Best of
Feminist-Theory

2017

Living a Feminist Life


Sara Ahmed - 2017
    Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique—often by naming and calling attention to problems—and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions—such as forming support systems—to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.

The Crunk Feminist Collection


Brittney Cooper - 2017
    To address this void, they started a blog. Now with an annual readership of nearly one million, their posts foster dialogue about activist methods, intersectionality, and sisterhood. And the writers' personal identities—as black women; as sisters, daughters, and lovers; and as television watchers, sports fans, and music lovers—are never far from the discussion at hand.These essays explore "Sex and Power in the Black Church," discuss how "Clair Huxtable is Dead," list "Five Ways Talib Kweli Can Become a Better Ally to Women in Hip Hop," and dwell on "Dating with a Doctorate (She Got a Big Ego?)." Self-described as "critical homegirls," the authors tackle life stuck between loving hip hop and ratchet culture while hating patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism.Brittney Cooper is an assistant professor at Rutgers University. In addition to a weekly column in Salon.com, her words have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Cosmo.com, and many others. In 2013 and 2014, she was named to the Root.com's Root 100, an annual list of Top Black Influencers.Susana M. Morris received her Ph.D. from Emory University and is currently an associate professor of English at Auburn University.Robin M. Boylorn is assistant professor at the University of Alabama. She is the author of the award-winning monograph Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience (Peter Lang, 2013).

Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power, and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All


Jaclyn Friedman - 2017
    In Unscrewed, Friedman brings her sharp expertise and incisive observations on the state of sexual politics to the fore, sparking a culture-wide rethink about sex, power and what we accept. With reportage and verve, Unscrewed builds a searing investigation into the state of sexual power in America, and outlines how to make real progress toward equality. Friedman reveals that the anxiety and fear women in our country feel around issues of their sexuality are not, in fact, their fault, but instead are side effects of what she calls our "era of fauxpowerment," wherein women have the illusion of sexual power, with no actual power to support it. Exploring the fault lines where media, religion, politics, and education impinge on our intimate lives, Unscrewed breaks down the causes and signs of fauxpowerment, then gives readers tools to take it on themselves.

Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color


Kimberlé Crenshaw - 2017
    Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color note includes:* A biography of Kimberle Crenshaw* An in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis* A short summary* A character list and related descriptions* Suggested essay questions and answers* Quotes and analysis* A list of themes* A glossary* Historical context* Two academic essays (if available)* 100 quiz questions to improve test taking skills!

Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentring Oppression


Tithi BhattacharyaSerap Saritas Oran - 2017
    While many Marxists tend to focus on the productive economy, this book focuses on issues such as child care, health care, education, family life and the roles of gender, race and sexuality, all of which are central to understanding the relationship between economic exploitation and social oppression.In this book, leading writers such as Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, David McNally and Susan Ferguson reveal the ways in which daily and generational reproductive labour, found in households, schools, hospitals and prisons, also sustains the drive for accumulation.Presenting a more sophisticated alternative to intersectionality, these essays provide ideas which have important strategic implications for anti-capitalists, anti-racists and feminists attempting to find a path through the seemingly ever more complex world we live in.

In America


Diana Goetsch - 2017
    Maybe the answers to how to navigate America are in plain sight, spelled out in a pop song or on a milk carton. Maybe we’re destined to be tumbleweed, “drifting from nowhere to nowhere” in no man’s land. Through it all, Goetsch remains who she’s always been—essentially a love poet, patrolling the shadowlands for what can be redeemed.

Butterfly Politics


Catharine A. MacKinnon - 2017
    Under the right conditions, small simple actions can produce large complex effects. In this timely and provocative book, Catharine A. MacKinnon argues that the right seemingly minor interventions in the legal realm can have a butterfly effect that generates major social and cultural transformations.Butterfly Politics brings this incisive understanding of social causality to a wide-ranging exploration of gender relations. The pieces collected here many published for the first time provide a new perspective on MacKinnon's career as a pioneer of legal theory and practice and an activist for women s rights. Its central concerns of gender inequality, sexual harassment, rape, pornography, and prostitution have defined MacKinnon's intellectual, legal, and political pursuits for over forty years. Though differing in style and approach, the selections all share the same motivation: to end inequality, including abuse, in women s lives. Several mark the first time ideas that are now staples of legal and political discourse appeared in public for example, the analysis of substantive equality. Others urge changes that have yet to be realized.The butterfly effect can animate political activism and advance equality socially and legally. Seemingly insignificant actions, through collective recursion, can intervene in unstable systems to produce systemic change. A powerful critique of the legal and institutional denial of reality that perpetuates practices of gender inequality, Butterfly Politics provides a model of what principled, effective, socially conscious engagement with law looks like.

Us Women, Our Ways, Our World


Pat Dudgeon - 2017
    The collection engages with questions such as: What makes Aboriginal women strong? Why are grandmothers so important (even ones never met)? How is the connection to country different for Aboriginal people compared to non-Aboriginal people’s love of nature or sense of belonging to an area? What is Aboriginal spirituality? These writings are generous, inclusive and considerate of the non-Aboriginal reader’s feelings. They are hopeful for the future, with an emphasis on acknowledging, joining, collaborating and caring. From the Introduction: “The value that Aboriginal women place on relationships emanates throughout the book.

Battling Injustice: 16 Women Nobel Peace Laureates


Supriya Vani - 2017
    It will inspire parents not to clip the wings of their daughters. All our girls are meant for stars, and they need equality and freedom to flourish.' --Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai and her father Ziauddin YousafzaiMalala Yousafzai, Tawakkol Karman, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, Shirin Ebadi -- these women and others like them shaped the history of their peoples through their fight against political persecution, social deprivation and gender discrimination. The Nobel Peace Prize memorializes their achievements and courage and ability to inspire hope in others.Through the life portraits of sixteen women Nobel Peace laureates, peace activist and journalist Supriya Vani argues that the fate of the world is inextricably tied to the emancipation of women, and that the cause of world peace urgently requires women leaders. These stories, the result of six years of painstaking research and many interviews, show how we have much to learn from the laureates, from the events that shaped their work to their inner journey of spirit. Women in the workplace, at home, as mothers and nurturers, as leaders, will all find something to take away from this collection.Battling Injustice is an authentic record of women's cultural history, told through the lives of some of the most remarkable women since modernity.'The lives of the women Nobel Peace laureates detailed in this book by Supriya Vani are clear evidence of my belief that women are naturally more sensitive to others' needs and well-being. They have greater potential for expressing love and affection. Therefore, when, as now, compassionate leadership is required, women should take on a greater role in making this world a better place.' --His Holiness the Dalai Lama 'Supriya Vani's stories of Nobel Peace laureates amount to much more than a sincere tribute to some of the world's most fearless women. By bringing us their voices, their vulnerabilities, their wisdom, she inspires us all to make a difference in the world by tapping into our better selves.' --Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post'A monumental effort by a vivacious young woman on the human potential for goodness.' --Sharon Stone, American actress and human rights activist'Since 1999, Nobel Peace Prize laureates have been gathering to reaffirm their commitment to peaceful means of resolving the world'sproblems. I admire the contribution of women laureates, their energy and warmth. As shown in this book by Supriya Vani, they give their hearts to our common efforts and to the younger generations that will continue their great work.' --Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union 'Supriya Vani's book is for everyone across the globe. I am sure it will spur many souls to tread the path of humanitarian service, to choose a life of peace and love.' --Nobel Peace laureate Tawakkol Karman'This book will inspire and motivate young people to work for peace.' --Cherie Blair, British barrister and spouse of former British prime minister Tony Blair'I recommend this book to the youth. It can inspire them to reach their goals.' --Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi'Supriya Vani rightly highlights the fact that the world needs more women leaders, who are spiritually, mentally and emotionally equipped to bring peace to our planet.' --Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum'I hope those who read this book will feel inspired to work for disarmament and peace.' --Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire'In February of 2017, at the XVI World Summit of Nobel Peace laureates held in Bogota, I had the happy opportunity to meet with six of my fellow female laureates. They represent the values of courage, determination, generosity and solidarity shared by millions of women around the planet, who strive each day to make a better, freer and more peaceful world. That is why I welcome and cherish this book by Supriya Vani -- the stories of all the sixteen women Nobel Peace laureates must be known. They are a source of inspiration forour youth and every one of us.' --Juan Manuel Santos Calderon, president of Colombia and a Nobel peace laureate

The Feminist Reference Desk: Concepts, Critiques, and Conversations


Maria T. Accardi - 2017
    Ultimately, feminist library instruction seeks to empower learners to be both critical thinkers and critical actors who are motivated and prepared to bring about social change. The concept of feminist pedagogy has recently energized current conversations on library instruction, so it is fitting and timely to consider how feminism might intersect with another vital student-centered service the academic library provides: the reference desk. Inspired by the ideas, possibilities, and discussions set in motion by Maria T. Accardi’s Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction (2013), this edited collection continues these conversations by considering how feminist strategies and philosophies might reshape, invigorate, and critique approaches to reference services. In short, this collection will provide critical and thought-provoking explorations of how academic librarians might rethink central reference concepts and services, from the reference interview, to the reference collection, to the staffing of the reference desk itself, from a feminist perspective.About the Editor: Maria T. Accardi is the author of Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction (2013), for which she received the 2014 ACRL WGSS Significant Achievement Award, and a co-editor of Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods (2010). She is Associate Librarian and Coordinator of Instruction and Reference at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, Indiana.

Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology


Astrida Neimanis - 2017
    Exploring the cultural and philosophical implications of this fact, Bodies of Water develops an innovative new mode of posthuman feminist phenomenology that understands our bodies as being fundamentally part of the natural world and not separate from or privileged to it.Building on the works by Luce Irigaray, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze, Astrida Neimanis's book is a landmark study that brings a new feminist perspective to bear on ideas of embodiment and ecological ethics in the posthuman critical moment.

Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader


Cyd Cipolla - 2017
    The essays here "queer"--or denaturalize and make strange--ideas that are taken for granted in both areas of study. Reimagining the meanings of and relations among queer and feminist theories and a wide range of scientific disciplines, contributors foster new critical and creative knowledge-projects that attend to shifting and uneven operations of power, privilege, and dispossession, while also highlighting potentialities for uncertainty, subversion, transformation, and play.Theoretically and rhetorically powerful, these essays also take seriously the materiality of "natural" objects and phenomena: bones, voles, chromosomes, medical records and more all help substantiate answers to questions such as, What is sex? How are race, gender, sexuality, and other systems of differences co-constituted? The foundational essays and new writings collected here offer a generative resource for students and scholars alike, demonstrating the ingenuity and dynamism of queer feminist scholarship.

Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation


Renate Klein - 2017
    Pro-surrogacy groups in rich countries such as Australia and Western Europe lobby for the shift to commercial surrogacy. Their capitalist neo-liberal argument is that a well-regulated fertility industry would avoid the exploitative practices of poor countries. Central to the project of cross-border surrogacy is the ideology that legalised commercial surrogacy is a legitimate means to provide infertile couples and gay men with children who share all or part of their genes. Women, without whose bodies this project is not possible are reduced to incubators, to ovens, to suitcases. And the ‘product child’ is a tradable commodity who has never consented to being a ‘take away baby’: removed from their birth mother and given to strangers aka ‘intended parents’. Still, those in favour of this practice of reproductive slavery speak of ‘Fair Trade Surrogacy’ and ‘responsible surrogacy’. In Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation Renate Klein details her objections to surrogacy by examining the short- and long-term harms done to the so-called surrogate mothers, egg providers and the female partner in a heterosexual commissioning couple. Klein also looks at the rights of children and compares surrogacy to (forced) adoption practices. She concludes that surrogacy, whether so-called altruistic or commercial can never be ethical and outlines forms of resistance to Stop Surrogacy Now. www.stopsurrogacynow.com It is the global advertising campaigns that groom infertile couples and gay men that have led to the establishment of multibillion cross-border industries: money made literally from women’s flesh.