Best of
Gender

2000

Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics


bell hooks - 2000
    In engaging and provocative style, bell hooks introduces a popular theory of feminism rooted in common sense and the wisdom of experience. Hers is a vision of a beloved community that appeals to all those committed to equality, mutual respect, and justice. hooks applies her critical analysis to the most contentious and challenging issues facing feminists today, including reproductive rights, violence, race, class, and work. With her customary insight and unsparing honesty, hooks calls for a feminism free from barriers but rich with rigorous debate. In language both eye-opening and optimistic, hooks encourages us to demand alternatives to patriarchal, racist, and homophobic culture, and to imagine a different future.

Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality


Anne Fausto-Sterling - 2000
    In lively and impassioned prose, she breaks down three key dualisms - sex/gender, nature/nurture, and real/constructed - and asserts that individuals born as mixtures of male and female exist as one of five natural human variants and, as such, should not be forced to compromise their differences to fit a flawed societal definition of normality.

Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism


Aileen Moreton-Robinson - 2000
    A pioneering work, it will overturn complacent notions of a mutual sisterhood and the common good.

Close to Spider Man


Ivan E. Coyote - 2000
    The young women in Ivan Coyote's deeply personal stories are looking to make a break from their circumstances, but the North is in their bones: so is their connections to family, friends, and other women. Like the protagonist in the title story, a waitress whose attempts to help a young co-worker saddled with a lunatic father finds her running across rooftops and climbing ladders; by getting close to Spider Man, she gets closer to freedom.Startling in their intimacy, the stories in "Close to Spider Man" make up a moving scrapbook of what it's like to be a young queer woman in the North, journeys imbued with the colours of a prescient sexuality and an honest heart.Runner-up, Danuta Gleed Award for Short-FictionNow in its third printing.

Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy


Grace Chang - 2000
    Specifically, this was in direct response to a campaign that had been brewing for years in policy circles and "citizen" groups, culminating in California state's Proposition 187. The initiative proposed to bar undocumented children from public schools and turn away undocumented students from state colleges and universities. It also proposed to deny the undocumented an array of public benefits and social services, including prenatal and preventive care such as immunizations.While the overt purpose of this voter initiative was to curtail immigration, ostensibly by restricting the use of public benefits and social services by undocumented immigrants, the real agenda behind it was to criminalize immigrants for presumably entering the country "illegally" and stealing resources from "true" United States citizens. More to the point, Proposition 187 came out of and was aimed at perpetuating the myth that all immigrants are "illegal" at worst and, at best, the cause of our society's and economy's ills.Throughout US history, immigration has been viewed and intentionally constructed as plague, infection or infestation and immigrants as disease (social and physical), varmints or invaders. If we look at contemporary popular films, few themes seem to tap the fears or thrill the American imagination more than that of the timeless space alien invading the United States, and statespeople have snatched up this popular image to rouse public support for

Night-Vision: Illuminating War & Class on the Neo-Colonial Terrain


Butch Lee - 2000
    hegemony, and the need for a revolutionary movement of the oppressed to overthrow it all.From Night-Vision: "The transformation to a neo-colonial world has only begun, but it promises to be as drastic, as disorienting a change as was the original european colonial conquest of the human race. Capitalism is again ripping apart & restructuring the world, and nothing will be the same. Not race, not nation, not gender, and certainly not whatever culture you used to have. Now you have outcast groups as diverse as the Aryan Nation and the Queer Nation and the Hip Hop Nation publicly rejecting the right of the u.s. government to rule them. All the building blocks of human culture—race, gender, nation, and especially class—are being transformed under great pressure to embody the spirit of this neo-colonial age."

The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life


Michael Warner - 2000
    In place of sexual status quo, Warner offers a vision of true sexual autonomy that will forever change the way we think about sex, shame, and identity.

Solitude of Self


Elizabeth Cady Stanton - 2000
    With gorgeous and direct language, she presents a compassionate appeal for human equality and dignity, and she addresses the place of solitude in the lives of women and men. Solitude of Self joins the canon of classic American speeches. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s timeless appeal presents the historical convergence between the 19th and the 21st centuries. In this last speech, Stanton proves that while many rights have been gained over the past century, inequality and degradation of the soul continue to thrive. For those opposed to the "glass ceilings" covering our culture, Solitude of Self will be a perfect gift of inspiration and comfort.

The Frailty Myth: Redefining the Physical Potential of Women and Girls


Colette Dowling - 2000
    The myth of female frailty, with its roots in nineteenth-century medicine and misogyny, has had a damaging effect on women's health, social status, and physical safety. It is Dowling's controversial thesis that women succumb to societal pressures to appear weak in order to seem more "feminine."The Frailty Myth presents new evidence that girls are weaned from the use of their bodies even before they begin school. By adolescence, their strength and aerobic powers have started to decline unless the girls are exercising vigorously--and most aren't. By sixteen, they have already lost bone density and turned themselves into prime candidates for osteoporosis. They have also been deprived of motor stimulation that is essential for brain growth.Yet as breakthroughs among elite women athletes grow more and more astounding, it begins to appear that strength and physical skill--for all women--is only a matter of learning and training. Men don't have a monopoly on physical prowess; when women and men are matched in size and level of training, the strength gap closes. In some areas, women are actually equipped to outperform men, due partly to differences in body structure, and partly to the newly discovered strengthening benefits of estrogen.Drawing on extensive research in motor development, performance assessment, sports physi-ology, and endocrinology, Dowling presents an astonishing picture of the new physical woman. And she creates a powerful argument that true equality isn't possible until women learn how to stand up for themselves--physically.

Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel


Jean Kilbourne - 2000
    But as Jean Kilbourne points out in this fascinating and shocking expose, the dreamlike promise of advertising always leaves us hungry for more. We can never be satisfied, because the products we love cannot love us back."When was the last time you felt this comfortable in a relationship?"; An ad for sneakers."You can love it without getting your heart broken."; An ad for a car."Until I find a real man, I'll settle for a real smoke."; A woman in a cigarette ad.Drawing upon her knowledge of psychology, media, and women's issues, Kilbourne offers nothing less than a new understanding of a ubiquitous phenomenon in our culture. The average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements a day and watches three years' worth of television ads over the course of a lifetime. Kilbourne paints a gripping portrait of how this barrage of advertising drastically affects young people, especially girls, by offering false promises of rebellion, connection, and control. She also offers a surprising analysis of the way advertising creates and then feeds an addictive mentality that often continues throughout adulthood.

These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women


Marjorie Agosín - 2000
    Despite cultural maxims encouraging them to be silent, women continue to speak, often through the language of poetry, where there is an abundance of intuition and the possibility of reclaiming power through language. In the work included here, we see how the common threads of courage and inventiveness can be woven into a bright tapestry of women’s voices that presents a true picture of a culture that must create its own history. Over fifty poets, including those well-known, such as Gabriela Mistral, Alfonsina Storni, and Cristina Peri Rossi, and those just emerging are included.Marjorie Agosín, editor of the Secret Weavers series, is well-known as a poet, writer, and human rights activist. She is a professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity


Ann Arnett Ferguson - 2000
    Based on three years of participant observation research at an elementary school, Bad Boys offers a richly textured account of daily interactions between teachers and students to understand this serious problem. Ann Arnett Ferguson demonstrates how a group of eleven- and twelve-year-old males are identified by school personnel as "bound for jail" and how the youth construct a sense of self under such adverse circumstances. The author focuses on the perspective and voices of pre-adolescent African American boys. How does it feel to be labeled "unsalvageable" by your teacher? How does one endure school when the educators predict one's future as "a jail cell with your name on it?" Through interviews and participation with these youth in classrooms, playgrounds, movie theaters, and video arcades, the author explores what "getting into trouble" means for the boys themselves. She argues that rather than simply internalizing these labels, the boys look critically at schooling as they dispute and evaluate the meaning and motivation behind the labels that have been attached to them. Supplementing the perspectives of the boys with interviews with teachers, principals, truant officers, and relatives of the students, the author constructs a disturbing picture of how educators' beliefs in a "natural difference" of black children and the "criminal inclination" of black males shapes decisions that disproportionately single out black males as being "at risk" for failure and punishment.Bad Boys is a powerful challenge to prevailing views on the problem of black males in our schools today. It will be of interest to educators, parents, and youth, and to all professionals and students in the fields of African-American studies, childhood studies, gender studies, juvenile studies, social work, and sociology, as well as anyone who is concerned about the way our schools are shaping the next generation of African American boys.Anne Arnett Ferguson is Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies and Women's Studies, Smith College.

Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader


Barbara A. Crow - 2000
    Yet the role radical feminism played within the women's movement remains hotly contested. For some, radical feminism has made a lasting contribution to our understanding of male privilege, and the ways the power imbalance between men and women affects the everyday fabric of women's lives. For others, radical feminism represents a reflexive hostility toward men, sex, and heterosexuality, and thus is best ignored or forgotten.Rather than have the movement be interpreted by others, Radical Feminism permits the original work of radical feminists to speak for itself. Comprised of pivotal documents written by U.S. radical feminists in the 1960s and 1970s, Radical Feminism combines both unpublished and previously published manifestos, position papers, minutes of meetings, and newsletters essential to an understanding of radical feminism. Consisting of documents unavailable to the general public, and others in danger of being lost altogether, this panoramic collection is organized around the key issues of sex and sexuality, race, children, lesbianism, separatism, and class. Barbara A. Crow rescues the groundbreaking original work of such groups as The Furies, Redstockings, Cell 16, and the Women's Liberation Movement. Contributors include Kate Millet, Susan Brownmiller, Shulamith Firestone, Rosalyn Baxandall, Toni Morrison, Ellen Willis, Anne Koett, and Vivan Gornick.Gathered for the first time in one volume, these primary sources of radical feminism fill a major gap in the literature on feminism and feminist thought. Radical Feminism is an indispensable resource for future generations of feminists, scholars, and activists.

Flirting with Danger: Young Women's Reflections on Sexuality and Domination


Lynn M. Phillips - 2000
    Phillips explores how young women make sense of, resist, and negotiate conflicting cultural messages about sexual agency, responsibility, aggression, and desire. How do women develop their ideas about sex, love, and domination? Why do they express feminist views condemning male violence in the abstract, but often adamantly refuse to name their own violent and exploitive encounters as abuse, rape, or victimization?Based on in-depth individual and collective interviews with a racially and culturally diverse sample of college-aged women, Flirting with Danger sheds valuable light on the cultural lenses through which young women interpret their sexual encounters and their experiences of male aggression in heterosexual relationships.Phillips makes an important contribution to the fields of female and adolescent sexuality, feminist theory, and feminist method. The volume will also be of particular use to advocates seeking to design prevention and intervention programs which speak to the complex needs of women grappling with questions of sexuality and violence.

Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas Foreword by Paula Gunn Allen Third Printing


Barbara A. Mann - 2000
    Gantowisas means more than simply �woman� - gantowisas is �woman acting in her official capacity� as fire-keeping woman, faith-keeping woman, gift-giving woman; leader, counselor, judge; Mother of the People. This is the light in which the reader will find her in Iroquoian Women. Barbara Alice Mann draws upon worthy sources, be they early or modern, oral or written, to present a Native American point of view that insists upon accuracy, not only in raw reporting, but also in analysis. Iroquoian Women is the first book-length study to regard Iroquoian women as central and indispensable to Iroquoian studies.

The Unknown Karen Horney: Essays on Gender, Culture, and Psychoanalysis


Karen Horney - 2000
    It includes pieces on feminine psychology and the relations between the sexes as well as on other aspects of psychoanalytic theory. The editor's introductions set these works in context, showing their significance for Horney's thought and their relation to her other writings. The material in Part 1 provides an important supplement to Feminine Psychology, the book that established Horney as the first great psychoanalytic feminist. It reveals aspects of Horney's early thought not fully developed elsewhere, along with the views about feminine psychology and the relations between the sexes that reflect her later thinking. Part 2 deepens our understanding of the final two phases of Karen Horney's thought - her break with Freud and proposal of a new psychoanalytic paradigm in the 1930s, and her mature theory, developed in the 1940s. In presenting eighteen previously unpublished pieces, four essays that have not been available in English, and other texts that have been difficult to locate, this collection makes accessible an important segme

Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600–1950


Gregory M. Pflugfelder - 2000
    During each of three major eras, he argues, one field dominated discourse on male-male sexual relations: popular culture in the Edo period (1600-1868), jurisprudence in the Meiji period (1868-1912), and medicine in the twentieth century.This multidisciplinary and theoretically engaged analysis will interest not only students and scholars of Japan but also readers of gay studies, literary studies, gender studies, and cultural studies.

Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement


Constance Curry - 2000
    These compelling first-person accounts take us back to one of the most tumultuous periods in our nation s history--to the early days of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Albany Freedom Ride, voter registration drives and lunch counter sit-ins, Freedom Summer, the 1964 Democratic Convention, and the rise of Black Power and the women s movement. The book delves into the hearts of the women to ask searching questions. Why did they, of all the white women growing up in their hometowns, cross the color line in the days of segregation and join the Southern Freedom Movement? What did they see, do, think, and feel in those uncertain but hopeful days? And how did their experiences shape the rest of their lives?"

Surviving Domestic Violence: Voices of Women Who Broke Free


Elaine Weiss - 2000
    Each was a victim of domestic violence, escaped from her abuser, reclaimed her dignity, reconstructed her life, and rediscovered peace. Domestic violence doesn't just happen "out there" somewhere. It happens in our town, in our neighborhood, on our street. It happens to women we see at work, the supermarket, the movie theater, the ballet and the PTA board meeting. Every woman who has left an abusive man-every woman who has yet to leave-will find encouragement and hope in the voices of these women who broke free.

A Gentleman Entertains: A Guide to Making Memorable Occasions Happen


John Bridges - 2000
    Practical and unpretentious," A Gentleman Entertains" includes 15 essential preparations before entertaining 100 things every gentleman should know about being a host Ideas for twelve specific parties complete with more than 20 fool-proof recipes Tips on dealing with inevitable, inescapable, really ugly disaster moments.

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl


John Colapinto - 2000
    The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine—and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's—and one family's—amazing survival in the face of terrible odds.

Pronoun Envy: Literary Uses of Linguistic Gender


Anna Livia - 2000
    Most accounts do not extend beyond policy issues like the official institution of non-sexist language. In this volume, Anna Livia reveals continuities both before and after the sexist language refore movement and shows how the creative practices of pronoun use on the part of feminist writers had both aesthetic and political ends. Livia uses the term pronoun envy ironically to show that rather being a case of misguided envy, battles over gendered language are central to feminist concerns.Livia examines a broad corpus of written texts in English and French, concentrating on those texts which problematize the traditional functioning of the linguistic gender system. They range from novels and prose poems to film scripts and personal testimonies, and in time from the 19th century to the present. Some withhold any indication of gender; others have non-gendered characters. Livia's goal is two-fold; to help bridge the divide between linguistic and literary analysis, and to show how careful study of the manipulation of linguistic gender in these texts informs larger concerns. This fresh and highly interdisciplinary work lies at the intersection of several vital areas, including language and gender, sociolinguistics, and feminist literary analysis.

Inclusion and Democracy


Iris Marion Young - 2000
    Processes of debate and decision making often marginalize individuals and groups because the norms of political discussion are biased against some forms of expression. Inclusion and Democracy broadens our understanding of democratic communication by reflecting on the positive political functions of narrative, rhetorically situated appeals, and public protest. It reconstructs concepts of civil society and public sphere as enacting such plural forms of communication among debating citizens in large-scale societies. Iris Marion Young thoroughly discusses class, race, and gender bias in democratic processes, and argues that the scope of a polity should extend as wide as the scope of social and economic interactions that raise issues of justice. Today this implies the need for global democratic institutions. Young also contends that due to processes of residential segregation and the design of municipal jurisdictions, metropolitan governments which preserve significant local autonomy may be necessary to promote political equality. This latest work from one of the world's leading political philosophers will appeal to audiences from a variety of fields, including philosophy, political science, women's studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and communications studies.

Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing


Ann Vickery - 2000
    Contesting those increasingly normative accounts which seek to contain Language writing within familiar narratives of literary history, she draws on recent and hitherto unpublished archival material as well as interviews with the writers themselves. In a series of detailed readings and case studies, she investigates how gendered identities are made and consolidated through cultural practice and textual production. Accordingly, literary analysis is combined with an exploration of paratextual processes such as publishing, editing, theorizing, public readings, and talk series. Vickery further shows how Language writers tried to refigure authorship through processes such as collaboration, textual borrowing, clairvoyance, and counsel. The case studies include the works of Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Tina Darragh, Joan Retallack, Hannah Weiner, Bernadette Mayer, Rae Armantrout, and Fanny Howe, as well as the formative stages of the journals L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and HOW(ever), Lyn Hejinian's Tuumba Press, and Susan Howe's radio program "Poetry."

Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England


Michael C. Schoenfeldt - 2000
    After Galen, the predominant medical paradigm of the period envisaged a self governed by humors, literally embodying inner emotion by locating and explaining human passion within a taxonomy of internal organs and fluids. It thus gave a profoundly material emphasis to behavioral phenomena, giving the poets of the period a vital and compelling vocabulary for describing the ways in which selves inhabit and experience bodies.

Away from Home: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879-2000: American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879-2000


K. Tsianina Lomawaima - 2000
    "Artfully weaving old photographs, first-person accounts, and well-organized text and verse, the editors present important and predominantly Native views of some 'good, bad, and ugly' aspects of Indian boarding school life.—Choice

Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender


Charlotte E. Fonrobert - 2000
    Is the designated impurity of menstruation sexist? Or does ritual absence from sex during menstruation encourage a rhythmic reaffirmation of conjugal intimacy?This book offers a new perspective on the extensive rabbinic discussions of menstrual impurity, female physiology, and anatomy, and on the social and religious institutions those discussions engendered. It analyzes the functions of these discussions within the larger textual world of rabbinic literature and in the context of Jewish and Christian culture in late antiquity.How did gender work—how was it made to work—in rabbinic literature? How did that literature dictate the place of women in Jewish culture? In search of answers to these questions, the author analyzes the architectural metaphors deployed to describe female anatomy, arguing that this discursive construction operated culturally to associate women with the home and exclude them from rabbinic study halls.The author shows that rabbinic discourse is not completely controlled by rabbinic ideology, however. She analyzes talmudic discussions that allow alternative gender perspectives to emerge, indicating that women and their bodies were not completely objectified. This suggests that the Babylonian Talmud does not present a completely homogeneous gender structure, but contains a number of different, sometimes contradictory, possibilities.The book concludes with a study of early Christian texts that relate to the same biblical laws on menstrual impurity as rabbinic texts, focusing in particular on a Jewish-Christian text in which the anonymous author polemicizes against Jewish women converts who remain attached to the biblical laws. This text allows us to reconstruct women’s perspectives on the inscription of religious meaning onto their bodies and physiological processes.

Education, Equality and Human Rights: Issues of gender, 'race', sexuality, disability and social class


Mike Cole - 2000
    Each of the five equality issues of gender, race, sexuality, disability and social class are covered as areas in their own right, and in relation to education. Written by experts in each particular field, the chapters trace the history of the various issues up to the present and enable readers to assess their continuing relevance in the future.With a new preface written by leading educationist Peter McLaren, the substantially updated second edition of this comprehensive book provides an important educational perspective on world-wide equality issues for teachers and student teachers at all stages.

Lady in Waiting: Developing Your Love Relationships


Debby Jones - 2000
    Are you waiting for the right man? Or becoming the right woman?

Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood


Gary Taylor - 2000
    Castration is a lively history of the meaning, function, and act of castration from its place in the early church to its secular reinvention in the Renaissance as a spiritualized form of masculinity in its 20th century position at the core of psychoanalysis.

The Door in the Dream: Conversations with Eminent Women in Science


Elga Wasserman - 2000
    This book gathers the personal stories of the select few women scientists who have achieved the honor of election to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. It is helpful to those concerned about women: educators, employers, and more.

Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930


Holly Edwards - 2000
    Published to coincide with the multimedia exhibition that opens at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute and travels to the Walters Art Gallery and the Mint Museum of Art, this catalogue considers how urban, mercantile, Protestant America represented the Islamic world of the Middle East and North Africa in ways that say more about itself than the foreign culture.This gorgeously illustrated volume first looks at the use of Orientalist stereotypes by some of the country's most important high art painters of the nineteenth century: Frederic Edwin Church's treatment of the exotic terrain through a lens of deep religiosity; a more cosmopolitan reading of the harem girl by John Singer Sargent; the perfumed alternative to industrial capitalism conjured in the landscapes and market scenes of Samuel Colman and Louis Comfort Tiffany; and interpretations of the Orient as emancipatory by Ella Pell, the only major woman Orientalist. The book next traces the popularization of Orientalism in the decorative arts (including a few treasures from Olana, Church's Moorish-style home on the Hudson), on Broadway, and in Hollywood, as well as through advertising that linked consumer products with visual suggestions of exotic sexuality and through cultural objects, such as the Shriners' fez.The generous color plates show both an innocent romanticization of the Orient and a darker, heavily eroticized version of Oriental otherness. An excellent chronology and bibliography, in addition to expert essays by both Americanists and Islamicists, give context to absorbing images. Though a perfect companion for visitors to the exhibition, Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures is also for anyone seeking an uncommon take on the development of American self-understanding. Exhibition Schedule: ? The Sterling and Francine Clark Art InstituteWilliamstown, MassachusettsJune 11-September 4, 2000 The Walters Art GalleryBaltimore, MarylandOctober 1-December 10, 2000 The Mint Museum of ArtCharlotte, North CarolinaFebruary 3-April 22, 2001

Cosmodolphins: Feminist Cultural Studies of Technology, Animals and the Sacred


Mette Marie Bryld - 2000
    The authors analyse contemporary categorizations of ‘human self‘ versus ‘wild other‘ through three twentieth century icons that best illustrate ambivalent ideas about self and other: spaceships,horoscopes and dolphins.The book includes interviews with astrologers, wilderness guides, dolphin trainers and academic staff of space agencies from both Russia and the US.The interviews highlight some interesting differences between these two cultures in ideas both about gender and about self/other boundaries. The authors also look at representations of the space race in film and science fiction in both cultures, as well as New Age and other texts on dolphins, astrology and space travel.Cosmodolphins shows how all three icons partly reproduce and partly alter the earlier, colonial self/other dichotomy of woman, native and nature against the ‘civilized‘ technologically masterful male self. We see how a particular icon of the wild - the dolphin - is elevated to mythological status, how a secularized society looks for spiritual fulfilment in the `beyond‘ - astrology - and in its own technological advances - space travel.Theoretically innovative, this book represents an alternative approach to ecofeminist themes linking them up with studies of new technocultures and cyborgs. It forms an excellent exemplar of feminist cultural studies.

Eve's Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History


Robert S. McElvaine - 2000
    McElvaine has broken ranks with his fellow historians and answered the call made by E.O. Wilson in Consilience, that humanistic scholars must begin to draw upon the natural sciences in order to fully understand the human condition. Bridging the gap between evolutionary biology and cultural history, McElvaine has created what he calls a biohistory. He begins with the assertion, by no means accepted by most historians, that history must begin with an understanding of the evolutionary heritage we carried out of the Stone Age, and that the time before writing, usually dismissed by historians as prehistory, saw the development of forces that have shaped the entire course of human history.

Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People


Viviane Namaste - 2000
    Through combined theoretical and empirical study, Viviane K. Namaste argues that transgendered people are not so much produced by medicine or psychiatry as they are erased, or made invisible, in a variety of institutional and cultural settings. Namaste begins her work by analyzing two theoretical perspectives on transgendered people—queer theory and the social sciences—displaying how neither of these has adequately addressed the issues most relevant to sex change: everything from employment to health care to identity papers. Namaste then examines some of the rhetorical and semiotic inscriptions of transgendered figures in culture, including studies of early punk and glam rock subcultures, to illustrate how the effacement of transgendered people is organized in different cultural sites. Invisible Lives concludes with new research on some of the day-to-day concerns of transgendered people, offering case studies in violence, health care, gender identity clinics, and the law.

Undomesticated Ground


Stacy Alaimo - 2000
    Feminists, troubled by the way in which such representations show women controlled by powerful natural forces and confined to domestic space, have sought to distance themselves from nature. In Undomesticated Ground, Stacy Alaimo issues a bold call to reclaim nature as feminist space. Her analysis of a remarkable range of feminist writings--as well as of popular journalism, visual arts, television, and film--powerfully demonstrates that nature has been and continues to be an essential concept for feminist theory and practice.Alaimo urges feminist theorists to rethink the concept of nature by probing the vastly different meanings that it carries. She discusses its significance for Americans engaged in social and political struggles from, for example, the Indian Wars of the early nineteenth century, to the birth control movement in the 1920s, to contemporary battles against racism and heterosexism. Reading works by Catherine Sedgwick, Mary Austin, Emma Goldman, Nella Larson, Donna Haraway, Toni Morrison, and others, Alaimo finds that some of these writers strategically invoke nature for feminist purposes while others cast nature as a postmodern agent of resistance in the service of both environmentalism and the women's movement.By examining the importance of nature within literary and political texts, this book greatly expands the parameters of the nature writing genre and establishes nature as a crucial site for the cultural work of feminism.

The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre


Laurence Senelick - 2000
    It examines: * tribal rituals and shamanic practices in the Balkans and Chinese-Tibet * the gender-bending elements of Greek and early Christian religion * the homosexual appeal of the boy actor on the traditional stage of China, Japan and England * the origins of the dame comedian, the principal boy, the glamour drag artiste and the male impersonator * artists such as David Bowie, Boy George, Charles Ludlam, Dame Edna Everage, Lily Savage, Candy Darling, Julian Clary and the New York Dolls. Lavishly illustrated with unusual and rare pictures, this is the first ever cross-cultural study of theatrical transvestism. It is a must for anyone interested in cross-dressing, theatre, and gender.

On Black Men


David Marriott - 2000
    From national dreams to media fantasies, there is a persistent imagining of what black men must be. This book explores the legacy of that role, particularly its violent effect on how black men have learned to see themselves and one another. David Marriott draws upon popular culture, ranging from lynching photographs to current Hollywood film, as well as the ideas of key thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and John Edgar Wideman, to reveal a vicious pantomime of unvarying reification and compulsive fascination, of whites looking at themselves through images of black desolation, and of blacks dispossessed by that process.

Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics


Charlotte Hooper - 2000
    Charlotte Hooper draws from feminist theory to provide an account of the relationship between masculinity and power. She explores how the theory and practice of international relations produces and sustains masculine identities and masculine rivalries.This volume asserts that international politics shapes multiple masculinities rather than one static masculinity, positing an interplay between a "hegemonic masculinity" (associated with elite, western male power) and other subordinated, feminized masculinities (typically associated with poor men, nonwestern men, men of color, and/or gay men). Employing feminist analyses to confront gender-biased stereotyping in various fields of international political theory--including academic scholarship, journals, and popular literature like The Economist--Hooper reconstructs the nexus of international relations and gender politics during this age of globalization.

Global Critical Race Feminism: An International Reader


Adrien Katherine Wing - 2000
    Containing nearly thirty essays, the book addresses such topical themes as responses to white feminism; the flashpoint issue of female genital mutilation; the intersections of international law with U.S. law; Third World women in the First World; violence against women; and the global workplace.Broadly representative, the reader addresses the role and status-legal and otherwise-of women in such countries as Cuba, New Zealand, France, Serbia, Nicaragua, Colombia, South Africa, Japan, China, Australia, Ghana, and many others. Authors include: Aziza al-Hibri, Penelope Andrews, Taimie Bryant, Devon Carbado, Mai Chen, Brenda Cossman, Lisa Crooms, Mary Dudziak, Isabelle Gunning, Anna Han, Berta Hern�ndez, Laura Ho, Sharon Hom, Rosemary King, Kiyoko Knapp, Hope Lewis, Martha Morgan, Zorica Mrsevic, Vasuki Nesiah, Leslye Obiora, Gaby Or�-Aguilar, Catherine Powell, Jenny Rivera, Celina Romany, Judy Scales-Trent, Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, J. Clay Smith, and Leti Volpp.

Love, Sex and Gender in the World Religions


Joseph Runzo - 2000
    Among the issues covered are gender politics, sexual symbolism and religious ecstasy, and their role in religions as diverse as Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism. Featuring essays by such distinguished thinkers as Arvind Sharma, Karen Lebacqz, Julius Lipner, Karen Jo Torjesen and Carter Heyward, this new collection combines classic sources of text and tradition with innovative ideas and modes of thought, creating a detailed but accessible study. This clear and concise book will challenge the reader to think creatively about both past and present concepts of sexuality, relationships and the role of women in the world faiths. It should be of interest to students, scholars and the interested general reader alike.

What Is a Man?: 3,000 Years of Wisdom on the Art of Manly Virtue


Waller R. Newell - 2000
    A source of guidance and inspiration, this wisdom-filled collection also reflects on the confusions of modern manhood by addressing contemporary issues through voices as diverse as James Dean, David Foster Wallace, and Kurt Cobain. Reminding us all of the relevance of file manly tradition, What Is a Man? offers a readable and revelatory guide to the virtues of men of their best.

Intimacy


Lauren Berlant - 2000
    How is it that "private matters" are analyzed endlessly in public forums on a daily basis? Why is it assumed that "getting a life" means having a private relationship? Intended to unravel some of the tangled relations that fall under the broad category of "intimacy," this provocative collection of sixteen essays articulates the ways in which intimate lives are connected with the institutions, ideologies, and desires that organize people's worlds. Locating its domain in the familiar spaces of friendship, love, sex, family, and feeling "at home," Intimacy also examines the estrangement, betrayal, loneliness, and even violence that may accompany the demise of relationships, both personal and political. These include intimacies among strangers, such as happens in times of national scandal or habits of everyday life. The contributors to this volume traverse many disciplines and cultures, tracking the processes by which intimate lives absorb and repel the dominant rhetoric, law, ethics, and ideologies of public spheres. Drawing on examples from contemporary culture, history, art, literature, and music, this book illuminates the ways in which intimacy has become linked with stories of citizenship, capitalism, aesthetic forms, and the writing of history. As it challenges conventional notions of private life, Intimacy is sure to spark controversy about its institutions as well. Some of these essays in this book were previously published in an award-winning issue of the journal "Critical Inquiry."Contributors include Lauren Berlant, Svetlana Boym, Steven Feld, Deborah R. Grayson, Michael Hanchard, Dagmar Herzog, Annamarie Jagose, Laura Kipnis, Laura Letinsky, Biddy Martin, Maureen McLane, Mary Poovey, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick, Joel Snyder, Candace Vogler, Michael Warner, and others.

Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible


Musa W. Dube - 2000
    In a provocative and insightful reading of the book of Matthew, she shows us how to read the Bible as decolonizing rather than imperialist literature.

Identity and Language Learning: Gender, Ethnicity and Educational Change


Bonny Norton - 2000
    Under what conditions do language learners speak? How is a learner's changing identity related to the process of language learning? How can language teachers address the complex histories of language learners? These are the questions that are central to this title.

The Gender and Science Reader


Muriel Lederman - 2000
    Gender and Science Reader brings together key writings by leading scholars to provide a comprehensive feminist analysis of the nature and practice of science.

The Woman's Kabbalah: Ecstatic Jewish Practices for Women [With Study Guide]


Tirzah Firestone - 2000
    The word itself is feminine, meaning "receiving", yet women have long been excluded from this Jewish mystical tradition. As a young woman, Firestone forged a pioneering path into the ecstatic mysteries of the Kabbalah. Today, as a leading woman rabbi, she has made it her life work to help other women do the same.On The Woman's Kabbalah, Rabbi Firestone opens a treasury of practices especially for women, to transport them into new dimensions of awareness. Through chant, prayer, and journaling, listeners learn how to spark, explore, and express their spiritual selves, according to the Kabbalah's once-guarded instructions. Included are specific techniques for contacting and creating a relationship with the maggid (personal spirit guide), discerning the inner voice of wisdom we each are blessed with, and opening the senses to the exquisite wonders of everyday life.For the Kabbalah to be a living body of truth, Rabbi Firestone teaches, it must include women in its framework. Now its feminine dimension is finally and fully illuminated through the all-embracing practices on The Woman's Kabbalah.

Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century


Ida Blom - 2000
    The focus on the twentieth century and in particular the post-colonial and post-socialist era, however, has neglected the crucial developmental phase of modern nationalism, when basic patterns were created that were to exert long-term influence on the political culture of nations in and outside Europe. This book examines how gender and nation legitimize and limit the access of individuals and groups to national movements and the resources of nation-state. From problems of inclusion, exclusion and difference, national wars and military systems to national symbols, rituals and myths, contributors present a diverse array of critical perspectives, methodological approaches, and case-studies that are intellectually provocative and will help to guide future research as well as orient it toward international comparison.This book raises new questions about nation and gender and provides an assessment of the state of research in different countries for all those interested in cultural and social history, politics, anthropology and gender studies.

The parent guide to Our whole lives: Grades K-1 and grades 4-6


Patricia Hoertdoerfer - 2000
    

Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism and the Politics of Sexual Assault


Maria Bevacqua - 2000
    This timely book illuminates the movement's importance to the broader women's movement and discusses the public policy implications of this activism. Maria Bevacqua locates the roots of rape consciousness, traces the evolution of an anti-rape ideology on the feminist agenda, describes how the rape issue moved to the wider public agenda, and investigates the various manifestations and strategies of anti-rape politics. She examines how feminists first articulated the rape experience as a women's issue, traces the evolution of anti-rape ideology over a thirty-year period, and considers recent tensions in the movement, including allegations of a feminist date rape "hype" in the media and in the academy. The author untangles the public and legislative responses to the rape issue, analyzing both the political context that made policymakers receptive to anti-rape goals and the effect of the anti-rape movement on American political and social life.

Masculinity Besieged?: Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivity in Chinese Literature of the Late Twentieth Century


Xueping Zhong - 2000
    Reading through a feminist psychoanalytic lens, Zhong argues that understanding the nature of male subjectivities as portrayed in literature and film is crucial to understanding China’s ongoing quest for modernity. Before the 1990s onslaught of popular culture decentered the role of intellectuals within the nation, they had come to embody Chinese masculinity during the previous decade. The focus on masculinity in literature had become unprecedented in scale and the desire for “real men” began to permeate Chinese popular culture, making icons out of Rambo and Takakura Ken. Stories by Zhang Xianliang and Liu Heng portraying male anxiety about masculine sexuality are employed by Zhong to show how “marginal” males negotiate their sexual identities in relation to both women and the state. Looking at writers popular among not only the well-educated but also the working and middle classes, she discusses works by Han Shaogong, Yu Hua, and Wang Shuo and examines instances of self-loathing male voices, particularly as they are articulated in Mo Yan’s well-known work Red Sorghum. In her last chapter Zhong examines “roots literature,” which speaks of the desire to create strong men as a part of the effort to create a geopolitically strong Chinese nation. In an afterword, Zhong situates her study in the context of the 1990s. This book will be welcomed by scholars of Chinese cultural studies, as well as in literary and gender studies.

Anti-Racist Feminism: Critical Race and Gender Studies


Agnes Calliste - 2000
    Exploring the relational aspects of difference and the implications for re-conceptualizing anti-racism discourse and practice, this book seeks to incite the reader to broaden the examination of social spaces through the lens of an anti-racist, feminist scholarship and practice.

No Small Courage: A History of Women in the United States


Nancy F. Cott - 2000
    Individual stories and primary sources-including letters, diaries, and news reports-animate this history of the domestic, professional, and political efforts of American women.John Demos begins the book with a discussion of Native American women confronting colonization. Leading historians illuminate subsequent eras of social and political change-including Jane Kamensky on women's lives in the colonial period, Karen Manners Smith on the rising tide of political activityby women in the Progressive Era, Sarah Jane Deutsch on the transition of 1920s optimism to the harsh realities of the Great Depression, Elaine Tyler May on the challenges to a gender-defined social order encouraged by World War II, and William H. Chafe on the women's movement and the struggle forpolitical equality since the 1960s. The authors vividly relate such events as Anne Hutchinson's struggle for religious expression in Puritan Massachusetts, former slave Harriet Tubman's perilous efforts to free others in captivity, Rosa Parks's resistance to segregation in the South, and newfoundopportunities for professional and personal self-determination available as a result of decades of protest. Dozens of archival illustrations add to the human dimensions of the authoritative text.No Small Courage dynamically captures the variety and significance of American women's experience, demonstrating that the history of our nation cannot be fully understood without focusing on changes in women's lives.