Best of
Gender-Studies

1999

Woman: An Intimate Geography


Natalie Angier - 1999
    Angier takes readers on a mesmerizing tour of female anatomy and physiology that explores everything from organs to orgasm, and delves into topics such as exercise, menopause, and the mysterious properties of breast milk.A self-proclaimed "scientific fantasia of womanhood." Woman ultimately challenges widely accepted Darwinian-based gender stereotypes. Angier shows how cultural biases have influenced research in evolutionary psychology (the study of the biological bases of behavior) and consequently led to dubious conclusions about "female nature." such as the idea that women are innately monogamous while men are natural philanderers.But Angier doesn't just point fingers; she offers optimistic alternatives and transcends feminist polemics with an enlightened subversiveness that makes for a joyful, fresh vision of womanhood. Woman is a seminal work that will endure as an essential read for anyone intersted in how biology affects who we are as women, as men, and as human beings.

Documents on the Rape of Nanking


Timothy Brook - 1999
    What ended in one atrocity began with another: the savage military takeover of China's capital city, which quickly became known as the Rape of Nanking. The Japanese Army's conduct from December 1937 to February 1938 constitutes one of the most barbarous events not just of the war but of the century. The violence was documented at the time and then redocumented during the war crimes trial in Tokyo after the war. This book brings together materials from both moments to provide the first comprehensive dossier of primary sources on the Rape.Part 1, "The Records," includes two sources written as the Rape was underway. The first is a long set of documents produced by the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone, a group of foreigners who strove to protect the Chinese residents. The second is a series of letters that American surgeon Dr. Robert Wilson wrote for his family during the same period. These letters are published here for the first time.The evidence compiled by the International Committee and its members would be decisive for the indictments against Japanese leaders at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo. Part 2, "The Judgments," reprints portions of the tribunal's 1948 judgment dealing with the Rape of Nanking, its judicial consequences, and sections of the dissenting judgment of Justice Radhabinod Pal.These contemporary records and judgments create an intimate firsthand account of the Rape of Nanking. Together they are intended to stimulate deeper reflection than previously possible on how and why we assess and assign the burden of war guilt.Timothy Brook is Professor of Chinese History and Associate Director of the Joint Centre for Asia Pacific Studies, University of Toronto, and is coeditor of Nation Work: Asian Elites and National Identities and Cultureand Economy: The Shaping of Capitalism in Eastern Asia, both published by the University of Michigan Press.

The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas Into History


Emma Pérez - 1999
    it will certainly be read seriously in Chicano/a studies." --Women's Review of BooksEmma Perez discusses the historical methodology which has created Chicano history and argues that the historical narrative has often omitted gender. She poses a theory which rejects the colonizer's methodological assumptions and examines new tools for uncovering the hidden voices of Chicanas who have been relegated to silence.

How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS


Paula A. Treichler - 1999
    Treichler has become a singularly important voice among the significant theorists on the AIDS crisis. Dissecting the cultural politics surrounding representations of HIV and AIDS, her work has altered the field of cultural studies by establishing medicine as a legitimate focus for cultural analysis. How to Have Theory in an Epidemic is a comprehensive collection of Treichler’s related writings, including revised and updated essays from the 1980s and 1990s that present a sustained argument about the AIDS epidemic from a uniquely knowledgeable and interdisciplinary standpoint. “AIDS is more than an epidemic disease,” Treichler writes, “it is an epidemic of meanings.” Exploring how such meanings originate, proliferate, and take hold, her essays investigate how certain interpretations of the epidemic dominate while others are obscured. They also suggest ways to understand and choose between overlapping or competing discourses. In her coverage of roughly fifteen years of the AIDS epidemic, Treichler addresses a range of key issues, from biomedical discourse and theories of pathogenesis to the mainstream media’s depictions of the crisis in both developed and developing countries. She also examines representations of women and AIDS, treatment issues, and the role of activism in shaping the politics of the epidemic. Linking the AIDS tragedy to a uniquely broad spectrum of contemporary theory and culture, this collection concludes with an essay on the continued importance of theoretical thought for untangling the sociocultural phenomena of AIDS—and for tackling the disease itself. With an exhaustive bibliography of critical and theoretical writings on HIV and AIDS, this long-awaited volume will be essential to all those invested in studying the course of AIDS, its devastating medical effects, and its massive impact on contemporary culture. It should become a standard text in university courses dealing with AIDS in biomedicine, sociology, anthropology, gay and lesbian studies, women’s studies, and cultural and media studies.

Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches


Walter Wink - 1999
    This unique resource presents short pieces from some of the nation's most prominent church leaders - Protestant and Catholic, mainline and evangelical - who address the fundamental moral imperatives about homosexuality. Together they invite the reader to open his or her heart to the Spirit, to tolerance, and to Gospel values. Through personal testimony, factual clarification, and moral suasion, they provide much-needed clarity on the biblical witness and biblical authority, the nature or character of homosexuality and sexual orientation, and many related topics. Contributors include Elise Boulding, Ignacio Castuera, John B. Cobb Jr., William Sloane Coffin, Peggy Campolo, Bishop Paul Egertson, James A. Forbes Jr., Maria Harris, Barbara Kelsey, Morton Kelsey, Gabriel Moran, David G. Myers, Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Ken Sehested, Carole Shields, Donald W. Shriver Jr., M. Mahan Siler Jr., Lewis B. Smedes, and Walter Wink.

Unbending Gender


Joan C. Williams - 1999
    Concerned by what she finds--young women who flatly refuse to identify themselves as feminists and working-class and minority women who feel the movement hasn't addressed the issues that dominate their daily lives--she outlines a new vision of feminism that calls for workplaces focused on the needs of families and, in divorce cases, recognition of the value of family work and its impact on women's earning power. Williams shows that workplaces are designed around men's bodies and life patterns in ways that discriminate against women, and that the work/family system that results is terrible for men, worse for women, and worst of all for children. She proposes a set of practical policies and legal initiatives to reorganize the two realms of work in employment and households--so that men and women can lead healthier and more productive personal and work lives. Williams introduces a new 'reconstructive' feminism that places class, race, and gender conflicts among women at center stage. Her solution is an inclusive, family-friendly feminism that supports both mothers and fathers as caregivers and as workers.

Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque


Mohja Kahf - 1999
    Yet during medieval and Renaissance times, European writers portrayed Muslim women in exactly the opposite way, as forceful queens of wanton and intimidating sexuality. In this illuminating study, Mohja Kahf traces the process through which the "termagant" became an "odalisque" in Western representations of Muslim women. Drawing examples from medieval chanson de geste and romance, Renaissance drama, Enlightenment prose, and Romantic poetry, she links the changing images of Muslim women to changes in European relations with the Islamic world, as well as to changing gender dynamics within Western societies.

Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture


Siobhan B. Somerville - 1999
    Analyzing a range of sources, including sexology texts, early cinema, and African American literature, Siobhan B. Somerville argues that the emerging understanding of homosexuality depended on the context of the black/white “color line,” the dominant system of racial distinction during this period. This book thus critiques and revises tendencies to treat race and sexuality as unrelated categories of analysis, showing instead that race has historically been central to the cultural production of homosexuality.At about the same time that the 1896 Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision hardened the racialized boundary between black and white, prominent trials were drawing the public’s attention to emerging categories of sexual identity. Somerville argues that these concurrent developments were not merely parallel but in fact inextricably interrelated and that the discourses of racial and sexual “deviance” were used to reinforce each other’s terms. She provides original readings of such texts as Havelock Ellis’s late nineteenth-century work on “sexual inversion,” the 1914 film A Florida Enchantment, the novels of Pauline E. Hopkins, James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, and Jean Toomer’s fiction and autobiographical writings, including Cane. Through her analyses of these texts and her archival research, Somerville contributes to the growing body of scholarship that focuses on discovering the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality.Queering the Color Line will have broad appeal across disciplines including African American studies, gay and lesbian studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, cinema studies, and gender studies.

Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern


Carolyn Dinshaw - 1999
    Reaching beyond both medieval and queer studies, Dinshaw demonstrates in this challenging work how intellectual inquiry into pre-modern societies can contribute invaluably to current issues in cultural studies. In the process, she makes important connections between past and present cultures that until now have not been realized. In her pursuit of historical analyses that embrace the heterogeneity and indeterminacy of sex and sexuality, Dinshaw examines canonical Middle English texts such as the Canterbury Tales and The Book of Margery Kempe. She examines polemics around the religious dissidents known as the Lollards as well as accounts of prostitutes in London to address questions of how particular sexual practices and identifications were normalized while others were proscribed. By exploring contemporary (mis)appropriations of medieval tropes in texts ranging from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction to recent Congressional debates on U.S. cultural production, Dinshaw demonstrates how such modern media can serve to reinforce constrictive heteronormative values and deny the multifarious nature of history. Finally, she works with and against the theories of Michel Foucault, Homi K. Bhabha, Roland Barthes, and John Boswell to show how deconstructionist impulses as well as historical perspectives can further an understanding of community in both pre- and postmodern societies. This long-anticipated volume will be indispensible to medieval and queer scholars and will be welcomed by a larger cultural studies audience.

Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity


Sut Jhally - 1999
    Tough Guise is the first educational video geared toward college and high school students to systematically examine the relationship between pop-cultural imagery and the social construction of masculine identities in the U.S. at the dawn of the 21st century. In this innovative and wide-ranging analysis, Jackson Katz argues that widespread violence in American society, including the tragic school shootings in Littleton, Colorado, Jonesboro, Arkansas, and elsewhere, needs to be understood as part of an ongoing crisis in masculinity. This exciting new media literacy tool-- utilizing racially diverse subject matter and examples-- will enlighten and provoke students (both males and females) to evaluate their own participation in the culture of contemporary masculinity. Sections: Introduction | Hidden: A Gender | Upping the Ante | Backlash | The Tough Guise | The School Shootings | Constructing Violent Masculinity | Sexualized Violence | Invulnerability | Vulnerability | Better Man

Eden Built by Eves: The Culture of Women's Music Festivals


Bonnie J. Morris - 1999
    Now Dr. Bonnie J. Morris takes readers on an breathtaking insider's journey through 25 years of this cultural phenomenon. From Michigan to Mississippi, Eden Built by Eves is a splendidly full archive of festival herstory: conflicts, scandals, new music, rain, sun work, family, joy. What does festival culture mean to the audiences, artists, and activists who loyally return each year? A vibrant and soaring tribute to the work of thousands of women, this volume brims with candid backstage interview with festival performers and produces, moving testimony, and often hilarious anecdotes from "festiegoers." A plethora of photographs, articles, comic strips, illustrations, and excerpts from festival literature provide a thorough explanation of the music, relationships, and issues that have shaped an entire generation of lesbian memories in America. With affection, intensive research, and the experience of a lifetime attending festivals, Morris has created a stunning and important contribution to both musical and women's history.

Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity


Naomi Sawelson-Gorse - 1999
    Indeed, the word Dada evokes the idea of the male--both as father and as domineering authority. Thus female colleagues were to be seen not heard, nurturers not usurpers, pleasant not disruptive.This book is the first to make the case that women's changing role in European and American society was critical to Dada. Debates about birth control and suffrage, a declining male population and expanding female workforce, the emergence of the New Woman, and Freudianism were among the forces that contributed to the Dadaist enterprise.Among the female dadaists discussed are the German �migr� Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven; Berlin dadaist Hannah H�ch; French dadaists Juliette Roche and Suzanne Duchamp; Zurich dadaists Sophie Taeuber and Emmy Hennings; expatriate poet and artist Mina Loy; the Queen of Greenwich Village, Clara Tice; Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the lesbian couple who ran The Little Review; and Beatrice Wood, who died in 1998 at the age of 105. The book also addresses issues of colonialist racism, cross-dressing and dandyism, and the gendering of the machine. The bibliography was compiled by the International Dada Archive (Timothy Shipe and Rudolf E. Kuenzli).ContributorsEleanor S. Apter, Barbara J. Bloemink, Willard Bohn, Carolyn Burke, William A. Camfield, Whitney Chadwick, Dorothea Dietrich, Susan Fillin-Yeh, Paul B. Franklin, Ren�e Riese Hubert, Marisa Januzzi, Amelia Jones, Marie T. Keller, Rudolf E. Kuenzli, Maud Lavin, Margaret A. Morgan, Dickran Tashjian, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Barbara Zabel

Silence


Moira Buffini - 1999
    

Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II


Maureen Honey - 1999
    This sea of white faces left for posterity images such as Rosie the Riveter, obscuring the contributions that African American women made to the war effort. In Bitter Fruit, Maureen Honey corrects this distorted picture of women's roles in World War II by collecting photos, essays, fiction, and poetry by and about black women from the four leading African American periodicals of the war period: Negro Digest, The Crisis, Opportunity, and Negro Story.Mostly appearing for the first time since their original publication, the materials in Bitter Fruit feature black women operating technical machinery, working in army uniforms, entertaining audiences, and pursuing a college education. The articles praise the women's accomplishments as pioneers working toward racial equality; the fiction and poetry depict female characters in roles other than domestic servants and give voice to the bitterness arising from discrimination that many women felt. With these various images, Honey masterfully presents the roots of the postwar civil rights movement and the leading roles black women played in it.Containing works from eighty writers, this anthology includes forty African American women authors, most of whose work has not been published since the war. Of particular note are poems and short stories anthologized for the first time, including Ann Petry's first story, Octavia Wynbush's last work of fiction, and three poems by Harlem Renaissance writer Georgia Douglas Johnson. Uniting these various writers was their desire to write in the midst of a worldwide military conflict with dramatic potential for ending segregation and opening doors for women at home.Traditional anthologies of African American literature jump from the Harlem Renaissance to the 1960s with little or no reference to the decades between those periods. Bitter Fruit not only illuminates the literature of these decades but also presents an image of black women as community activists that undercuts gender stereotypes of the era. As Honey concludes in her introduction, "African American women found an empowered voice during the war, one that anticipates the fruit of their wartime effort to break silence, to challenge limits, and to change forever the terms of their lives."

How Like a Leaf: An Interview with Donna Haraway


Donna J. Haraway - 1999
    How Like a Leaf will be a welcome inside view of the author's thought.

Intersex in the Age of Ethics


Alice Domurat Dreger - 1999
    It could not be more timely, as professional conferences, gender clinics, and the popular media now consider how medicine and society should handle intersex and intersexuals. This volume provides a much-needed perspective.

Women and Desire: Beyond Wanting to Be Wanted


Polly Young-Eisendrath - 1999
    Instead of being able to know what they really want or who they really are, women have been conditioned to accept images -- the good daughter, the nice friend, the ideal boss, the perfect mother -- to define themselves through reflections from others. As a result, self-direction, self-determination, and self-confidence are undermined from adolescence through old age. A double bind comes to surround female desire: a woman is damned as "the bitch" if she is direct and self-determining; but she is confused and indirect if she plays the Object of Desire.Dr. Young-Eisendrath shows us how to break out of this double bind so that we can encounter the challenges of choice and responsibility for our own desires. She wisely uses mythological and personal stories to help us take control of our sexual, relational, material, and spiritual lives. If you feel confused, resentful, or trapped in a life that does not seem to be fully yours, then you can find a clear path to your true self, once and for all, with the help of Women and Desire.

Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations


Karma Lekshe Tsomo - 1999
    Buddhist Women Across Cultures documents both women's struggle for religious equality in Asian Buddhist cultures as well as the process of creating Buddhist feminist identity across national and ethnic boundaries as Buddhism gains attention in the West. The book contributes significantly to an understanding of women and religion in both Western and non-Western cultures.[Contributors include Paula Arai, Cait Collins, Lorna Devaraja, Beata Grant, Rita Gross, Theja Gunawardhana, Elizabeth Harris, Anne Klein, Sarah Pinto, Dharmacharini Sanghadevi, Sara Shneiderman, Haeju Sunim (Ho-Ryeaon Jeon), Senarat Wijayasundara, and Janice D. Willis.]

Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice


Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks - 1999
    Merry Wiesner-Hanks assesses the role of personal faith and the church itself in the control and expression of all aspects of sexuality. The book ranges over developments within Europe and beyond to the European colonies including Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Goa, which were establishing themselves around the world. Christian missionaries and rituals and structures accompanied all of the imperial powers and the control of the sexuality of both indigenous peoples and colonists was an essential part of policy. The book is introduced with a clear, original and engaging account of the central concepts in the study of sexuality in Christianity, such as shame, sin, the body, marriage and gender. Drawing on diverse evidence including literary, medical and historical the following sections chart changes in Western Christianity in the Late Middle Ages, Protestantism and Catholicism in Europe, Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe and Russia, and finally the Spanish, Portuguese, English and Dutch Colonies. Merry Wiesner-Hanks exciting book covers both the ideas and effects in each period. Christianity and Sexuality in the early Modern World includes discursive bibliographies which discuss major books and articles at the end of each chapter.

Masculinities


Raewyn W. Connell - 1999
    Exploring themes such as global gender relations and the practical uses of masculinity research, this text looks at the implications for the field, particularly with regard to understanding current world issues.

Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising


Jean Kilbourne - 1999
    Discusses the advertising establishment, revealing what advertisers know about human nature and how they exploit it to make a profit.

Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader


Janet Price - 1999
    Its wide range of contributions locate the important historical developments, interdisciplinary perspectives, and key discourses that have shaped this dynamic area of feminist theory.

Medusa: The Fourth Kingdom


Marina Minghelli - 1999
    We hear the woman’s account of their meetings, their lovemaking, her longing. We have another view of her story through a journal account written by one of her friends, who is, among other things, engaged in a study of the myth of Medusa. From diverse perspectives we see her path to independence and wholeness, a initiatory journey that requires courage and love. A poetic and meticulously constructed story of a woman’s quest for transformation, Medusa takes into account both ordinary and magical aspects of reality to create a contemporary psychological parable. Marina Minghelli, historian and writer, is the author of the prize-winning book Santa Marina la travestita, a historical study of feminine symbology. She lives in Rome. Beverly Allen’s books include: Pier Paolo Pasolini:The Poetics of Heresy; The Defiant Muse: Italian Feminist Poetry; Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzogovina and Croatia; and Revisioning Italy: National Identity and Global Culture.

Reinventing Identities: The Gendered Self in Discourse


Mary Bucholtz - 1999
    Feminist scholars in particular have only begun to investigate how deeply language reflects and shapes who we think we are. This volume of previously unpublished essays, the first in the new series Studies in Language and Gender, advances that effort by bringing together leading feminist scholars in the area of language and gender, including Deborah Tannen, Jennifer Coates, and Marcyliena Morgan, as well as rising younger scholars. Topics explored include African-American drag queens, gender and class on the shopping channel, and talk in the workplace.

Outrageous Women of the Renaissance


Vicki León - 1999
    Young girls should be inspired by the stories of these powerful and outspoken women. Examples of the her-stories include those of Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian painter; Grace O'Malley, a Celtic freedom fighter; Mira Bai, an Indian poet; and Sophia Brahe, an astronomer and businesswoman

Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works


Francine M. Deutsch - 1999
    That's the message of Francine Deutsch's refreshing and humane book, based on extensive interviews with a wide range of couples. Deutsch casts a skeptical eye on the grim story of inequality that has been told since women found themselves working a second shift at home. She brings good news: equality based on shared parenting is possible, and it is emerging all around us. Some white-collar fathers achieve as well as talk about equality, and some blue-collar parents work alternate shifts to ensure that one parent can always be with the children.Using vivid quotations from her interviews, Deutsch tells the story of couples who share parenting equally, and some who don't. The differences between the groups are not in politics, education, or class, but in the way they negotiate the large and small issues--from whose paid job is important to who applies the sunscreen. With the majority of mothers in the workforce, parents today have to find ways of sharing the work at home. Rigid ideas of good mothers and good fathers, Deutsch argues, can be transformed into a more flexible reality: the good parent.Halving It All takes the discussion beyond shrill ideological arguments about working mothers and absent fathers. Deutsch shows how, with the best of intentions, people perpetuate inequalities and injustices on the home front, but also, and more important, how they can devise more equal arrangements, out of explicit principles, or simply out of fairness and love.

How Weaning Happens


Diane Bengson - 1999
    Bengson bases her book on the questions and needs of hundreds of mothers she's counseled as an LLL Leader, helping breastfeeding families gently and lovingly complete the nursing relationship. Describes how mothers should determine for themselves when to wean despite socio-cultural and family pressures and provides various methods of weaning both gentle and loving.

Victorian Sappho


Yopie Prins - 1999
    Victorian Sappho traces the emergence of this idealized feminine figure through reconstructions of the Sapphic fragments in late-nineteenth-century England. Yopie Prins argues that the Victorian period is a critical turning point in the history of Sappho's reception; what we now call "Sappho" is in many ways an artifact of Victorian poetics. Prins reads the Sapphic fragments in Greek alongside various English translations and imitations, considering a wide range of Victorian poets--male and female, famous and forgotten--who signed their poetry in the name of Sappho. By "declining" the name in each chapter, the book presents a theoretical argument about the Sapphic signature, as well as a historical account of its implications in Victorian England. Prins explores the relations between classical philology and Victorian poetics, the tropes of lesbian writing, the aesthetics of meter, and nineteenth-century personifications of the "Poetess." as current scholarship on Sappho and her afterlife. Offering a history and theory of lyric as a gendered literary form, the book is an exciting and original contribution to Victorian studies, classical studies, comparative literature, and women's studies.

Feminisms and Internationalism


Mrinalini Sinha - 1999
    This book addresses the theme of the history of internationalism in feminist theory and praxis, covering such topics as the historical concept of internationalism within feminism and women's movements; the nature of historical shifts within feminist movements, and challenges to internationalism within feminism by women of colour and by women from colonised or formerly colonised countries.

Gender Camouflage: Women and the U.S. Military


Gerald Sorin - 1999
    The focus then shifts to military wives, women employed by the DoD, and female civilian military instructors whose work is less visible but no less essential to the institution. The book also examines the experiences of women outside of the military, such as "comfort women" near U.S. bases, women engaged in peacework, and women workers affected by military spending in the federal budget.Analytic chapters are juxtaposed with first-person narratives by women who have actually been there, including a member of the first gender-integrated class at West Point, the first female civilian instructors at the U.S. Naval Academy, and an African American Air Force Nurse Corps veteran.Contributors include Connie Reeves, Georgia Clark Sadler, Gwyn Kirk, and Joan Furey.

Gender, Emotion, and the Family


Leslie Brody - 1999
    Integrating a wealth of perspectives and research--biological, sociocultural, developmental--her work explores the nature and extent of gender differences in emotional expression, as well as the endlessly complex question of how such differences come about.Nurture, far more than nature, emerges here as the stronger force in fashioning gender differences in emotional expression. Brody shows that whether and how men and women express their feelings varies widely from situation to situation and from culture to culture, and depends on a number of particular characteristics including age, ethnicity, cultural background, power, and status.Especially pertinent is the organization of the family, in which boys and girls elicit and absorb different emotional strategies. Brody also examines the importance of gender roles, whether in the family, the peer group, or the culture at large, as men and women use various patterns of emotional expression to adapt to power and status imbalances.Lucid and level-headed, Gender, Emotion, and the Family offers an unusually rich and nuanced picture of the great range of male and female emotional styles, and the variety of the human character.

Ireland in Proximity: History, Gender and Space


David Alderson - 1999
    Drawing on a variety of disciplinary and theoretical approaches, this impressive collection of essays makes an innovative contribution to three areas of current, and often contentious, debate within Irish Studies. This accessible volume illustrates the diversity of thinking on Irish history, culture and identity. By invoking theoretical perspectives including psychoanalysis, cultural theories of space, postcoloniality and theories of gender and sexual difference, the collection offers fresh perspectives on established subjects and brings new and under-represented areas of critical concern to the fore. Chapter subjects include: * sexuality and gender identities * the historiographical issues surrounding the Famine * the Irish diaspora * theories of space in relation to Ulster and beyond. Contributors inlcude: David Alderson, Aidan Arrowsmith, Caitriona Beaumont, Fiona Becket, Scott Brewster, Dan Baron Cohen, Mary Corcoran, Virginia Crossman, Richard Kirkland, David Lloyd, Patrick McNally, Elisabeth Mahoney, Willy Maley, Shaun Richards, �ibhear Walshe.

Deconstruction, Feminist Theology, and the Problem of Difference: Subverting the Race/Gender Divide


Ellen T. Armour - 1999
    But feminism's ability to fulfill this promise has been undermined by its failure to deal adequately with the difference that race makes for gender. In this book, Ellen T. Armour forges an alliance between deconstruction and feminist theology and theory by demonstrating deconstruction's usefulness in addressing feminism's trouble with race.Armour shows how the writings of Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray can be used to uncover feminism's white presumptions so that race and gender can be thought of differently. In clear, concise terms she explores the possibilities and limitations for feminist theology of Derrida's conception of "woman" and Irigaray's "multiple woman," as well as Derrida's thinking on race and Irigaray's work on religion. Armour then points a way beyond the race/gender divide with the help of African-American theorists such as bell hooks, Hortense Spillers, and Patricia Hill Collins.