Best of
Gender-Studies

2001

Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of a Self


Susan J. Brison - 2001
    She survived, but her world was destroyed. Her training as a philosopher could not help her make sense of things, and many of her fundamental assumptions about the nature of the self and the world it inhabits were shattered.At once a personal narrative of recovery and a philosophical exploration of trauma, this book examines the undoing and remaking of a self in the aftermath of violence. It explores, from an interdisciplinary perspective, memory and truth, identity and self, autonomy and community. It offers imaginative access to the experience of a rape survivor as well as a reflective critique of a society in which women routinely fear and suffer sexual violence.As Brison observes, trauma disrupts memory, severs past from present, and incapacitates the ability to envision a future. Yet the act of bearing witness, she argues, facilitates recovery by integrating the experience into the survivor's life's story. She also argues for the importance, as well as the hazards, of using first-person narratives in understanding not only trauma, but also larger philosophical questions about what we can know and how we should live.Bravely and beautifully written, Aftermath is that rare book that is an illustration of its own arguments.

How Can I Get Through to You?: Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women


Terrence Real - 2001
    This book offers a solution Bestselling author and nationally renowned therapist Terrence Real unearths the causes of communication blocks between men and women in this groundbreaking work. Relationships are in trouble; the demand for intimacy today must be met with new skills, and Real -- drawing on his pioneering work on male depression -- gives both men and women those skills, empowering women and connecting men, radically reversing the attitudes and emotional stumbling blocks of the patriarchal culture in which we were raised. Filled with powerful stories of the couples Real treats, no other relationship book is as straight talking or compelling in its innovative approach to healing wounds and reconnecting partners with a new strength and understanding.

Art and Feminism


Helena Reckitt - 2001
    Widely acknowledged as both beautiful and intelligent, a sourcebook of art informed by feminism from the 1960s to the start of the 21st century, now available in paperback.

Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios


Luz del Alba Acevedo - 2001
    Its contributors reflect varied class, religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, sexual, and national backgrounds. Yet in one way or another they are all professional producers of testimonios—or life stories—whether as poets, oral historians, literary scholars, ethnographers, or psychologists. Through coalitional politics, these women have forged feminist political stances about generating knowledge through experience. Reclaiming testimonio as a tool for understanding the complexities of Latina identity, they compare how each made the journey to become credentialed creative thinkers and writers. Telling to Live unleashes the clarifying power of sharing these stories. The complex and rich tapestry of narratives that comprises this book introduces us to an intergenerational group of Latina women who negotiate their place in U.S. society at the cusp of the twenty-first century. These are the stories of women who struggled to reach the echelons of higher education, often against great odds, and constructed relationships of sustenance and creativity along the way. The stories, poetry, memoirs, and reflections of this diverse group of Puerto Rican, Chicana, Native American, Mexican, Cuban, Dominican, Sephardic, mixed-heritage, and Central American women provide new perspectives on feminist theorizing, perspectives located in the borderlands of Latino cultures. This often heart wrenching, sometimes playful, yet always insightful collection will interest those who wish to understand the challenges U.S. society poses for women of complex cultural heritages who strive to carve out their own spaces in the ivory tower.Contributors. Luz del Alba Acevedo, Norma Alarcón, Celia Alvarez, Ruth Behar, Rina Benmayor, Norma E. Cantú, Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Gloria Holguín Cuádraz, Liza Fiol-Matta, Yvette Flores-Ortiz, Inés Hernández-Avila, Aurora Levins Morales, Clara Lomas, Iris Ofelia López, Mirtha N. Quintanales, Eliana Rivero, Caridad Souza, Patricia Zavella

The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued


Ann Crittenden - 2001
    In this provocative book, award-winning economics journalist Ann Crittenden argues that although women have been liberated, mothers have not. Drawing on hundreds of interviews from around the country, as well as the most current research in economics, sociology, history, child development,. and law, she shows how mothers are systematically disadvantaged and made dependent by a society that celebrates the labor of child-rearing but undervalues and even exploits those who perform it. The price of motherhood is everywhere apparent. College-educated women pay a "mommy tax" of more than a million dollars in lost income when they have a child. Family law deprives mothers of financial equality in marriage. Most child care is excluded from the gross domestic product, at-home mothers are not counted in the labor force, and the social safety net simply leaves them out. With passion and clarity, Crittenden dismantles the principal argument for the status quo: that it's a woman's "choice." She demonstrates, on the contrary, that if mothers had more resources and respect, everyone -- including children -- would be better off. Bold and galvanizing, full of innovative solutions, The Price of Motherhood reveals the glaring disparity between the value created by mothers' work and the reward women receive for carrying out society's most important job.

Bandit Letters


Sarah Messer - 2001
    Her cast of elusive outlaws, who encounter the borders and borderlands of experience and identity, appear, reappear, and disappear in landscapes that conjure the Wild West, Colonial New England, and a pop-culture-strewn American present tense.

As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art


Rebecca Solnit - 2001
    The organic world, to Solnit, gives rise to the social, political, and philosophical landscapes we inhabit. As Eve Said to the Serpent skillfully weaves the natural world with the realm of art--its history, techniques, and criticism--to offer a remarkable compendium of Solnit's research and ruminations.The nineteen pieces in this book range from the intellectual formality of traditional art criticism to highly personal, lyrical meditations. All are distinguished by Solnit's vivid, original style that blends imaginative associations with penetrating insights. These thoughts produce quirky, intelligent, and wryly humorous content as Solnit ranges across disciplines to explore nuclear test sites, the meaning of national borders, deserts, clouds, and caves--as well as ideas of the feminine and the sublime as they relate to our physical and psychological terrains.Sixty images throughout the book display the work of the contemporary artists under discussion, including landscape photographers, performance artists, sculptors, and installation artists. Alongside her text, Solnit's gallery of images provides a vivid excursion into new ways of perceiving landscape, bodies, and art. Animals and the human body appear together with space and terra firma as Solnit reconfigures the blurred lines that define nature.

Double-Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology


Venetria K. Patton - 2001
    Patton and Maureen Honey bring together a comprehensive selection of texts from the Harlem Renaissance-a key period in the literary and cultural history of the United States. The collection revolutionizes our way of viewing this era, since it redresses the ongoing emphasis on the male writers of this time. Double-Take offers a unique, balanced collection of writers-men and women, gay and straight, familiar and obscure. Arranged by author, rather than by genre, this anthology includes works from major Harlem Renaissance figures as well as often-overlooked essayists, poets, dramatists, and artists. The editors have included works from a wide variety of genres-poetry, short stories, drama, and essays-allowing readers to understand the true interdisciplinary quality of this cultural movement. Biographical sketches of the authors are provided and most of the pieces are included in their entirety. Double-Take also includes artwork and illustrations, many of which are from original journals and have never before been reprinted. Significantly, Double-Take is the first Harlem Renaissance title to include song lyrics to illustrate the interrelation of various art forms.

Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influences on Early American Feminists


Sally Roesch Wagner - 2001
    Women of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy possessed freedoms far beyond those of their white sisters: decisive political power, control of their bodies, control of their own property, custody of children they bore, the power to initiate divorce, satisfying work, and a society generally free of rape and domestic violence. The thoughts of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage were shaped by their involvement with indigenous women neighbors in upstate New York.Intrepid historian Sally Roesch Wagner recounts the compelling struggle for freedom and equality waged by women in the United States and documents the influence and inspiration Native American women gave to this dynamic social movement. The personal and political changes unleashed by the Iroquois/feminist relationship continue to transform our lives.

Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability


E. Frances White - 2001
    From Charles Darwin and nineteenth-century racism to black nationalism and the Nation of Islam, from Baptist women's groups to James Baldwin; E. Frances White takes on one institution after another as she re-centers the role of black women in the United States' intellectual heritage. White presents identity politics as a complex activity, with entangled branches of race and gender, of invisibility and voyeurism, of defiance and passivity and conformism.White's powerful introduction draws on oral narratives from her own family history to illuminate the nature of narrative, both what is said and what is left unsaid. She then sets the historical stage with a helpful history of the inception and development of black feminism and a critique of major black feminist writings. In the three chapters that follow, she addresses the obstacles black feminism has already surmounted and must continue to traverse. Confronting what White calls "the politics of respectability," these chapters move the reader from simplistic views of race and gender in the nineteenth century through black nationalism and the radical movements of the sixties, and their relationship to feminist thought, to the linkages between race, gender, and sexuality in the works of such giants as Toni Morrison and James Baldwin. No one who finishes Dark Continent of Our Bodies will look at race and gender in the same way again.

Taking Back Our Lives: A Call to Action for the Feminist Movement


Ann Russo - 2001
    Russo provides a multi-oppression approach to understanding the violence that is done to women, incorporating issues of gender, race, class and sexuality in her analysis.

The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts


Arnold I. Davidson - 2001
    He applies this method to the history of sexuality, with important consequences for our understanding of desire, abnormality, and sexuality itself.In Davidson's view, it was the emergence of a science of sexuality that made it possible, even inevitable, for us to become preoccupied with our true sexuality. Historical epistemology attempts to reveal how this new form of experience that we call sexuality is linked to the emergence of new structures of knowledge, and especially to a new style of reasoning and the concepts employed within it. Thus Davidson shows how, starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, a new psychiatric style of reasoning about diseases emerges that makes possible, among other things, statements about sexual perversion that quickly become commonplace in discussions of sexuality.Considering a wide range of examples, from Thomas Aquinas to Freud, Davidson develops the methodological lessons of Georges Canguilhem and Michel Foucault in order to analyze the history of our experience of normativity and its deviations.

Never Again a World Without Us: Voices of Mayan Women in Chiapas, Mexico


Teresa Ortiz - 2001
    

Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics


Irma McClaurin - 2001
    Women and black scholars were relegated to the field's periphery. From this marginal place, white feminist anthropologists have successfully carved out an acknowledged intellectual space, identified as feminist anthropology. Unfortunately, the works of black and non-western feminist anthropologists are rarely cited, and they have yet to be respected as significant shapers of the direction and transformation of feminist anthropology. In this volume, Irma McClaurin has collected-for the first time-essays that explore the role and contributions of black feminist anthropologists. She has asked her contributors to disclose how their experiences as black women have influenced their anthropological practice in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, and how anthropology has influenced their development as black feminists. Every chapter is a unique journey that enables the reader to see how scholars are made. The writers present material from their own fieldwork to demonstrate how these experiences were shaped by their identities. Finally, each essay suggests how the author's field experiences have influenced the theoretical and methodological choices she has made throughout her career. Not since Diane Wolf's Feminist Dilemmas in the Field or Hortense Powdermaker's Stranger and Friend have we had such a breadth of women anthropologists discussing the critical (and personal) issues that emerge when doing ethnographic research.

Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality: Documents and Essays


Kathy Peiss - 2001
    The book--which is suitable for courses on the history of American sexuality, gender studies, or gay and lesbian studies, presents a carefully selected group of readings organized to allow students to evaluate primary sources, test the interpretations of distinguished historians, and draw their own conclusions.

The Shawl


Louise Erdrich - 2001
    Short story published in The New Yorker in March 2001.

Black Feminist Cultural Criticism


Jacqueline Bobo - 2001
    In this outsdanding collection, writers and scholars in literature, film, television, theatre, music, art, material culture, and other cultural forms explicate Black women's artistry within the context of an activist framework. The contributors are concerned with the politics of cultural production and the ways in which Black women have confronted institutional and social barriers.

Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love


Warren Farrell - 2001
    Debunking common myths about fatherhood, reveals the corrosive effects of negative media, government, and the legal system on the role of fathers, and discusses why fathers should be reunited with their children.

The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values


Nancy Folbre - 2001
    As Folbre points out in her provocative and insightful new book, every society must confront the problem of balancing self-interested pursuits with care for others—including children, the elderly, and the infirm. Historically, most societies enjoyed an increased supply of care by maintaining strict limits on women’s freedom. But as these limits happily and inevitably give way, there are many consequences for those who still need care.Using the image of “the invisible heart” to evoke the forces of compassion that must temper the forces of self-interest, Folbre argues that if we don’t establish a new set of rules defining our mutual responsibilities for caregiving, the penalties suffered by the needy—our very families—will increase. Intensified economic competition may drive altruism and families out of business.A leading feminist economist, Nancy Folbre writes in a lively, personal style—Molly Ivins cheek-to-cheek with John Kenneth Galbraith—and develops a distinctive approach to the economics of care. Unlike others who praise family values, Folbre acknowledges the complicated relationship between women and altruism. Her book offers new interpretations of such policy issues as welfare reform, school finance, and progressive taxation, and it confronts the challenges of globalization, outlining strategies for developing an economic system that rewards both individual achievement and care for others.

Men in Wonderland: The Lost Girlhood of the Victorian Gentleman


Catherine Robson - 2001
    For many, girls represented the true essence of childhood or bygone times of innocence; but for middle-class men, especially writers, the interest ran much deeper. In Men in Wonderland, Catherine Robson explores the ways in which various nineteenth-century British male authors constructed girlhood, and analyzes the nature of their investment in the figure of the girl. In so doing, she reveals the link between the idealization of little girls and a widespread fantasy of male development--a myth suggesting that men become masculine only after an initial feminine stage, lived out in the protective environment of the nursery. Little girls, argues Robson, thus offer an adult male the best opportunity to reconnect with his own lost self.Tracing the beginnings of this myth in the writings of Romantics Wordsworth and De Quincey, Robson identifies the consolidation of this paradigm in numerous Victorian artifacts, ranging from literary works by Dickens and Barrett Browning, to paintings by Frith and Millais, to reports of the Royal Commission on Children's Employment. She analyzes Ruskin and Carroll's "high noon" of girl worship and investigates the destruction of the fantasy in the closing decades of the century, when social concerns about the working girl sexualized the image of young females.Men in Wonderland contributes to a growing interest in the nineteenth century's construction of childhood, sexuality, and masculinity, and illuminates their complex interconnections with a startlingly different light. Not only does it complicate the narratives of pedophilic desire that are generally used to explain figures like Ruskin and Carroll, but it offers a new understanding of the Victorian era's obsession with loss, its rampant sentimentality, and its intense valorization of the little girl at the expense of mature femininity.

The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women's Piety in Late Antiquity


Stephen J. Davis - 2001
    In examining the practices of Thecla's devotees in Asia Minor and Egypt, Stephen Davis shows that Thecla's cult was closely linked with communities of women as a means of empowerment.

Quiet Heroes: Navy Nurses of the Korean War 1950-1953, Far East Command


Frances Omori - 2001
    Navy nurses serving in the Korean War 50 years ago were called, saved lives, and came home quietly.

Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture


Paul Nathanson - 2001
    The first of a three-part series, "Spreading Misandry" offers an impressive critique of popular culture to identify a phenomenon that is just now being recognized as a serious cultural problem - misandry, the sexist counterpart of misogyny. Nathanson and Young urge us to rethink prevalent assumptions about men that result in profoundly disturbing stereotypes that foster contempt. "Spreading Misandry" breaks new ground by discussing misandry in moral terms rather than purely psychological or sociological ones and by criticizing not only ideological feminism but other ideologies on both the left and the right.

The Queen's Mirror: Fairy Tales by German Women, 1780-1900


Shawn C. Jarvis - 2001
    These authors of these stories used fairy tales to explain their own lives, to teach children, to examine history, and to critique society and the status quo. Powerful and conflicted females are queens, girls on quests, mothers, daughters, magical wisewomen, and midwives to the fairies; they love, hate, murder, save children, fight tyranny, overcome cannibals, and rescue the working poor.Jeannine Blackwell's introduction places the tales in their historical, social, and critical context, and Shawn C. Jarvis's afterword presents a thematic analysis of the texts and approaches to reading them in conjunction with other European and American tales.

Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World


Mona Domosh - 2001
    Domosh and Seager show how notions of maleness and femaleness have influenced our built environment, the locations in which we invest meaning, and the ways we live, work, travel, and explore. From the arrangement of furniture in Victorian homes to the movements of refugees over contemporary borders, the book explores gender patterns and roles across cultures and historical periods. It is lavishly illustrated with line drawings, photographs, and maps.

Women Pray: Voices through the Ages, from Many Faiths, Cultures, and Traditions


Monica Furlong - 2001
    Book by

Bandits, Eunuchs and the Son of Heaven: Rebellion and the Economy of Violence in Mid-Ming China


David M. Robinson - 2001
    This bizarre meeting was the doing of the eunuch Zhang Zhong, the emperor's personal servant and companion. To understand how this extraordinary meeting came about requires a consideration of the economy of violence during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Here, for the first time in any language, is a detailed look at the role of illicit violence during the Ming.Drawing on court annals, imperial law codes, administrative regulations, private writings, and local gazetteers, David Robinson recreates in vivid detail a world where heavily armed highwaymen and bandits raided the boulevards in and around the Ming capital, Beijing. From the emperor and his high court ministers in the Forbidden City to the merchants and commoners on the street, everyone confronted this volatile economy of violence.Bandits, Eunuchs, and the Son of Heaven reveals how illicit armed violence formed a critical, and until now largely unexplored, facet of late-imperial Chinese history. It offers important new insights into the nature of the late-imperial state, the structure of emperorship, the role of the military, and the place of force in everyday life in early-modern China.

The Elder Within: The Source of Mature Masculinity


Terry Jones - 2001
    This is a search both in the world and inside the soul. Jones encourages and celebrates the expression of eldership: an approach to the second-half-of-life that is apparent in expressions like active grand parenting, mentoring and stewardship. The man who embraces elder qualities makes himself available to the young, to his family and the community. He has confidence in the fruits of his long life experience, and wants to seed the future for the sake of the young. Jones imagines men as they enter the retirement years taking on roles such as mentor, mediator and a source of blessing. North American men, however, don't have models for how to utilize the expanded life span we have today. We lose ourselves in work for most of our adult lives. Like fathers before us, we have been emotionally distant from our children. We have not developed skills in nurturing our spirit. The elder within is a source of a spiritual and balanced expression of masculinity. The Elder Within shows the relationship between the acceptance of responsibility for stewardship both of people and the earth and the recovery of men from the damage done to their souls in recent history. In the 18th century men became detached from family and community as they moved from farm to factory. Competing for jobs and profit, men forgot the joy of collaboration. In order to survive men learned about asserting power in the workplace. They then returned home and allowed their power to darken the nature of fatherhood and grand-fatherhood. Today we have come to decry abuse by men who beat their wives, perpetuate violence and discriminate against people. These are not mature men. In The Elder Within we celebrate mature men who express mature masculinity. The focus of the book is men, but women will also enjoy the hopeful potential of mature masculinity. Jones believes men are looking for a next step in the personal growth and healing many of them began in the men's movement. The Elder Within offers elder, as an alternative to elderly: that stereotype of older people that frightens the young about aging. Eldership, the expression of elder qualities, is a second half of life adventure in modeling mature masculinity. Elder expression fosters consensus rather than conflict. The man or woman who expresses elder energy uses tools of wisdom like meditation, contemplation and active listening. The elder expresses confidence in their long life experience and wants to seed the future by being accessible to and holding the dream for the young.

Gender in Psychoanalytic Space


Virginia Goldner - 2001
    . . . A collection of cutting edge work that brims with the excitement of new possibility."-Dr. Sam Gerson Combining clinical psychoanalysis with feminism, postmodernism, and psychoanalytic theory, this pioneering collection represents a major step forward in psychoanalytic gender studies.