1950s. There are insightful essays on American Values and on the tremendous advances women have made in the twentieth century, as well as Lerner's presidential address to the Organization of American Historians, which outlines the contributions of women to the field of history and the growing importance of women as a subject of history. The highlight of the final section of the book is Lerner's bold and innovative look at the issues of class and race as they relate to women, an essay that distills her thinking on these difficult subjects and offers a coherent conceptual framework that will prove of lasting interest to historians and intellectuals. A major figure in women's studies and long-term activist for women's issues, a founding member of NOW and a past president of the Organization of American Historians, Gerda Lerner is a pioneer in the field of Women's History and one of its leading practitioners. Why History Matters is the summation of the work and thinking of this distinguished historian.

    In Chiapas women still marry at 13, and are often sold for a few bottles of liquor or a cow. On New Year's Day 1994 Chiapas was brought to the attention of the world by a very modern insurrection by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN). Since the beginning women were integral to the rebellion and later the movement for social justice in Chiapas and Mexico. In this volume the women of Chiapas tell of their hopes and their struggles, and their fight for a more democratic and humane way of life in their state and their country. The account discusses the lives of indigenous women in the state. Personal and testimonial in style, the women interviewed recount their lives as women in their communities and also their part in the struggle to establish and defend the EZLN.

    This handsome collection, featuring nearly 2,000 new quotations, new topics, and a fresh new look, is a trove of enlightening and useful witticisms about the world of business, drawn from across the centuries and all corners of the globe. It features a wide range of germane wisdom from such contemporary luminaries as Katherine Graham, Susan Sontag, Bill Gates, Ronald Reagan, Fran Lebowitz, Gore Vidal, and Donald Trump alongside timeless quotes from Ovid, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gertrude Stein, Mahatma Gandhi, Henry Ford, Helen Keller, John D. Rockefeller, Oscar Wilde, J.R.R. Tolkien, Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw, and thousands of others—not to mention hundreds of quotes from the Forbes men themselves. Fully indexed for easy use as a speaker’s or writer’s reference, this inspiring volume comes straight from the most trusted and widely read business magazine of all time.

    The inner male, counterpart to the museit is he who appears in male shape in women's dreams, fantasies, and meditations. Often suppressed and shrouded in negativity, the daimon archetype can be transformed into an empowering and inspiring influence on the female soul. Here is a unique and intimate exploration that will speak to and honor the heart and creativity of every woman.

    To make this point, these essays focus on the "woman question" in the Middle East (most particularly in Egypt and Iran), especially at the turn of the century, when gender became a highly charged nationalist issue tied up in complex ways with the West. The last two decades have witnessed an extraordinary burst of energy and richness in Middle East women's studies, and the contributors to this volume exemplify the vitality of this new thinking. They take up issues of concern to historians and social thinkers working on the postcolonial world. The essays challenge the assumptions of other major works on women and feminism in the Middle East by questioning, among other things, the familiar dichotomy in which women's domesticity is associated with tradition and modernity with their entry into the public sphere. Indeed, Remaking Women is a radical challenge to any easy equation of modernity with progress, emancipation, and the empowerment of women.The contributors are Lila Abu-Lughod, Marilyn Booth, Deniz Kandiyoti, Khaled Fahmy, Mervat Hatem, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Omnia Shakry, and Zohreh T. Sullivan.The book is introduced by the editor with a piece called "Feminist Longings and Postcolonial Conditions," which masterfully interfaces the critical studies of feminism and modernism with scholarship on South Asia and the Middle East.

    Author of many books, both fiction and non-fiction, which challenge our thinking about the politics of sex, Third World development, the Arab world and writing itself, she has been a constant thorn in the side of the class and patriarchal systems.This collection of her non-fiction writing since the publication of her seminal book on Arab women The Hidden Face of Eve (Zed Books, 1980) presents the full range of her extraordinary work. She explores a host of topics from women’s oppression at the hands of recent interpretations of Islam to the role of women in African literature, from the sexual politics of development initiatives to tourism in a ‘post-colonial’age, from the nature of cultural identity to the subversive potential of creativity, from the fight against female genital mutilation to problems facing the internationalization of the women’s movement. Throughout her writing, she sheds new light on the power of women in resistance - against poverty, racism, fundamentalism, and inequality of all kinds.Showing the intellectual and political development of an important thinker for the late twentieth century, this book is essential reading for students and lecturers in women’s studies, development studies and social theory. It is also a book anyone who wants to understand current global politics - in their widest sense - can not do without.

    The book has rare images of the Suffragette campaign leading up to the outbreak of the World War I. The book also documents leading personalities in the movement, such as Emmeline Parkhurst, Annie Kenney and Emily Wilding Davison, the behind-the-scene activities at the Woman's Social and Political Union, their public propaganda, the brilliant set piece demonstrations and the escalation of militancy from pestering the politicians to burning down buildings and attacking works of art. The granting of the vote in 1918 and 1928 is also discussed.

    Striving toward a more accurate representation of women's psychological development, the Stone Center at Wellesley College has become well known for its exploration of women's ways of defining themselves in relation to others. This new collection builds on the foundations laid by the widely acclaimed Women's Growth In Connection to further describe the relational perspective, devoting special attention to the diversity of women's experience. Its 15 thoughtful and clearly written chapters offer fresh insights on vital issues including sexuality, shame, anger, depression, power relations between women, and women's experiences in therapy, and make engaging reading for anyone/m-/female or male/m-/interested in increasing connectedness at a personal and societal level.

    This is a meditation book which will clear your political sinuses and blow out the cobwebs of fuzzy "live-and-let-live" thinking.The essays may be read as a series of mini-lectures or as inspirational meditations. From such Hot Role Models as Gertrude Stein, Chyrstos, bell hooks, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and Audre Lorde. The quotations have been selected with scrupulous attention to multi-culturalism, which not only includes representation of women of varying races and ethnicities, but also of varying physical abilities, ages, weights, sexual orientations, and class background.

    She was the first American woman to write a coherent feminist argument, and her writings and work championing the emancipation of woman still carry a powerful message for contemporary women. In the view of historians, Sarah Grimké has long been overshadowed by her sister, Angelina. In The Feminist Thought of Sarah Grimké, Gerda Lerner corrects this appraisal by placing Sarah's work in the context of the long history of feminist thought and Biblical criticism, showing that she was indeed a major figure and a pioneer. Based on her meticulous study of primary sources -- Sarah's writings, letters, and journal entries -- Lerner at last gives full credit to Sarah Grimke's contribution to the women's rights movement. As Lerner explains, that Sarah's work came to us in snippets and fragments, handwritten on paper cut out of a notebook, embedded in the manuscript collection of her brother-in-law, unnoticed and forgotten for over a hundred years is typical of what happened to the intellectual work of women, but it is not indicative of her accomplishments as a major thinker.The Feminist Thought of Sarah Grimké not only revises our appreciation of Sarah Grimké's thought and life, but it represents some of Gerda Lerner's most significant work in documenting women's role in history.

    Her pioneering, interdisciplinary research into the earliest cultures of Europe led to a startling new view of the origins and meaning of Western civilization. According to anthropologist Ashley Montagu, "Marija Gimbutas has given us a veritable Rosetta Stone of the greatest heuristic value..". Linguist Harald Haarmann states, "(Gimbutas') discovery of a deeper layer of European history...may be considered the framework for a new paradigm in research into antiquity".From the Realm of the Ancestors: Anthology i Honor of Marija Gimbutas, is an international collection of essays by major scholars of archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, genetics, history, mythology, comparative religions, women's studies, psychology, poetry, and the visual arts. These essays present a broad sampling of essential ideas, inspired by the work of Marija Gimbutas, that provide a new understanding of the beginnings of European civilization and profound possibilities for cultural transformation.

    An examination of feminist themes in children's and young adult's literature covers such topics as friendship, marriage, and community.

    The first regards the other as an entirely different being from oneself, but one which is still recognizable. The second understands and recognizes this other by its function as a repository of characteristics cast from oneself.In recognizing how this dual relationship is reconciled within the self, and its implications in male/female relations, Jessica Benjamin continues her exploration of intersubjectivity and gender, taking up questions of contemporary debates in feminist theory and psychoanalysis.

    Very simple and concrete language is used to explain the complexities of human sexuality; All About Sex is meant to be understandable to younger members of the family and to facilitate family communication and education. The overall purpose of the book is to normalize sex and help families establish sexual values and encourage responsible sexual behaviors. Charts, illustrations, and resources annotate the text and are presented in a reassuring way that will make it acceptable to place All About Sex openly on the family bookshelf. Comprehensive, accurate, straightforward, and sensitive, All About Sex will be an important and valued resource to educators as well as families.

    Drawing on the testimonies of women, many who have never before spoken out, this book uncovers the fraudulence of the view that women are increasingly crying rape when they simply regret what has happened the night before.

    Cereta's works circulated widely in Italy during the early modern era, but her complete letters have never before been published in English. In her public lectures and essays, Cereta explores the history of women's contributions to the intellectual and political life of Europe. She argues against the slavery of women in marriage and for the rights of women to higher education, the same issues that have occupied feminist thinkers of later centuries. Yet these letters also furnish a detailed portrait of an early modern woman’s private experience, for Cereta addressed many letters to a close circle of family and friends, discussing highly personal concerns such as her difficult relationships with her mother and her husband. Taken together, these letters are a testament both to an individual woman and to enduring feminist concerns.

    In Eve's Herbs, Riddle explores a new question: If women once had access to effective means of birth control, why was this knowledge lost to them in modern times?Beginning with the testimony of a young woman brought before the Inquisition in France in 1320, Riddle asks what women knew about regulating fertility with herbs and shows how the new intellectual, religious, and legal climate of the early modern period tended to cast suspicion on women who employed "secret knowledge" to terminate or prevent pregnancy. Knowledge of the menstrual-regulating qualities of rue, pennyroyal, and other herbs was widespread through succeeding centuries among herbalists, apothecaries, doctors, and laywomen themselves, even as theologians and legal scholars began advancing the idea that the fetus was fully human from the moment of conception.Drawing on previously unavailable material, Riddle reaches a startling conclusion: while it did not persist in a form that was available to most women, ancient knowledge about herbs was not lost in modern times but survived in coded form. Persecuted as "witchcraft" in centuries past and prosecuted as a crime in our own time, the control of fertility by "Eve's herbs" has been practiced by Western women since ancient times.

    Exploring postmodern themes of gendered and racialized exclusion, 'black' identity and social and cultural difference this volume provides an overview of black feminism in Britain as it has developed during the last two decades.Among the topics covered are: * white feminism* political activism* 'mixed-race' identity* class differences* cultural hybridity* autobiography* black beauty* religious fundamentalism* national belonging* lesbian identity* postcolonial space* popular cultureThis timely and important book is essential reading for students and scholars of cultural studies, women's studies, sociology, literature and postcolonial studies

    Plays featured include:* King John* Henry VI, Part I* Henry VI, Part II* Henry, Part III* Richard III* Richard II* Henry V.It will be a must for students and scholars interested in the cultural and social implications of Shakespeare today.

    The values of Patriarchy entwine with those of Capitalism to create an economic system of domination, while a maternal economy would provide for everyone and promote a community-oriented subjectivity which would also honor Mother Nature. This book gives a woman based perspective on the gift economy as a basis for social change.

    Author Belinda Robnett argues that the diversity of experiences of the African-American women organizers has been underemphasized in favor of monolithic treatments of their femaleness and blackness.Drawing heavily on interviews with actual participants in the American Civil Rights movement, this work retells the movement as seen through the eyes and spoken through the voices of African-American women participants. It is the first book to provide an analysis of race, class, gender, and culture as substructures that shaped the organization and outcome of the movement. Robnett examines the differences among women participants in the movement and offers the first cohesive analysis of the gendered relations and interactions among its black activists, thus demonstrating that femaleness and blackness cannot be viewed as sufficient signifiers for movement experience and individual identity. Finally, this book makes a significant contribution to social movement theory by providing a crucial understanding of the continuity and complexity of social movements, clarifying the need for different layers of leadership that come to satisfy different movement needs. An engaging narrative history as well as a major contribution to social movement and feminist theory, How Long? How Long? will appeal to students and scholars of social activism, women's studies, American history, and African-American studies, and to general readers interested in the perennially fascinating story of the American Civil Rights movement.

    By providing the first book to engage in an empirical investigation of the pornography industry itself, the authors--each grounded in the radical feminist anti-pornography movement--move beyond the rhetorical bomb-tossing of an often polarized debate.The authors engage in a systematic examination of the politics, production, content, and consumption of contemporary mass-market heterosexual pornography, thereby contributing to a fuller understanding of pornography's role in the cultural construction of gender, racial and sexual identities, and relations. They begin with an overview of the social and political history of the feminist anti-pornography movement and the debate over pornography within feminism. Then they address the various rhetorical dodges--definitional, legal, and causal--used to distort the fact that institutionalized pornography helps maintain the sexual and social oppression of women within a patriarchal system.Exploring the beginnings of the commercial pornography industry, the book focuses in part on the history of Playboy magazine. It also analyzes the content of contemporary mass-market videos. Dines, Jensen, and Russo argue that the sexual ideology of patriarchy eroticizes domination and submission, with pornography playing a significant role in how these values are mediated and normalized in American society. They discuss the effects of pornography on the lives of those who use it and those against whom it is used. In so doing, the authors hope to contribute to creating a world in which sex is not a site of oppression but of liberation.

    She also joined the struggle for Nigerian independence as an activist in the anticolonial movement. This book presents the story of this courageous woman.

    They reveal decisions they made, and the feelings they had - from satisfaction to abuse. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the author conducted a survey of black female sexuality. The findings are presented here. They reveal the role of historical stereotypes in contemporary relationships and images. The book also offers compassionate strategies for confronting and overcoming these myths and finding greater sexual health and well-being.

    With reference to contemporary and historical issues in biomedicine, the book argues that the boundaries of both the subject and the body are no longer secure. The aim is both to valorise women and to suggest that 'leakiness' may be the very ground for a postmodern feminist ethic. The contribution made by Leaky Bodies and Boundaries is to go beyond modernist feminisms to radically displace the mechanisms by which women are devalued. The anxiety that postmodernism cannot yield an ethics, nor advance feminist concerns is addressed. This book will provide invaluable reading for those studying feminist philosophy, cultural studies and sociology.

    It is one of the first books to acknowledge the importance of postmodern feminist arguments against ecofeminism whilst persuasively preseenting a strong new case for econolocal feminism. Chris J.Cuomo first traces the emergence of ecofeminism from the ecological and feminist movements before clearly discussing the weaknesses of some ecofeminist positions. Exploring the dualisms of nature/culture and masculing/feminine that are the bulwark of many contemporary ecofeminist positions and questioning traditional traditional feminist analyses of gender and caring, Feminism and Ecological Communities asks whether women are essentially closer to nature than men and how we ought to link the oppression of women, people of colour, and other subjugated groups to the degradation of nature. Chris J.Cuomo addresses these key issues by drawing on recent work in feminist ethics as well as teh work of diverse figures such as Aristotle, John Dewey, Donna Haraway adn Maria Lugones. A fascinating feature of the book is the use of the metaphor of the cyborg to highlight the fluidity of the nature/culture distinction and how this can enrich econfeminist ethics and politics. An outstanding new argument for an ecological feminism that links both theory and practice, Feminism and Ecological Communities bravely redraws the ecofeminist map. It will be essential reading for all those interested in gender studies, environmental studies and philosophy.

    In the following decades, Freeman drew widespread praise for her intimate portraits of women and her realistic depictions of rural New England life. She published short stories, essays, novels, plays, and children’s books. Her stories, written in a clear and direct prose, are remarkable for their unpretentious, sympathetic portrayals of the lives of ordinary New Englanders of Freeman’s era. Many of the stories depict rebellion against oppressive social and private conditions. Others describe conflicting desires for independence and lasting relationships. This volume of twenty-eight stories is the first to provide a representative sample of Freeman’s finest work, from all phases of her career. It makes plain why Freeman (in the words of editor Mary R. Reichardt) is widely recognized as an important figure “in the history of American women’s fiction . . . and the development of the American short story.”

    The contributors explore: * women's mental health* the interaction between popular culture and the representation of women in psychiatric discourse* the socio-political dimensions of women's livesCase studies cover a selection of topics including assertiveness, empowerment, sexuality and childbirth, as well as issues around class, race and age.Feminist Approaches to Art Therapy helps art therapists develop gender-aware practice, and illustrates to women in general what art therapy has to offer them.

    The journey, from diagnosis to chemotherapy to mastectomy, from denial to humor to grief and rage, is ultimately one of courage and creativity. The poems themselves are accessible and finely wrought. They are equally testaments to Raz's insistence on making an order out of chaos, of finding ways to create and understand and eventually accept new definitions of good and evil, health, blame, personal boundaries -- in short, a new sense of self. These poems remain intimately bound to the world and of the senses, becoming documents of transformation.

    By identifying key turning points for black women, the essays create a new chronology and a new paradigm for historical analysis. The chronology begins in 1837 with the interracial meeting of antislavery women in New York City and concludes with the civil rights movement of the 1960s.The contributors focus on specific examples of women pursuing a dual ambition: to gain full civil and political rights and to improve the social conditions of African Americans. Together, the essays challenge us to rethink common generalizations that govern much of our historical thinking about the experience of African American women.Contributors include Bettina Aptheker, Elsa Barkley Brown, Willi Coleman, Gerald R. Gill, Ann D. Gordon, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Cynthia Neverdon-Morton, Martha Prescod Norman, Janice Sumler-Edmond, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, and Bettye Collier-Thomas.

    Beatrice Muchman and her family fled from Germany to Belgium after Hitler came to power. In 1943, when the Nazis began rounding up Jews and sending them to death camps, Beatrice's parents entrusted her to a Catholic woman. Beatrice's mother and father were killed, but she survived and was ultimately brought to the United States, where she was adopted by an uncle and aunt who had escaped to America before the war broke out. Because she was so young when these events occurred, Beatrice Muchman often misunderstood situations and motivations, especially because they were never clearly explained, perhaps as an effort to protect her. For years afterwards, she believed that her parents had for some reason abandoned her and in consequence was filled with anger against them. Due to the fortuitous circumstance of discovering a cache of letters from her parents and other relevant documents among the papers of the uncle who had adopted her, Beatrice Muchman, as a mature woman, began exploring her past. Combing her memory for recollections of events she had tried to forget, and combining what she learned from the letters with the account in the diary she had kept as a child, which she now reads with an adult's insight, she was able to reconstruct the story of her Holocaust childhood. In doing so, she came to understand how much her parents had loved her and how pained they were by their final separation.

    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

    Spelman examines the complex ways in which we try to redeem the pain we cause and witness. She also shows the way our responses are often more than they seem: how compassion can mask condescension; how identifying with others' pain often slips into illicit appropriation; how pity can reinforce the unequal relationship between those who cause and those who endure suffering.

    The photo-essay book focuses on the personal histories and faces of domestic violence. Forty full-page black-and-white photos, each with a corresponding page of text, present powerful images of women who have escaped violent relationships.

    Having won awards since her debut at 13, Richardson is the most decorated woman softball player in the history of the game. And her UCLA softball scholarship helped Richardson fulfill another dream: to become a doctor.Now, in her own words, Richardson tells the story of her remarkable life, of her fierce determination to excel at everything she tried, and of the difficult personal sacrifices she was forced to make. A book that also takes readers behind the scenes at the 1996 Summer Olympics, "Living the Dream" is an unforgettable story of hope and ambition, glory, and gold -- a true-life tale that will inspire millions.

    These women warrriors don't mince words but speak with fierce conviction and surprising insight.This book showcases the growing politicization of Asian American women and their emerging feminist movement. It will be a vital contribution to women's and Asian American studies, and a must-read for Asian women and girls everywhere.

    In Feminism and Ecology, Mary Mellor, tracing ecofeminist activism from the Love Canal demonstrations to socialist ecofeminism, provides a comprehensive introduction to the ecofeminist movement and its history. Mellor examines the connections between feminism and the Green movement, outlining the contributions of major participants while contextualizing them within a wider range of debates. Looking past the shortsighted assertion that women and men stand in equal relation to the natural order, Mellor discusses the association of women with biology and nature, illustrating how the relationship between women and the environment can help further our understanding of the relationship between humanity and the natural world. Against trends toward radical economic liberalism, global capitalism, and postmodern pluralism, she argues that within the feminist and Green movements is the basis of a new radical movement.

    . . offers a massive amount of data on the technologies, styles and designs, as well as the symbolic and ritual meanings, of women's tent and related architecture in (various African) cultures".--WOMEN'S REVIEW OF BOOKS. 24 color, 66 b&w photos. 148 line drawings.

    The book brings together film scholars and philosophers in a united commitment to the standards of argumentation that characterize analytic philosophy rather than a single doctrinal approach. The essays address such topics as authorship, emotion, ideology, representation, and expression in film.

    Putting the racial dynamics of feminist interpretation center stage, these essays question such issues as the primacy of sexual difference, the universal nature of psychoanalytic categories, and the role of race in the formation of identity. They offer new ways of approaching African American texts and reframe our thinking about the contexts, discourses, and traditions of the American cultural landscape. Calling for the racialization of whiteness and claiming that psychoanalytic theory should make room for competing discourses of spirituality and diasporic consciousness, these essays give shape to the many stubborn incompatibilities—as well as the transformative possibilities—between white feminist and African American cultural formations.Bringing into conversation a range of psychoanalytic, feminist, and African-derived spiritual perspectives, these essays enact an inclusive politics of reading. Often explosive and always provocative, Female Subjects in Black and White models a new cross-racial feminism.

    The English women prophets and visionaries whose voices are recovered here all lived between the 12th and the 17th centuries and claimed, through the medium of trances and eucharistic piety, to speak for God. They include Margery Kempe and the medieval visionaries, Elizabeth Barton (the Holy Maid of Kent), the Reformation martyr Anne Askew and other godly women described in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, and Lady Eleanor Davies as an example of a woman prophet of the Civil War. The uncertainties surrounding their words and their dissemination are analyzed, and the strategies women devised to be heard and read are exposed, showing that through prophecy they were often able to intervene in the religious and political discourse of their times; the role of God's secretary gave them the opportunity to act and speak autonomously and publicly.

    "How I Got Into Sex" collects fascinating autobiographies of over forty people whose livelihoods are linked to sex. The list of contributors is quite diverse with respect to age, experience, and professional preference, including therapists, educators, leading researchers of sexology, a sex toy designer, housewives, sex surrogates, criminologists, clergy, transsexuals, journalists, sociologists, physicians, psychologists, lawyers, nurses, scientists, social workers, and historians. Their unique personal accounts reveal much about society's attitudes toward sex.

    The words and images that have come to define many young women's lives have long been overlooked and under appreciated. A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World exists because these voices have refused to be silenced.

    While the editors showcase a host of female writers well-known in their day--Felicia Hemans, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Christina Rossetti--they widen the focus to less familiar works by working-class, colonial, and political writers.The anthology's chronological progression highlights the development of women's verse from the late Romantic period through the Victorian fin-de-si�cle. The editors examine the political formations and cultural groupings to which the women belonged, along with the structures which made the development of their work possible: in particular, the numerous minority journals which allowed them a coherent voice. They consider common preoccupations with marriage, slavery, military conflict, national identity, and religious and sexual discourses, and reveal how styles and genres changed across the century. The anthology draws on first editions for texts wherever possible, retaining the spelling and punctuation of the originals for a faithful representation.

    The contributors, who include Mavis Beayton, Stella Bruzzi, Sara Cohen, Sean Cubitt, Keith Negus and Will Straw, debate how popular music performers, subcultures, fans and texts construct and deconstruct `masculine' and `feminine' identities. Using a wide range of case studies, from Mick Jagger to Riot Grrrls, they demonstrate that there is nothing `natural', permanent or immovable about the regime of sexual difference which governs society and culture.Sexing the Groove also includes a comprehensive annotated bibliography for further reading and research into gender and popular music.

    As a feminist project, Femme offers an alliance between many communities of women previously passed over by feminism. Contributors: Leah Lilith Albrecht-Samarasinha, Barbara Cruikshank, Madeline Davis, Heather Findlay, Jewelle Gomez, Kelly Hankin, Leslie Henson, Amber Hollibaugh, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Mabel Maney, Katherine Millersdaughter, Joan Nestle, Lisa Ortiz, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Rebecca Ann Rugg, Gaby Sandoval, Marcy Sheiner, Alex Robertson Textor.

    Originally published in 1978, The Afro-American Woman includes essays that highlight historical experiences common to Black women. The anthology also features essays that focus on early activists Anna J. Cooper, Nannie Burroughs, and Charlotta A. Bass. This book is a long out-of-print, valuable reference source. It was the first written by Black academics which analyzed these women's experiences from a historical and Black nationalist perspective.

    Coauthor of civil rights antipornography laws, life-long political activist, and international lecturer and consultant on issues of sexual violence and exploitation, Dworkin has a prolific and distinguished writing career. She has published thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction, and her work has been translated into twelve languages.This is the first-ever book-length analysis of Dworkin's feminist politics and the first critical analysis to examine her controversial political ideas in light of the literary dimensions of her prose. Cindy Jenefsky, with Ann Russo, looks at Dworkin's major nonfiction works—including Woman Hating, Pornography: Men Possessing Women, and Intercourse —in terms of the rhetorical dynamics animating her political ideas. Also included within this analysis are Jenefsky's lengthy interviews with Dworkin, which focus on her identity as an artist and on the artistic principles guiding her work.The result is a novel reinterpretation of Dworkin's politics and a brilliantly clear analysis of the political nature of artistic practice for readers interested in literary and rhetorical criticism, feminist theory and activism, the volatile debates over pornography and civil rights, and the relationship between contemporary sexual practices and male power systems.