Best of
Gender

2012

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective


Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor - 2012
    In this collection, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to black feminism and its impact on today's struggles.

Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle


Silvia Federici - 2012
    Originally inspired by Federici's organizational work in the Wages for Housework movement, the topics discussed include the international restructuring of reproductive work and its effects on the sexual division of labor, the globalization of care work and sex work, the crisis of elder care, and the development of affective labor. Both a brief history of the international feminist movement and a contemporary critique of capitalism, these writings continue the investigation of the economic roots of violence against women.

Seeing Like a Feminist


Nivedita Menon - 2012
    From sexual harassment charges against international figures to the challenge that caste politics poses to feminism, from the ban on the veil in France to the attempt to impose skirts on international women badminton players, from queer politics to domestic servants' unions to the Pink Chaddi campaign, Menon deftly illustrates how feminism complicates the field irrevocably. Incisive, eclectic and politically engaged, Seeing like a Feminist is a bold and wide-ranging book that reorders contemporary society.

Heroines


Kate Zambreno - 2012
    Taking the self out feels like obeying a gag order - pretending an objectivity where there is nothing objective about the experience of confronting and engaging with and swooning over literature." - from HeroinesOn the last day of December, 2009 Kate Zambreno began a blog called Frances Farmer Is My Sister, arising from her obsession with the female modernists and her recent transplantation to Akron, Ohio, where her husband held a university job. Widely reposted, Zambreno's blog became an outlet for her highly informed and passionate rants about the fates of the modernist "wives and mistresses." In her blog entries, Zambreno reclaimed the traditionally pathologized biographies of Vivienne Eliot, Jane Bowles, Jean Rhys, and Zelda Fitzgerald: writers and artists themselves who served as male writers' muses only to end their lives silenced, erased, and institutionalized. Over the course of two years, Frances Farmer Is My Sister helped create a community where today's "toxic girls" could devise a new feminist discourse, writing in the margins and developing an alternative canon.In Heroines, Zambreno extends the polemic begun on her blog into a dazzling, original work of literary scholarship. Combing theories that have dictated what literature should be and who is allowed to write it - from T. S. Eliot's New Criticism to the writings of such mid-century intellectuals as Elizabeth Hardwick and Mary McCarthy to the occasional "girl-on-girl crime" of the Second Wave of feminism - she traces the genesis of a cultural template that consistently exiles female experience to the realm of the "minor" and diagnoses women for transgressing social bounds. "ANXIETY: When she experiences it, it's pathological," writes Zambreno. "When he does, it's existential." By advancing the Girl-As-Philosopher, Zambreno reinvents feminism for her generation while providing a model for a newly subjectivized criticism.

Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation


Beth E. Richie - 2012
    Through the compelling stories of Black women who have been most affected by racism, persistent poverty, class inequality, limited access to support resources or institutions, Beth E. Richie shows that the threat of violence to Black women has never been more serious, demonstrating how conservative legal, social, political and economic policies have impacted activism in the U.S.-based movement to end violence against women. Richie argues that Black women face particular peril because of the ways that race and culture have not figured centrally enough in the analysis of the causes and consequences of gender violence. As a result, the extent of physical, sexual and other forms of violence in the lives of Black women, the various forms it takes, and the contexts within which it occurs are minimized—at best—and frequently ignored. Arrested Justice brings issues of sexuality, class, age, and criminalization into focus right alongside of questions of public policy and gender violence, resulting in a compelling critique, a passionate re-framing of stories, and a call to action for change.

Adi Parva - Churning of the Ocean


Amruta Patil - 2012
    Combining stories from the Adi Parva which precede the main narrative of the Pandav-Kaurav war for succession.

Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia


Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs - 2012
    Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators. The narratives are filled with wit, wisdom, and concrete recommendations, and provide a window into the struggles of professional women in a racially stratified but increasingly multicultural America.

Goblinheart


Brett Axel - 2012
    A youngster named Julep, who lives in a forest tribe, insists on growing up to be a goblin rather than a fairy. The tribe learns to accept that Julep is a goblin at heart, eventually coming around to support the physical transition that must be made for Julep to live as a goblin.

Sex and World Peace


Valerie M. Hudson - 2012
    Harnessing an immense amount of data, they call attention to discrepancies between national laws protecting women and the enforcement of those laws, and they note the adverse effects on state security of abnormal sex ratios favoring males, the practice of polygamy, and inequitable realities in family law, among other gendered aggressions.The authors find that the treatment of women informs human interaction at all levels of society. Their research challenges conventional definitions of security and democracy and shows that the treatment of gender, played out on the world stage, informs the true clash of civilizations. In terms of resolving these injustices, the authors examine top-down and bottom-up approaches to healing wounds of violence against women, as well as ways to rectify inequalities in family law and the lack of parity in decision-making councils. Emphasizing the importance of an R2PW, or state responsibility to protect women, they mount a solid campaign against women's systemic insecurity, which effectively unravels the security of all.

Story of a Comfort Girl


Roger Rudick - 2012
    To populate these "comfort stations," as they were euphemistically called, the Japanese army drafted or tricked around two-hundred thousand girls, most from rural Korea, into coming to work in military "factories." Instead, they were forced into sexual slavery.After the war, the surviving comfort women, gripped with a crushing sense of shame, rarely if ever spoke about their ordeals. As a result, their suffering has barely been acknowledged in the history books. Realizing that the survivors were dying off, the Council was formed to record their accounts before it was too late; before Japanese revisionists erased these unfortunate events from the history books forever."Story of a Comfort Girl" is the moving first-person account of one such survivor.

God's Good Design: What the Bible Really Says About Men and Women


Claire Smith - 2012
    Studying these passages led to radical changes in her life. Too often we put these same passages in the 'too hard basket', or we make up our minds without taking a close look at them for ourselves. But we must let God's word determine these issues, and not the culture in which we live.Claire takes us through the same process she went through herself, looking closely at seven key Bible passages about men and women and how they should relate together in God's purposes. Along the way she deals with many common objections, and applies the teaching of the Bible simply and practically to our relationships at home and in church. The warmth and simplicity of the book means it will benefit every Christian—whether you have looked at these passages a thousand times, or you've never thought about them in your life.About the author...After working for some years as a nurse, Claire Smith spent many years at Moore College closely studying the Bible, completing a BTh, MA (Theology), and a PhD in New Testament. These days she spends her time writing and speaking at conferences. To relax, she writes letters to the paper and talks theology with the two men in her life--her husband, Rob, and their son, Nathanael (both avid musicians). She will also happily watch any sport on TV (although her favourite is rugby).

I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing By Women


Caroline Bergvall - 2012
    Edited by Caroline Bergvall, Laynie Browne, Teresa Carmody and Vanessa Place, I’ll Drown My Book takes its name from a poem by Bernadette Mayer, appropriating Shakespeare. The book includes work by 64 women from 10 countries, with contributors’ responses to the question—What is conceptual writing?—appearing alongside their work. I’ll Drown My Book offers feminist perspectives within this literary phenomenon.CONTRIBUTORS:Kathy Acker, Oana Avasilichioaei & Erin Moure, Dodie Bellamy, Lee Ann Brown, Angela Carr, Monica de la Torre, Danielle Dutton, Renee Gladman, Jen Hofer, Bernadette Mayer, Sharon Mesmer, Laura Mullen, Harryette Mullen, Deborah Richards, Juliana Spahr, Cecilia Vicuna, Wendy Walker, Jen Bervin, Inger Christiansen, Marcella Durand, Katie Degentesh, Nada Gordon, Jennifer Karmin, Mette Moestrup, Yedda Morrison, Anne Portugal, Joan Retallack, Cia Rinne, Giovanni Singleton, Anne Tardos, Hannah Weiner, Christine Wertheim, Norma Cole, Debra Di Blasi, Stacy Doris & Lisa Robertson, Sarah Dowling, Bhanu Kapil, Rachel Levitsky, Laura Moriarty, Redell Olsen, Chus Pato, Julie Patton, Kristin Prevallet, a.rawlings, Ryoko Seikiguchi, Susan M. Schultz, Rosmarie Waldrop, Renee Angle, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Tina Darragh, Judith Goldman, Susan Howe, Maryrose Larkin, Tracie Morris, Sawako Nakayasu, M. NourbeSe Philip, Jena Osman, kathryn l. pringle, Frances Richard, Kim Rosenfeld, and Rachel Zolf.

How He Gets Into Her Head: The Mind of the Male Intimate Abuser


Don Hennessy - 2012
    The author details the similarities in tactices and motivation between the paedophile and the male intimate abuser. He has found that by explaining these tactices to victims he has released many of them from the mind-control that they have experienced.

Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice


bell hooks - 2012
    From the films Precious and Crash to recent biographies of Malcolm X and Henrietta Lacks, hooks offers provocative insights into the way race is being talked about in this "post-racial" era.

Sex, Race and Class: The Perspective of Winning: A Selection of Writings 1952-2011


Selma James - 2012
    Arguing that class struggle manifests itself as the conflict between the reproduction and survival of the human race, the general theme of the collected essays leans left and warns of market exploitation, war, and ecological disaster. Spanning nearly six decades and compiling essays that have appeared in anthologies or are selections from Selma James' books—some printed here for the first time—these selections preach equality in wages for men and women alike, especially in nontraditional work environments.

Seasonal Velocities


Ryka Aoki - 2012
    Through her poetry, essays, stories, and performances, Ryka Aoki has challenged, informed, and shared with queer audiences across the United States. Available on Amazon, as well as directly from the press at Trans-Genre.net.

The Global Sexual Revolution: Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom


Gabriele Kuby - 2012
    It is the culmination of a metaphysical revolution as well—a shifting of the fundamental ground upon which we stand and build a culture. Instead of desire being subjected to natural, social, moral, and transcendent orders, the identity of man and woman is dissolved, and free rein given to the maximum fulfillment of polymorphous urges, with no ultimate purpose or meaning.Gabriele Kuby surveys gender ideology and LGBT demands, the devastating effects of pornography and sex-education, attacks on freedom of speech and religion, the corruption of language, and much more. From the movement’s trailblazers to the post-Obergefell landscape, she documents in meticulous detail how the tentacles of a budding totalitarian regime are slowly gripping the world in an insidious stranglehold. Here on full display are the re-education techniques of the new permanent revolution, which has migrated from politics and economics to sex. Kuby’s courageous work is a call to action for all well-meaning people to redouble their efforts to preserve freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the freedom of parents to educate their children according to their own beliefs. “Mrs. Kuby is a brave warrior against ideologies that ultimately result in the destruction of man.”—POPE BENEDICT XVI“As the carnage of untrammeled sexual license piles up in cultures that have embraced sexual revolutionary ideology, we need the kind of sober and thoughtful analysis Gabriele Kuby provides. Her work will help readers understand that false visions of freedom are highways to slavery, and that true freedom is to be found in self-mastery and virtue.”—ROBERT P. GEORGE“Gabriele Kuby maps the topography of horror that sex unleashed from the moral order visits upon any society that allows it. She also offers a strong, much-needed dose of moral realism that offers a way out of an otherwise totalitarian result.”—ROBERT R. REILLY

dr.a.g., bookthefilm edition


Christopher Logan - 2012
    The performers in this book are evidence of that diversity, captured by some of the top photographers working in today's world.

Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique


Sally Haslanger - 2012
    In these previously published essays, Sally Haslanger draws on insights from feminist and critical race theory to explore and develop the idea that gender and race are positions within a structure of social relations. On this interpretation, the point of saying that gender and race are socially constructed is not to make a causal claim about the origins of our concepts of gender and race, or to take a stand in the nature/nurture debate, but to locate these categories within a realist social ontology. This is politically important, for by theorizing how gender and race fit within different structures of social relations we are better able to identify and combat forms of systematic injustice.Although the central essays of the book focus on a critical social realism about gender and race, these accounts function as case studies for a broader critical social realism. To develop this broader approach, several essays offer reworked notions of ideology, practice, and social structure, drawing on recent research in sociology and social psychology. Ideology, on the proposed view, is a relatively stable set of shared dispositions to respond to the world, often in ways that also shape the world to evoke those very dispositions. This looping of our dispositions through the material world enables the social to appear natural.Additional essays in the book situate this approach to social phenomena in relation to philosophical methodology, and to specific debates in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language. The book as a whole explores the interface between analytic philosophy and critical theory.

At the Heart of the Gospel: Reclaiming the Body for the New Evangelization


Christopher West - 2012
    How should Christians respond? With his illuminating Theology of the Body, Pope John Paul II challenged the modern world not to stop at the surface, but to enter the depth of the “great mystery” that the body and sex reveal: a mystery that lies at the heart of the Gospel itself.Since he first discovered John Paul II’s teaching in 1993, Christopher West has devoted himself to sharing its life-transforming message with the world. In this highly anticipated work, West leads us into the depth of Christ’s “nuptial union” with the Church, demonstrating how authentic Catholic teaching on the body and sex saves us from both the libertine perspective of popular culture and the cold puritanism that has sometimes infected Christianity. In the process, West provides a blueprint for reaching our sexually broken world in the “new evangelization.”

Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself: Latina Girls and Sexual Identity


Lorena Garcia - 2012
    In Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself, Lorena Garcia examines how Latina girls negotiate their emerging sexual identities and attempt to create positive sexual experiences for themselves. Through a focus on their sexual agency, Garcia demonstrates that Latina girls' experiences with sexism, racism, homophobia and socioeconomic marginality inform how they engage and begin to rework their meanings and processes of gender and sexuality, emphasizing how Latina youth themselves understand their sexuality, particularly how they conceptualize and approach sexual safety and pleasure. At a time of controversy over the appropriate role of sex education in schools, Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself, provides a rare look and an important understanding of the sexual lives of a traditionally marginalized group.

Rape: Weapon of War and Genocide


John K. Roth - 2012
    It is filled with texts of terror that must be heard if the human community is truly to respond Never again! --Margaret A. Farley, Gilbert L. Stark Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics, Yale University Divinity School. . . One of the most nuanced, illuminating, and grimly engaging volumes on rape and mass violence yet published. -- Adam Jones, Executive Director, Gendercide Watch, Author, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction Carol Rittner and John K. Roth have brought together a range of very powerful contributions on rape in war and genocide . . . Each chapter deals very personally with the agony of rape and the challenges it poses to male behavior, international law, and political action. -- Hugo Slim, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict, University of Oxford, Author, Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in WarResist the urge to put this book down. It . . . calls us to listen to the living and the dead, to their words and their silence. -- Doris L. Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto, Author, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

Monster Pop! Volume 1


Maya Kern - 2012
    Monster Pop! is a fun and fresh romcom slice of life webcomic about George Tinsely, your average fun-loving, leaps before she looks cyclops, and her adventures in friendship, love, and growing up.

One in Every Crowd


Ivan E. Coyote - 2012
    Coyote's wry, honest stories about gender and identity have captivated audiences everywhere. Ivan's eighth book is her first for LGBT youth, written for anyone who has ever felt different or alone in their struggles to be true to themselves. Included are stories about Ivan's tomboy youth and her adult life, where she experiences cruelty and kindness in unexpected places.Funny, inspiring, and full of heart, One in Every Crowd is about embracing and celebrating difference and feeling comfortable in one's own skin.Ivan E. Coyote was also featured in the anti-bullying anthology It Gets Better.

Transposes


Dylan Edwards - 2012
    The result is laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreaking, challenging, inventive, informative, and invites the reader to explore what truly makes a man a man.Includes a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Alison Bechdel (Fun Home, Are You My Mother?)

The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations


José Medina - 2012
    It elucidates how social insensitivities and imposed silences prevent members of different groups from interacting epistemically in fruitful ways--from listening to each other, learning from each other, and mutually enriching each other's perspectives. Medina's epistemology of resistance offers a contextualist theory of our complicity with epistemic injustices and a social connection model of shared responsibility for improving epistemic conditions of participation in social practices. Through the articulation of a new interactionism and polyphonic contextualism, the book develops a sustained argument about the role of the imagination in mediating social perceptions and interactions. It concludes that only through the cultivation of practices of resistance can we develop a social imagination that can help us become sensitive to the suffering of excluded and stigmatized subjects. Drawing on Feminist Standpoint Theory and Critical Race Theory, this book makes contributions to social epistemology and to recent discussions of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, epistemic responsibility, counter-performativity, and solidarity in the fight against racism and sexism.

Baedan 1: Journal of Queer Nihilism


Baedan - 2012
    It is not a political negativity that we must locate in our queerness, but rather a vicious anti-politics which opposes any utopian dreams of a better future residing on the far side of a lifetime of sacrifice. Our queer negativity has nothing to do with art, but it has a great deal to do with urban insurrection, piracy, slave revolt: all those bodily struggles that refuse the future and pursue the irrationality of jouissance, enjoyment, rage, chaos. Ours is not the struggle for an alternative, because there is no alternative which can escape the ever-expanding horizons of capital. Instead we fight, hopeless, to tear our lives away from that expanding horizon and to erupt with wild enjoyment now. Anything less is our continued domestication to the rule of civilization.”

Lynn Margulis: The Life and Legacy of a Scientific Rebel


Dorion Sagan - 2012
    Best known for her work on the origins of eukaryotic cells, the Gaia hypothesis, and symbiogenesis as a driving force in evolution, her work has forever changed the way we understand life on Earth.When Margulis passed away in 2011, she left behind a groundbreaking scientific legacy that spanned decades. In this collection, Dorion Sagan, Margulis's son and longtime collaborator, gathers together the voices of friends and colleagues to remark on her life and legacy, in essays that cover her early collaboration with James Lovelock, her fearless face-off with Richard Dawkins during the so-called "Battle of Balliol" at Oxford, the intrepid application of her scientific mind to the insistence that 9/11 was a false-flag operation, her affinity for Emily Dickinson, and more.Margulis was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983, received the prestigious National Medal of Science in 1999, and her papers are permanently archived at the Library of Congress. Less than a month before her untimely death, Margulis was named one of the twenty most influential scientists alive - one of only two women on this list, which include such scientists as Stephen Hawking, James Watson, and Jane Goodall.

Backwards Day


S. Bear Bergman - 2012
    Andrea looks eagerly forward to Backwards Day every year, so she can turn into a boy for the day. But one year she doesn't turn along with everyone else. She's miserable. The very next day, however, she turns into a boy - and stays that way! He's delighted, but his parents are distressed, and take him to the big city to consult with Backwardsologists. When they finally figure out what's happened, the miracles of Backwards Day are fully revealed to the reader."

NPR American Chronicles: Women's Equality


National Public Radio - 2012
    Profiles of Victoria Woodhull, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony provide insights into the origins of the movement, while reflections from Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Geraldine Ferraro, and others reveal the passion and dedication required to maintain progress in the continuing struggle for women’s equality. © 2012 HighBridge Audio

Birds and Birthdays


Christopher Barzak - 2012
    This is Christopher Barzak’s tribute to them: three stories and an essay that enter into a humane surrealism that turns away from the unconscious and toward magic.Sometimes the stories themselves seem to be paintings. Sometimes painter and writer may be characters, regarding each other through a painful otherness, talking in shared secrets. Barzak’s stories are huge with the spacious strangeness of worlds where there is always more room for a woman to escape her tormenters, or outgrow an older self. Here we find:A bird-maker and a star-catcher whose shared historyspills over into the birds and the stars themselves.A girl who outgrows her clothes, her house, and finallyher town—and leaves to find her body a new home.A landlord, whose marriage, motherhood, separation,sexual exploration, and excursions into self-portraitureall take place within a single apartment building.In “Remembering the Body: Reconstructing the Female in Surrealism,” Barzak comments on the images that inspired these stories and discusses his own position as a writer among painters.

Pretty Tilt


Carrie Murphy - 2012
    Influenced by both the Gurlesque and by post-confessionalism, these poems focus an unflinching eye on the strange, ugly, and beautiful paradoxes of growing up female.

The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard


Tom LégerCarter Sickels - 2012
    28 authors from North America converge in a single volume to showcase the future of trans literature and the next great movements in queer art.

Tip of the Iceberg: A Book About the Clitoris


Laura Szumowski - 2012
    From sex to science, illness to ejaculation, Szumowski covers all the bases and does so with humor, a love for myth-busting, and substantial factual backing.

Transitions of the Heart: Stories of Love, Struggle and Acceptance by Mothers of Transgender and Gender Variant Children


Rachel Pepper - 2012
    It offers a view that will educate everyone about the trans experience. It offers emotional support to family and friends close to someone experience transition and educations to those who may not fully understand what the “T” in LGBTQ means. What do mothers really think of their transgender and gender variant children? Sharing stories of love, struggle, and acceptance, this collection of mother's voices, representing a diversity of backgrounds and sexual orientations, affirms the experience of those who have raised and are currently raising transgender and gender variant children between the ages of 5-50.  There are stories here of birth mothers and adoptive mothers, single mothers and married mothers, stepmothers and grandmothers, and heterosexual mothers and lesbian mothers. They have children of all ages, ranging fro six to sixty. Their children are gender nonconforming, gender variant, gender queer, transgender, and “pink boys.” Many mothers are active in PFLAG groups and other community based support groups. Often "transitioning" socially and emotionally alongside their child but rarely given a voice in the experience, mothers hold the key to familial and societal understanding of gender difference. Edited by Rachel Pepper, a gender specialist and co-author of the acclaimed book The Transgender Child, Transitions of the Heart includes both a glossary of terms as well as a resource guide. It will prove an invaluable resource for parents coming to terms with a child's gender variance or transition.

Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan


Amy Stanley - 2012
    Drawing on legal codes, diaries, town registers, petitions, and criminal records, it describes how the work of “selling women” transformed communities across the archipelago. By focusing on the social implications of prostitutes’ economic behavior, this study offers a new understanding of how and why women who work in the sex trade are marginalized. It also demonstrates how the patriarchal order of the early modern state was undermined by the emergence of the market economy, which changed the places of women in their households and the realm at large.

Bumbling into Body Hair: A Transsexual's Memoir


Everett Maroon - 2012
    A comical memoir about a klutz's sex change, Bumbling into Body Hair shows how a sense of humor - and true love - can triumph over hair disasters, resurrected breasts, and even the most crippling self-doubt.

Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969-1986


Michael Staudenmaier - 2012
    Through the influence of founding members like Noel Ignatiev and Don Hamerquist, STO took a Marxist approach to the question of race and revolution, exploring the notion of “white skin privilege,” and helping to lay the groundwork for the discipline of critical race studies.Michael Staudenmaier is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Illinois-Urbana.

Two Spirits, One Heart: A Mother, Her Transgender Son, and Their Journey to Love and Acceptance


Marsha Aizumi - 2012
    Two Spirits, One Heart chronicles Marsha's personal journey from fear, uncertainty, and sadness to eventual unconditional love, acceptance, and support of her child who struggled to reconcile his gender identity. Told with honesty and warmth, this book is a must-read for parents and loved ones of LGBT individuals everywhere. “Marsha and Aiden’s moving story of confronting and overcoming fear—and of the love and deeper bond that emerge between a mother and her son because of that profound journey—shows how all families can accept each other’s humanity. I was deeply inspired by the honesty, awareness, and healing found in these pages.” —Rea Carey, Executive Director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force About the authors: Marsha Aizumi is an educator, motivational speaker, and advocate for the LGBT community. She serves on the National Board of Directors of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). You can visit Marsha online at www.marshaaizumi.com Aiden Takeo Aizumi is a committed activist for LGBT rights. In 2010, he was honored as a youth leader with the Paul A. Anderson award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. He currently serves on the PFLAG National Transgender Gender Non-conforming Advisory Council. Aiden is also pursuing a bachelor's degree in education.

Transformation Now!: Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change


AnaLouise Keating - 2012
    women-of-color feminist/womanist thought and queer studies, inviting us to transform how we think about identity, difference, social justice and social change, metaphysics, reading, and teaching. Through detailed investigations of women of color theories and writings, indigenous thought, and her own personal and pedagogical experiences, Keating develops transformative modes of engagement that move through oppositional approaches to embrace interconnectivity as a framework for identity formation, theorizing, social change, and the possibility of planetary citizenship. Speaking to many dimensions of contemporary scholarship, activism, and social justice work, Transformation Now! calls for and enacts innovative, radically inclusionary ways of reading, teaching, and communicating.

South Asian Feminisms


Ania Loomba - 2012
    In this collection of essays, prominent feminist scholars and activists build on that work to confront pressing new challenges for feminist theorizing and practice. Examining recent feminist interventions in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, they address feminist responses to religious fundamentalism and secularism; globalization, labor, and migration; militarization and state repression; public representations of sexuality; and the politics of sex work. Their essays attest to the diversity and specificity of South Asian locations and feminist concerns, while also demonstrating how feminist engagements in the region can enrich and advance feminist theorizing globally. Contributors. Flavia Agnes, Anjali Arondekar, Firdous Azim, Anannya Bhattacharjee, Laura Brueck, Angana P. Chatterji, Malathi de Alwis, Toorjo Ghose, Amina Jamal, Ratna Kapur, Lamia Karim, Ania Loomba, Ritty A. Lukose, Vasuki Nesiah, Sonali Perera, Atreyee Sen, Mrinalini Sinha, Ashwini Sukthankar

The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference


Roderick A. Ferguson - 2012
    African American, Chicano, Asia American, American Indian, women, and queer activists demanded the creation of departments that reflected their histories and experiences, resulting in the formation of interdisciplinary studies programs that hoped to transform both the university and the wider society beyond the campus.In The Reorder of Things, however, Roderick A. Ferguson traces and assesses the ways in which the rise of interdisciplines—departments of race, gender, and ethnicity; fields such as queer studies—were not simply a challenge to contemporary power as manifest in academia, the state, and global capitalism but were, rather, constitutive of it. Ferguson delineates precisely how minority culture and difference as affirmed by legacies of the student movements were appropriated and institutionalized by established networks of power.Critically examining liberationist social movements and the cultural products that have been informed by them, including works by Adrian Piper, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Zadie Smith, The Reorder of Things argues for the need to recognize the vulnerabilities of cultural studies to co-option by state power and to develop modes of debate and analysis that may be in the institution but are, unequivocally, not of it.

Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies


Anne Enke - 2012
    Working from the premise that transgender is both material and cultural, the contributors address such aspects of the university as administration, sports, curriculum, pedagogy, and the appropriate location for transgender studies.Combining feminist theory, transgender studies, and activism centered on social diversity and justice, these essays examine how institutions as lived contexts shape everyday life."Transfeminist Perspectives in and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies is a very worthwhile book. Enke is knowledgeable about the field, and frames the issues nicely, explicitly addressing some of the core problems in feminism and women’s studies. This anthology shrewdly demonstrates how transgender studies can do feminist work, and it goes a long way toward furthering that important critical/political task."—Susan Stryker, Professor of Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Arizona, and author of Transgender History

Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages


Ruth Mazo Karras - 2012
    Many people lived together in long-term, quasimarital heterosexual relationships, unable to marry if one was in holy orders or if the partners were of different religions. Social norms militated against the marriage of master to slave or between individuals of very different classes, or when the couple was so poor that they could not establish an independent household. Such unions, where the protections that medieval law furnished to wives (and their children) were absent, were fraught with danger for women in particular, but they also provided a degree of flexibility and demonstrate the adaptability of social customs in the face of slowly changing religious doctrine.Unmarriages draws on a wide range of sources from across Europe and the entire medieval millennium in order to investigate structures and relations that medieval authors and record keepers did not address directly, either in order to minimize them or because they were so common as not to be worth mentioning. Ruth Mazo Karras pays particular attention to the ways women and men experienced forms of opposite-sex union differently and to the implications for power relations between the genders. She treats legal and theological discussions that applied to all of Europe and presents a vivid series of case studies of how unions operated in specific circumstances to illustrate concretely what we can conclude, how far we can speculate, and what we can never know.

I Heart Sex Workers: A Christian Response to People in the Sex Trade


Lia Claire Scholl - 2012
    The factors leading individuals into sex work are as varied as hair colors, yet sex workers are viewed as powerless individuals who must be rescued. I Heart Sex Workers offers another perspective, one where the characters defy stereotypes and solutions are hard to find. Author Lia Scholl firmly believes the Christian response to sex work should be one of building agency for women, through education, through fighting injustice, by listening to the voices of sex workers. I Heart Sex Workers examines the forces leading individuals into prostitution, whether through coercion, choice, or circumstance. And it provides a Christian response, answering the question, "Are you my neighbor?" How do we respond to woman trading sex for a place to live tonight when she asks, "Where will I sleep?" This book discusses these issues and many more.

The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure


Tristan Taormino - 2012
    This book investigates not only how feminists understand pornography, but also how feminists do porn—that is, direct, act in, produce, and consume one of the world's most lucrative and growing industries. With original contributions by Susie Bright, Candida Royalle, Betty Dodson, Nina Hartley, Buck Angel, and more, The Feminist Porn Book updates the debates of the porn wars of the 1980s, which sharply divided the women's movement, and identifies pornography as a form of expression and labor in which women and other minorities produce power and pleasure.Tristan Taormino is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, sex educator, and feminist pornographer. She is the author of seven books including The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and Opening Up. She runs the adult film production company Smart Ass Productions and is an exclusive director for Vivid Entertainment.Celine Parreñas Shimizu is an associate professor of film and performance studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and founding editor of Camera Obscura. She is the author of Straitjacket Sexualities and the 2009 Cultural Studies Book Award winning, The Hypersexuality of Race.Mireille Miller-Young is assistant professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her forthcoming book, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women, Sex Work, and Pornography (Duke University Press) examines African American women’s sex work in the porn industry.

Bull of Heaven: The Mythic Life of Eddie Buczynski and the Rise of the New York Pagan


Michael G. Lloyd - 2012
    In the generation of young men and women who had grown up after World War II, there was a new-found sense of freedom that allowed people to not only question society's assumptions of the nature of God and spirit, but to experiment in order to find different ways of giving meaning to modern lives. The modern New Age and the Neo-Pagan movement in the United States coalesced from this chaos of diverse practices and beliefs. As a teenager, Eddie Buczynski had dreamed of becoming a Jesuit Priest. Rejected by the Church because of his questioning mind and budding attraction to other young men, his feet were soon set on a different path - one that would lead from his childhood home in Ozone Park to the raucous streets of '60s Greenwich Village, through the burgeoning Neo-Pagan spiritual movement of the '70s, before finally depositing him into the academic realm of Classical & Near Eastern achaeology. This is the story of one man and his circle of friends who dreamed of changing the spiritual paradigm of society and who, despite their human frailties helped to widen the acceptance of alternative religions in the United States. Bringing together the threads of disparate subcultures, social movements, spiritual paths and characters, Bull of Heaven weaves Buczynski's life into a tapestry that encompasses the history of the New Age and occult in New York City. And in so doing, it offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of GLBT men and women whose heretofore untold contributions helped to shape the face of modern Neo-Paganism.Available in paperback at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Terzah's Sons


Victoria Copus - 2012
    Terzah has recently had a harling, and is far from happy with Zen's posting. Terzah despises humans and has nothing but contempt for those around him. However, when tragedy strikes the small community, and a human who Terzah realises was actually a friend to him dies unexpectedly, Terzah is moved to take in the woman's orphaned sons. Not every human agrees with this, as they feel humans should be raised by humans. Terzah finds himself fighting prejudice as keen as his own. Gradually, Terzah realises his attitude to humanity must change, as hara and humans are forced to work together to overcome common threats and dilemmas, so that the settlement will succeed and become a real community. Conflicts within his own family and dark secrets kept by his consort add intrigue and drama to the tale.Terzah's Sons gives a fascinating glimpse into the daily life of hara, far from the courts of the high ranking and mighty. These are hara who get their hands dirty, coping with life's problems as best they can in primitive conditions. Author Victoria Copus has captured the character of Terzah, the customs of the shamanic Kheops and the complexities of intertribal politics with a deft hand. This story is a skilful and insightful addition to the canon of Storm Constantine's Wraeththu Mythos.

Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950


Fabian Drixler - 2012
    In parts of eighteenth-century Japan, couples raised only two or three children. As villages shrank and domain headcounts dwindled, posters of child-murdering she-devils began to appear, and governments offered to pay their subjects to have more children. In these pages, the long conflict over the meaning of infanticide comes to life once again. Those who killed babies saw themselves as responsible parents to their chosen children. Those who opposed infanticide redrew the boundaries of humanity so as to encompass newborn infants and exclude those who would not raise them. In Eastern Japan, the focus of this book, population growth resumed in the nineteenth century. According to its village registers, more and more parents reared all their children. Others persisted in the old ways, leaving traces of hundreds of thousands of infanticides in the statistics of the modern Japanese state. Nonetheless, by 1925, total fertility rates approached six children per women in the very lands where raising four had once been considered profligate. This reverse fertility transition suggests that the demographic history of the world is more interesting than paradigms of unidirectional change would have us believe, and that the future of fertility and population growth may yet hold many surprises.

Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics


Naisargi Dave - 2012
    Dave examines the formation of lesbian communities in India from the 1980s to the early 2000s. Based on ethnographic research conducted with activist organizations in Delhi, a body of letters written by lesbian women, and research with lesbian communities and queer activist groups across the country, Dave studies the everyday practices that constitute queer activism in India.Dave argues that activism is an ethical practice comprising critique, invention, and relational practice. She investigates the relationship between the ethics of activism and the existing social norms and conditions from which activism emerges. Through her analysis of different networks and institutions, Dave documents how activism oscillates between the potential for new social arrangements and the questions that arise once the activists' goals have been achieved. Queer Activism in India addresses a relevant and timely phenomenon and makes an important contribution to the anthropology of queer communities, social movements, affect, and ethics.Naisargi N. Dave is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto."An excellent, detailed, and highly nuanced ethnography of the ethical and affective undercurrents of lesbian activism in Delhi, India, from the late twentieth century to the present. Naisargi N. Dave's focus on ethics provides a necessary intervention in the ethnography of social action and movements."—Martin F. Manalansan IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora"A beautifully written ethnography, offering a passionately detailed ethnographic perspective on queer politics, feminism, and social movements in India."—Kamala Visweswaran, author of Un/common Cultures: Racism and the Rearticulation of Cultural Difference

Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution within the Revolution


Vilma Espin - 2012
    50 establishing Department of Education in Second Front, Nov. 2, 1958.

The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart


Sean L. Field - 2012
    William next consigned Guiard of Cressonessart, an apocalyptic activist in the tradition of Joachim of Fiore and a would-be defender of Marguerite, to perpetual imprisonment. Over several months, William of Paris conducted inquisitorial processes against them, complete with multiple consultations of experts in theology and canon law. Though Guiard recanted at the last moment and thus saved his life, Marguerite went to her execution the day after her sentencing.The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor is an analysis of the inquisitorial trials, their political as well as ecclesiastical context, and their historical significance. Marguerite Porete was the first female Christian mystic burned at the stake after authoring a book, and the survival of her work makes her case absolutely unique. The Mirror of Simple Souls, rediscovered in the twentieth century and reconnected to Marguerite's name only a half-century ago, is now recognized as one of the most daring, vibrant, and original examples of the vernacular theology and beguine mysticism that emerged in late thirteenth-century Christian Europe. Field provides a new and detailed reconstruction of hitherto neglected aspects of Marguerite’s life, particularly of her trial, as well as the first extended consideration of her inquisitor's maneuvers and motivations. Additionally, he gives the first complete English translation of all of the trial documents and relevant contemporary chronicles, as well as the first English translation of Arnau of Vilanova’s intriguing “Letter to Those Wearing the Leather Belt,” directed to Guiard's supporters and urging them to submit to ecclesiastical authority. "Sean Field's new book is top-of-the-line historical scholarship, exquisitely written, and deeply satisfying on more than one level: for its research, for the quality of the documentation and argument, but also for its careful organization and smooth exposition, which transform a complicated story into a scholarly page-turner." —Walter P. Simons, Dartmouth College

First Spring Grass Fire


Rae Spoon - 2012
    This first book by Rae (who uses "they" as a pronoun) is a candid, powerful story about a young person growing up queer in a strict Pentecostal family in rural Canada.The narrator attends church events and Billy Graham rallies faithfully with their family before discovering the music that becomes their salvation and means of escape. As their father's schizophrenia causes their parents' marriage to unravel, the narrator finds solace and safety in the company of their siblings, in their nascent feelings for a girl at school, and in their growing awareness that they are not the person their parents think they are. With a heart as big as the prairie sky, this is a quietly devastating, heart-wrenching coming-of-age book about escaping dogma, surviving abuse, finding love, and risking everything for acceptance.Rae Spoon lives in Montreal, Quebec.

The Eye of the Crocodile


Val Plumwood - 2012
    Her book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1992) has become a classic. In 1985 she was attacked by a crocodile while kayaking alone in the Kakadu national park in the Northern Territory. She was death rolled three times before being released from the crocodile’s jaws. She crawled for hours through swamp with appalling injuries before being rescued. The experience made her well placed to write about cultural responses to death and predation. The first section of The Eye of the Crocodile consists of chapters intended for a book on crocodiles that remained unfinished at the time of Val’s death. The remaining chapters are previously published papers brought together to form an overview of Val’s ideas on death, predation and nature.

Sir Mouse to the Rescue


Dirk Nielandt - 2012
    

LIES: A Journal of Materialist Feminism


LIES Journal - 2012
    LIES is a platform for certain conversations and critiques that are difficult, impossible or dangerous if cis men are in the room. We attack the legacy of racism and transphobia that has plagued feminist organizing, and strive to develop new autonomous feminist practices that take antagonism to white supremacy and transphobia as essential parts of feminist struggle. LIES came out of our experiences within these struggles. It seeks to embody and develop in print the practice of autonomy that we needed to save ourselves in the midst of movements squared on patriarchy and fueled by the subordination of everyone but white cis men. LIES is a communist journal against communists. We draw our purpose and support from feminist, queer, and trans circles, our friends and comrades to whom this journal is devoted.

TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work


Judith Rudakoff - 2012
    In TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault, Judith Rudakoff brings together a diverse group of contributors, including artists, scholars, and Arsenault herself to offer an exploration of beauty, image, and the notion of queerness through the lens of Arsenault’s highly personal brand of performance art.Illustrated throughout with photographs of the artist’s transformation over the years and demonstrating her diversity of personae, this volume contributes to a deepening of our understanding of what it means to be a woman and what it means to be beautiful. Also included in this volume is the full script of Arsenault’s critically acclaimed stage play, The Silicone Diaries.

Iconic: Decoding Images of the Revolutionary Black Woman


Lakesia D. Johnson - 2012
    Revolutionary black women have evoked strong reaction throughout American history. Magazines, political campaigns, music, television, and movies have relied upon deep-seated archetypes and habitually cast strong, countercultural black women as mammies and sexual objects. In Iconic Lakesia Johnson explores how this belittling imagery is imposed by American media, revealing an immense cultural fear of black women's power and potential.But the media does not have the last word. Johnson chronicles how strong black women--truly revolutionary black women--have nonetheless taken control of their own imaging despite consistent negative characterizations. Through their speech, demeanor, fashion, and social relationships, women from Sojourner Truth to Michelle Obama have counteracted these depictions. With ingenuity, fortitude, and focus on the greater good, these revolutionary women transformed the cultural images of themselves and, simultaneously, those of American black women as a whole.Seamlessly weaving together role models of past and present, from women in politics to artists and musicians, Johnson eloquently demonstrates how the revolutionary black woman in many public forums has been--and continues to be--a central figure in challenging long-standing social injustices.--Jacquelina Dyer "Africanus Journal"

Those Who Did Not Die: Impact of the Agrarian Crisis on Women in Punjab


Ranjana Padhi - 2012
    The cost of food production far outweighs the returns; the peasantry is falling prey to indebtedness, both institutionalized and non- institutionalized. It is facing the severest of challenges, with even dalit landless labourers becoming victims of indebtedness and succumbing to suicide,Based on a study done in eight districts of the Malwa region of the Punjab, this book uses quantitative data along with field work, narratives and interviews with peasant unions. Over136 families have been interviewed where women as wives and mothers of the deceased speak of the aftermath of the suicide.The book outlines the distress borne by the family, including women, the children and the elderly in the aftermath of peasant suicides. By doing so, it interrogates the split between public and private; production and social reproduction; work and family. It highlights the determining character of capitalist-intensive agriculture in today's crisis times by focusing on women's reality and renewed hardships in a caste, class and patriarchal society.

Delirium: The Politics of Sex in America


Nancy L. Cohen - 2012
    Cohen writes in her prescient new book, Delirium: The Politics of Sex in AmericaThe 2012 election was supposed to be about the economy, but over the last few months it turned into a debate about sex and women’s rights. In Delirium, Cohen takes us on a gripping journey through the confounding and mysterious episodes of our recent politics to explain how we and why we got to this place. Along the way she explores such topics as why Bill Clinton was impeached over a private sexual affair; how George W. Bush won the presidency by stealth; why Hillary lost to Obama; why John McCain chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate; and what the 2012 presidential contest tells us about America today. She exposes the surprising role of right-wing women in undermining women’s rights, as well as explains how liberal men were complicit in letting it happen. Cohen uncovers the hidden history of an orchestrated, well-financed, ideologically powered shadow movement to turn back the clock on matters of gender equality and sexual freedom and how it has played a leading role in fueling America’s political wars. Delirium tells the story of this shadow movement and how we can restore common sense and sanity in our nation’s politics.

Hung Jury: Testimonies of Genital Surgery by Transsexual Men


Trystan T. Cotten - 2012
    Contributors write about the details and ups and downs of this transformative journey and dispel many myths and misinformation. They provide an in depth, understanding of the surgical, social, sexual, somatic, spiritual, and psychological aspects. Hung Jury appeals to readers from all walks of life. For those considering genitoplasty the book is a valuable resource of information for dealing with the ins/outs and ups/downs of surgery, how to decide which surgery is best for your needs, what to expect in the journey, and how to take care of yourself and optimize surgical results. For others who are curious, including the general public, you will be educated and enlightened about one of the most transformative experiences of female-to-male transitioning. Clinicians, therapists, and partners of trans men seeking genitoplasty will also gain tremendous insight and understanding of the emotional, psychological, and somatic factors underlying and motivating our journey down this path.

Transition to Murder


Renee James - 2012
    I should be scared by that thought, but mostly I’m angry. Not stomp-your-foot angry. Get even angry. Put a knife in his gut and turn it angry.” In this 2014 re-telling of Coming Out Can Be Murder, a beautiful young transwoman is brutally murdered. The media looks on blindly, the police go through the motions, but the victim's hairdresser goes ballistic. Bobbi Logan is so outraged by these events that she commits two bold and courageous acts: She comes out as a transwoman herself, sending her career as a hair stylist into a gut-wrenching tailspin, and she begins searching for her friend’s murderer, an investigation that brings her into the vicious web of a powerful, seductive predator who is as charming as he is ruthless. Originally published under the title Coming Out Can Be Murder, the book tells the chilling story of revenge when a suspected killer lives beyond the reach of the law. Bobbi Logan’s bruising search for truth and justice takes her into the pulsating streets of Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood, the colorful world of high-end hair styling, and the city’s vibrant transgender community. Fast-paced and unsparing in hard details, Transition to Murder is a fresh, original portrayal of the life of a transwoman who is searching to discover her own “self” even as she searches for a killer. Renee James is an award-winning journalist, as well as a writer, editor and licensed cosmetologist. She has been active in the Chicago transgender community for many years.

Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex, and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life


Andrew Canessa - 2012
    He examines how gender, race, and ethnic identities manifest themselves in everyday interactions in the Aymara village. Canessa shows that indigeneity is highly contingent; thoroughly imbricated with gendered, racial, and linguistic identities; and informed by a historical consciousness. Addressing how whiteness and indianness are reproduced as hegemonic structures in the village, how masculinities develop as men go to the mines and army, and how memories of a violent past are used to construct a present sense of community, Canessa raises important questions about indigenous politics and the very nature of indigenous identity.Andrew Canessa is Director of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Essex."Andrew Canessa makes superb use of more than twenty years of ethnographic experience with Andean villagers of Wila Kjarka to give us a beautifully detailed and intellectually stimulating account of the changing meanings of 'indian' and 'indigeneity' in Bolivia. His focus on the intimate and the public spaces of everyday life, and on the local and the translocal flows of people, ideas, and things, provides a wonderfully engaging picture of how villagers in the Andes think of themselves and others. His deep commitment to the people of the village gives us a refreshing and important perspective on the concept of 'indigeneity,' which is too often taken for granted in the context of contemporary identity politics. Intimate Indigeneities will prove very attractive to students and scholars alike."—Peter Wade, author of Race and Sex in Latin America"Focused on topics of great interest to contemporary readers—race, inequality, gender, sexuality, social and political change, education, military service, and domestic violence—and written with verve and style, Intimate Indigeneities draws on long-term, detailed ethnographic work that is impressive and rarely achieved. Andrew Canessa presents unique, novel knowledge about a place, a time, and a people."—Mary Weismantel, author of Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes"Using telling case histories, Andrew Canessa explores how indigeneity appears in the local and national arena, what it means to be indigenous in contemporary Bolivia, and why the villagers he has studied for more than twenty years reject this term. This is a major contribution, a splendid example of a twenty-first-century ethnography."—Jean E. Jackson, coeditor of Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State in Latin America

Leading Men: Presidential Campaigns and the Politics of Manhood


Jackson Katz - 2012
    Over the past thirty years, Democrats have made major gains with women, while Republicans have been doing far better with men especially white working class men. The question is why? In Leading Men, Jackson Katz offers stunning evidence that American presidential campaigns have evolved into nothing less than quadrennial referenda on competing versions of American manhood. And in the process, he never takes his eye off what this development means for women as both candidates and citizens. Written in an engaging style that will appeal to general readers, political experts, and activists alike, Katz explores some of the major political developments and offers a new way to understand the power of image in presidential politics. In the end, Leading Men offers nothing less than a paradigm-shifting way to understand the dynamics of presidential elections, and the very nature of the American presidency

Thought Reform and China's Dangerous Classes: Reeducation, Resistance, and the People


Aminda M Smith - 2012
    Aminda Smith takes readers inside early-PRC reformatories, where the new state endeavored to transform "vagrants" into members of the laboring masses. As places where "the people" were literally created, these centers became testing grounds for rapidly changing ideas and experiments about thought reform and the subjects they produced. Smith explores reformatories as institutions dedicated to molding new socialist citizens and as symbolic spaces in which internees, cadres, and the ordinary masses made sense of what it meant to be a member of the people in the People's Republic. Drawing on extensive, previously unavailable source material, she offers convincing answers to much-debated questions about the development and future of Chinese political culture.

Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State


Eileen Boris - 2012
    Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein demonstrate the ways in which law and social policy made home care a low-waged job that was stigmatized as welfare and relegated to the bottom of the medical hierarchy. For decades, these front-line caregivers labored in the shadows of a welfare state that shaped the conditions of the occupation. Disparate, often chaotic programs for home care, which allowed needy, elderly, and disabled people to avoid institutionalization, historically paid poverty wages to the African American and immigrant women who constituted the majority of the labor force. Yet policymakers and welfare administrators linked discourses of dependence and independence-claiming that such jobs would end clients' and workers' dependence on the state and provide a ticket to economic independence. The history of home care illuminates the fractured evolution of the modern American welfare state since the New Deal and its race, gender, and class fissures. It reveals why there is no adequate long-term care in America. Caring for America is much more than a history of social policy, however; it is also about a powerful contemporary social movement. At the front and center of the narrative are the workers-poor women of color-who have challenged the racial, social, and economic stigmas embedded in the system. Caring for America traces the intertwined, sometimes conflicting search of care providers and receivers for dignity, self-determination, and security. It highlights the senior citizen and independent living movements; the civil rights organizing of women on welfare and domestic workers; the battles of public sector unions; and the unionization of health and service workers. It rethinks the strategies of the U.S. labor movement in terms of a growing care work economy. Finally, it makes a powerful argument that care is a basic right for all and that care work merits a living wage.

The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art


Stephen D. Korshak - 2012
    Brundage, whose art contemporaries include Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok, is unique as she was the first female cover artist of the pulp era. Decades before the gothic fetish craze, Brundage's lush, provocative paintings, which frequently featured smoldering, semi-nude young women bearing whips, became a focus of acute attention and controversy. At the very peak of the notorious pulp's classic run, the magazine's appeal was due as much to Brundage's covers as to the stories inside by famous authors H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch and Conan creator, Robert E. Howard. Long before Frazetta, it was Brundage who was the very 1st Conan cover artist. The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage is the premier book devoted to this noted artist and features all of her Weird Tales and Conan covers.Authors and compilers Stephen D. Korshak and J. David Spurlock follow their seminal collaboration, The Paintings of J. Allen St. John -- Grand Master of Fantasy, with The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage which, also features essays by noted artist Rowena, Weird Tales historian Robert Weinberg, First-Fandom member / Shasta publisher Melvin Korshak, and Men's Adventure Magazines: In Postwar America co-author George Hagenauer.All editions feature big, 9" x 12" lavish illustrated, full-color pages with text."

I Trusted You: Fully and Honestly Speaking of Gendered Assault and the Way to a Rape-Free Culture


Nadine Rosechild Sullivan - 2012
    In our rape- and male-violence-prone culture, millions of women (of all races and ethnicities), children (of all genders and ethnicities), and adolescent and (even) adult men (across all social divisions) are victimized - predominantly by male perpetrators enacting a hegemonic violent masculinity. The dual suffering of victims (the assault and its long-term aftermath) complicates both individual-level and societal-level mental health, and makes us all less safe. But this gendered violence is not an innate biological imperative of the human species. The anthropological evidence proves that our present culture of violence is not a genetic mandate. Men and women in other times and places have enacted gender and sexuality differently - demonstrating that our current relationship with gendered violence is cultural - not biological. We can redirect our culture. We - collectively - create it, and therefore, we can change our society. We can heal as individuals. Those who have been victimized can come to recognize that nothing in them caused their assailant to perpetrate. AND we can heal as a collectivity. We can learn to relate to each other differently. We can break our addiction to violence. Using a compelling mix of personal stories, pointed poetry, and the realities of social fact, "I Trusted You" guides the reader to grasp the magnitude of the problem, to understand the experience of sexual and interpersonal trauma, to recognize that the fault lies with the perpetrator (not the victim) of sexual or interpersonal violence, to see the importance of refusing to use sex and relationships to cause harm, and to conceive of different gendered interactions for our collective future. "I Trusted You" is a book to liberate those who have been perpetrated against - to heal their wounds and facilitate their transitions from victims to survivors. "I Trusted You" is a book to touch the hearts of (present, former, and would-be) perpetrators - to cause them to see - and be moved by - the shared humanity of their (actual or potential) victims. "I Trusted You" is a book to revolutionize the status of interpersonal, gendered, relationships in the early 21st century United States. It brings into focus the importance of the ways we think about each other - demonstrating that the beliefs we hold influence the actions we take. Grounded in the firm belief that we can change the social forces that still ail us, "I Trusted You" is a beacon of hope, illuminating the way forward.

Casebook for Counseling Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Persons and Their Families


Sari H. Dworkin - 2012
    The cases presented include coming out; counseling intersex, bisexual, and transsexual clients; couples, marriage, and family counseling; parenting issues; aging; working with rural clients and African American, Native American, Latino/a, Asian, and multiracial individuals; sexual minority youth; HIV; sexual and drug addictions; binational couples; work and career; domestic violence; spirituality and religion; sexual issues; and women's health

Beyond the Dance Floor: Female DJs, Technology and Electronic Dance Music Culture


Rebekah Farrugia - 2012
    In this volume, Rebekah Farrugia explores a number of important issues, including the politics of identity and representation, the bonds formed by women within the DJ community, and the role female DJs and producers play in this dance music culture as well as in the larger public sphere. Though Farrugia primarily focuses on women’s relationship to music-related technologies—including vinyl, mp3s, and digital production software—she also deftly extends her argument to the strategic use of the Internet and web design skills for purposes tied to publicity, networking, and music distribution.

Archie Archives, Vol. 6


Bill Vigoda - 2012
    Don't miss this volume's two-hundred-plus pages of postwar Archie, the humor comic that defined the modern teenager for generations

Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies


Kara Keeling - 2012
    The essays in this volume highlight the key role of sound in the formation of central themes and areas of inquiry within contemporary American studies.The editors have adopted an interdisciplinary approach to their study of sound, reflecting on its cultural, political, technological, economic, socio-historical, spatial, temporal, affective, and formal contexts. The selected essays analyze sound and explore inter-American soundscapes within several areas, including• media technologies and consumption• race, sex, and gender• citizenship, belonging, and community• nationalism and citizenship• time and historical method• the public sphere and social changeHow have sound technologies and sonic media practices informed American identities? What role have hearing and listening played in formations of race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, community, and class? What are the political economies of sound? The contributors to Sound Clash address these questions and more as they think through sound as a critical space, listening as a critical and cultural act, and sonic media as key technological sites of investigation.Supplementary sound clips are available at the American Quarterly website, www.americanquarterly.org.

Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality


Rosalind S. Chou - 2012
    The book draws on sixty in-depth interviews to show how constructions of Asian American gender and sexuality tend to reinforce the social and political dominance for whites, particularly white males, even in the supposed "post-racial" United States. Drawing on established scholarship on the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality, Asian American Sexual Politics shows how power dynamics shape the lives of young Asian Americans today. Asian American women are often constructed as hyper-sexual docile bodies, while Asian American men are often racially "castrated." The book's interview excerpts show the range of frames through which Asian Americans approach the world, as well as the counter-frames they construct. In the final chapter, author Rosalind S. Chou offers strategies for countering racialized and sexualized oppression. This provocative book shows how persistent racism affects Asian American body image, self-esteem, and intimate relationships.

Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels


Hsu-Ming Teo - 2012
    M. Hull's best-selling novel that became a wildly popular film starring Rudolph Valentino—kindled "sheik fever" across the Western world in the 1920s. A craze for all things romantically "Oriental" swept through fashion, film, and literature, spawning imitations and parodies without number. While that fervor has largely subsided, tales of passion between Western women and Arab men continue to enthrall readers of today's mass-market romance novels. In this groundbreaking cultural history, Hsu-Ming Teo traces the literary lineage of these desert romances and historical bodice rippers from the twelfth to the twenty-first century and explores the gendered cultural and political purposes that they have served at various historical moments.Drawing on "high" literature, erotica, and popular romance fiction and films, Teo examines the changing meanings of Orientalist tropes such as crusades and conversion, abduction by Barbary pirates, sexual slavery, the fear of renegades, the Oriental despot and his harem, the figure of the powerful Western concubine, and fantasies of escape from the harem. She analyzes the impact of imperialism, decolonization, sexual liberation, feminism, and American involvement in the Middle East on women's Orientalist fiction. Teo suggests that the rise of female-authored romance novels dramatically transformed the nature of Orientalism because it feminized the discourse; made white women central as producers, consumers, and imagined actors; and revised, reversed, or collapsed the binaries inherent in traditional analyses of Orientalism.

Women in Iraq: Past Meets Present


Noga Efrati - 2012
    She traces the harsh and long-lasting implications of British state building on Iraqi women, particularly their legal and political enshrinement as second-class citizens, and the struggle by women's rights activists to counter this precedent. Efrati concludes with a discussion of post-Saddam Iraq and the women's associations now claiming their place in government. Finding common threads between these two generations of women, Efrati underscores the organic roots of the current fight for gender equality shaped by a memory of oppression under the monarchy.Efrati revisits the British strategy of efficient rule, largely adopted by the Iraqi government they erected and the consequent gender policy that emerged. The attempt to control Iraq through "authentic leaders"--giving them legal and political powers--marginalized the interests of women and virtually sacrificed their well-being altogether. Iraqi women refused to resign themselves to this fate. From the state's early days, they drew attention to the biases of the Tribal Criminal and Civil Disputes Regulation (TCCDR) and the absence of state intervention in matters of personal status and resisted women's disenfranchisement. Following the coup of 1958, their criticism helped precipitate the dissolution of the TCCDR and the ratification of the Personal Status Law. A new government gender discourse shaped by these past battles arose, yet the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, rather than helping cement women's rights into law, reinstated the British approach. Pressured to secure order and reestablish a pro-Western Iraq, the Americans increasingly turned to the country's "authentic leaders" to maintain control while continuing to marginalize women. Efrati considers Iraqi women's efforts to preserve the progress they have made, utterly defeating the notion that they have been passive witnesses to history.

Writings from the Sand, Volume 1: Collected Works of Isabelle Eberhardt


Isabelle Eberhardt - 2012
    She dressed like a man so she could have access to areas forbidden to women, smoked in public, and scandalized Genevan society. Already multilingual (French, German, and Russian), she began studying Arabic language and Islamic culture and eventually converted to Islam and joined a Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood. Eberhardt traveled throughout North Africa and wrote about her experiences in short stories, journals, and reflections. She married an Algerian and led a legendary and stormy life that included subversive political anarchism, the mysticism of Islam, numerous love affairs, and most importantly, writing unmatched by her contemporaries. Writings from the Sand, Volume 1, at once the document of a remarkable life and a literary treasure, appears here in English for the first time. Volume 1, including journals, diary entries, and observations of life in North Africa, offers a view of the culture and people of French Algeria rarely seen by outsiders—the peasants, prostitutes, mystics, criminals, and other marginalized members of a colonized society. This translation brings to life a brilliant woman ahead of her time while also raising questions—about North African history, colonialism, gender representation, and writing—that resonate in our day.

Archie Archives, Vol. 4


Harry Shorten - 2012
    Along with gals and pals Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, and more, Archie and his teenager travails have captured the hearts of comics readers for seventy years, and these hilarious stories are where it all began.So what are you waiting for? Pull up a stool at Pop Tate''s Chocklit Shoppe and get ready for 200-plus pages of mirthful mayhem and beautiful cartooning!

Archie Archives, Vol. 5


Harry Shorten - 2012
    Celebrate the mirth of a nation with Archie Comics and Dark Horse Comics in this latest addition to the Archie Archives line 1940s America instantly fell in love with Archie Andrews, Jughead, Betty and Veronica, and the whole gang from Riverdale, so much so that within just a few short years publisher MLJ Magazines became Archie Comics, beginning with some of the stories in this volume Learn why Archie and friends became comics icons in these 200-plus pages of hilarious high-school high jinx from Archie's Golden Age

Gendered Politics in the Modern South: The Susan Smith Case and the Rise of a New Sexism


Keira V. Williams - 2012
    Williams uses the Susan Smith case to analyze what she calls the new sexism found in the agenda of the budding neo-conservative movement of the 1990s. Just days after Smith s confession to killing her children, soon-to-be Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich linked Smith s behavior to the 1960s counterculture and to Lyndon Johnson s Great Society programs. At the same time, the assault on liberal social causes gained momentum as the media declared the death of feminism and a crisis in masculinity. In response to this perceived crisis, Williams argues, a distinct code of gender discrimination developed, one that sought to reassert a traditional form of white male power at the end of the twentieth century.

Fellow Men: Fantin-LaTour and the Problem of the Group in Nineteenth-Century French Painting


Bridget Alsdorf - 2012
    Through close readings of some of the most ambitious paintings of the realist and impressionist generation, Bridget Alsdorf offers new insights into how French painters understood the shifting boundaries of their social world, and reveals the fragile masculine bonds that made up the avant-garde.A dedicated realist who veered between extremes of sociability and hermetic isolation, Fantin-Latour painted group dynamics over the course of two decades, from 1864 to 1885. This was a period of dramatic change in French history and art--events like the Paris Commune and the rise and fall of impressionism raised serious doubts about the power of collectivism in art and life. Fantin-Latour's monumental group portraits, and related works by his friends and colleagues from the 1850s through the 1880s, represent varied visions of collective identity and test the limits of association as both a social and an artistic pursuit. By examining the bonds and frictions that animated their social circles, Fantin-Latour and his cohorts developed a new pictorial language for the modern group: one of fragmentation, exclusion, and willful withdrawal into interior space that nonetheless presented individuality as radically relational.

1611: Authority, Gender and the Word in Early Modern England


Helen Wilcox - 2012
    Represents an exploration of a year in the textual life of early modern England Juxtaposes the variety and range of texts that were published, performed, read, or heard in the same year, 1611 Offers an account of the textual culture of the year 1611, the environment of language, and the ideas from which the Authorised Version of the English Bible emerged

Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom


Mimi Sheller - 2012
    Mimi Sheller offers a new theory of "citizenship from below" to describe the contest between "proper" spaces of legitimate high politics and the disavowed politics of lived embodiment. While acknowledging the internal contradictions and damaging exclusions of subaltern self-empowerment, Sheller roots out from beneath the historical archive traces of a deeper freedom, one expressed through bodily performances, familial relationships, cultivation of the land, and sacred worship.Attending to the hidden linkages among intimate realms and the public sphere, Sheller explores specific struggles for freedom, including women's political activism in Jamaica; the role of discourses of "manhood" in the making of free subjects, soldiers, and citizens; the fiercely ethnonationalist discourses that excluded South Asian and African indentured workers; the sexual politics of the low-bass beats and "bottoms up" moves in the dancehall; and the struggle for reproductive and LGBT rights and against homophobia in the contemporary Caribbean. Through her creative use of archival sources and emphasis on the connections between intimacy, violence, and citizenship, Sheller enriches critical theories of embodied freedom, sexual citizenship, and erotic agency in all post-slavery societies.

Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations


Musa W. Dube - 2012