Best of
Gender-Studies

2017

Living a Feminist Life


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

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny


Kate Manne - 2017
    What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist--or increase--even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics, by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward women generally. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women who challenge male dominance. And it's compatible with rewarding "the good ones," and singling out other women to serve as warnings to those who are out of order. It's also common for women to serve as scapegoats, be burned as witches, and treated as pariahs.Manne examines recent and current events such as the Isla Vista killings by Elliot Rodger, the case of the convicted serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, who preyed on African-American women as a police officer in Oklahoma City, Rush Limbaugh's diatribe against Sandra Fluke, and the "misogyny speech" of Julia Gillard, then Prime Minister of Australia, which went viral on YouTube. The book shows how these events, among others, set the stage for the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Not only was the misogyny leveled against Hillary Clinton predictable in both quantity and quality, Manne argues it was predictable that many people would be prepared to forgive and forget Donald Trump's history of sexual assault and harassment. For this, Manne argues, is misogyny's oft-overlooked and equally pernicious underbelly: exonerating or showing "himpathy" for the comparatively privileged men who dominate, threaten, and silence women.

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


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

The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood


Tommy J. Curry - 2017
    Curry’s provocative book The Man-Not is a justification for Black Male Studies. He posits that we should conceptualize the Black male as a victim, oppressed by his sex. The Man-Not, therefore,is a corrective of sorts, offering a concept of Black males that could challenge the existing accounts of Black men and boys desiring the power of white men who oppress them that has been proliferated throughout academic research across disciplines.Curry argues that Black men struggle with death and suicide, as well as abuse and rape, and their genred existence deserves study and theorization. This book offers intellectual, historical, sociological, and psychological evidence that the analysis of patriarchy offered by mainstream feminism (including Black feminism) does not yet fully understand the role that homoeroticism, sexual violence, and vulnerability play in the deaths and lives of Black males. Curry challenges how we think of and perceive the conditions that actually affect all Black males.

Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women


Brittney Cooper - 2017
    Eschewing the Great Race Man paradigm so prominent in contemporary discourse, Brittney C. Cooper looks at the far-reaching intellectual achievements of female thinkers and activists like Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Barrier Williams, Pauli Murray, and Toni Cade Bambara. Cooper delves into the processes that transformed these women and others into racial leadership figures, including long-overdue discussions of their theoretical output and personal experiences. As Cooper shows, their body of work critically reshaped our understandings of race and gender discourse. It also confronted entrenched ideas of how--and who--produced racial knowledge.

The Combahee River Collective Statement


The Combahee River Collective - 2017
    

The Nasty Women Project: Voices from the Resistance


Nasty Women Project - 2017
    Their Stories. Their Resistance. The despot is perched in his tower, threatening democracy with every tweet. Vultures of big business occupy his cabinet seats, while empty-headed puppets tie the Senate to a string. With a wave of a pen, they set our rights on fire. Welcome to the new America. And who are we? We are the women of the marginalized majority. We come from every corner of America. We are the outraged mothers. We are the unprotected daughters. We are the uninsured sick, the gay and the blamed, the cast-off patrons of the lesser paid, and the survivors of trauma taught to feel ashamed. We are every woman you have ever met, and every woman you haven’t. Our stories are of struggle, but also of strength; of fear, but also of courage. We know despair, but we never lose hope. We are extraordinary women living in extraordinary times. We are The Nasty Women Project. 100% proceeds from our book sales are donated to Planned Parenthood.

Violated: Exposing Rape at Baylor University amid College Football's Sexual Assault Crisis


Paula Lavigne - 2017
    As the world's largest Baptist university, it was unabashedly Christian. It condemned any sex outside of marriage, and drinking alcohol was grounds for dismissal. Students weren't even allowed to dance on campus until 1996.During the last several years, however, Baylor officials were hiding a dark secret. Female students were being sexually assaulted at an alarming rate. Baylor administrators did very little to help victims, and their assailants rarely faced discipline for their abhorrent behavior.Finally, after a pair of high-profile criminal cases involving football players, an independent examination of Baylor's handling of allegations of sexual assault led to sweeping changes, including the unprecedented ouster of its president, athletics director, and popular, highly successful football coach.For several years, campuses and sports teams across the country have been plagued with accusations of sexual violence, and they've been criticized for how they responded to the students involved. But Baylor stands out. A culture reigned in which people believed that any type of sex, especially violent non-consensual sex, simply "doesn't happen here." Yet it was happening. Many people within Baylor's leadership knew about it. And they chose not to act.Paula Lavigne, and Mark Schlabach, weave together the complex - and at times contradictory - narrative of how a university, and football program, ascending in national prominence came crashing down amidst the stories of woman after woman coming forward describing their assaults, and a university system they found indifferent to their pain.

Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists: The Origins of the Women's Shelter Movement in Canada


Margo Goodhand - 2017
    It wasn't talked about, and women had few, if any, options to escape their abusers. Yet in 1973 -- with no statistics, no money and little public support -- five disparate groups of Canadian women quietly opened Canada's first battered women's shelters. Today, there are well over 600.In Runaway Wives and Rogue Feminists, journalist Margo Goodhand tracks down the "rogue feminists" whose work forged an underground railway for women and children, weaving their stories into an unforgettable -- and until now untold -- history.As they lobbied for funding, scrounged for furniture and fended off outraged husbands, these women marked a defining moment in Canadian history, triggering monumental changes in government, schools, courts and law enforcement. But was it enough to stop the cycle of violence? Forty years later, these pioneers describe how and why Canada has lost its ground in the battle for women's rights.

Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials & the Meaning of Grime


Jeffrey Boakye - 2017
    

The Mushroom Hunters


Neil Gaiman - 2017
    It was written for the The Universe in Verse event. It was an evening of poetry celebrating science and the scientists who have taken us to where we are today. The poem was read by Amanda Palmer, musician, artist and (in the context of this poem it is important to note) Neil Gaiman's wife. The poem went on to win the Rhysling Award for best long poem.

About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in Twenty-First-Century America


Carol Sanger - 2017
    Protested at rallies and politicized in party platforms, terminating pregnancy is often characterized as a selfish decision by women who put their own interests above those of the fetus. This background of stigma and hostility has stifled women's willingness to talk about abortion, which in turn distorts public and political discussion. To pry open the silence surrounding this public issue, Sanger distinguishes between abortion privacy, a form of nondisclosure based on a woman's desire to control personal information, and abortion secrecy, a woman's defense against the many harms of disclosure.Laws regulating abortion patients and providers treat abortion not as an acceptable medical decision--let alone a right--but as something disreputable, immoral, and chosen by mistake. Exploiting the emotional power of fetal imagery, laws require women to undergo ultrasound, a practice welcomed in wanted pregnancies but commandeered for use against women with unwanted pregnancies. Sanger takes these prejudicial views of women's abortion decisions into the twenty-first century by uncovering new connections between abortion law and American culture and politics.New medical technologies, women's increasing willingness to talk online and off, and the prospect of tighter judicial reins on state legislatures are shaking up the practice of abortion. As talk becomes more transparent and acceptable, women's decisions about whether or not to become mothers will be treated more like those of other adults making significant personal choices.

Dangerous Boobies: Breaking Up with My Time-Bomb Breasts


Caitlin Brodnick - 2017
    She had a preventative double mastectomy, thereby becoming an everywoman's Angelina Jolie. Dangerous Boobies: Breaking Up with My Time-Bomb Breasts goes in depth into her experience from testing to surgery and on to recovery. With a warm, funny, and approachable voice, Caitlin tells readers the full story, even sharing what it was like to go from a size 32G bra -- giant, for a woman who is barely over five feet tall! -- to a 32C. Engaging and open, she admits to having hated her breasts long before her surgery, and enjoying the process of "designing" her new breasts, from the shape of the breasts to the size and color of the nipples. While Caitlin's primary narrative explores the BRCA gene and breast cancer, her story is also one about body acceptance and what it takes to be confident with and in charge of one's body. Her speaking engagements and comedy routines have shown that the wider topic of breasts, breast size, and personal identity is resonating with younger readers.

The Ultimate Guide for Gay Dads: Everything You Need to Know About LGBTQ Parenting But Are (Mostly) Afraid to Ask


Eric Rosswood - 2017
    An estimated two million American LBGTQ people would like to adopt and an estimated 65,000 adopted children are living with a gay parent. In 2016, The Chicago Tribune reported that 10 to 20 percent of donor eggs went to gay men expanding their families via surrogacy, and in many places the numbers were up 50 percent from the previous five years.Gay parenting: Having a kid is like coming out all over again, on a daily basis, especial if you have an infant. Was coming out stressful for you? It’s about to get more intense and you will have a child watching your every move and listening to your every word. If you stutter or pause, they may pick up on your discomfort and could start to feel like something is wrong about their family unit. The Ultimate Guide For Gay Dads is jam packed with parenting tips and advice to help you build confidence and become the awesome gay dad you were meant to be!How Is This Parenting Guide Different From Others? Unlike other parenting books that have whole chapters focusing on things specifically related to mothers (such as how to get the perfect latch when breastfeeding), this parenting book replaces those sections with things relevant to gay dads. It covers topics like how to find LGBT friendly pediatricians, how to find LGBT friendly schools, how to childproof your home with style, how to answer awkward and prying questions about your family from strangers, examples for what two-dad families can do on Mother’s Day, and much more. The book also includes parenting tips and advice from pediatricians, school educators, lawyers, and other same-sex parents.Top LGBT parenting expert: Bestselling author Eric Rosswood covers every aspect of fatherhood for gay men in this essential guide to growing your family in the post-DOMA era. He is a major influencer on social media with over 100,000 followers on Twitter alone, as well as thousands on other platforms.Exploring LGBTQ issues: Rosswood is an in-demand authority and commentator on LGBTQ issues, including civil rights, parenting, marriage and politics. The author has been featured in major media including The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, CBS News, The Huffington Post, Elite Daily, Yahoo! News, AOL News, NY Daily News, IB Times, and regional LGBTQ press.

Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity


Jennifer Weiss-Wolf - 2017
    Seemingly overnight, a new, high-profile movement has emerged—one dedicated to bold activism, creative product innovation, and smart policy advocacy—to address the centrality of menstruation in relation to core issues of gender equality and equity. In Periods Gone Public, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf—the woman Bustle dubbed one of the nation's "badass menstrual activists"—explores why periods have become a prominent political cause. From eliminating the tampon tax, to enacting new laws ensuring access to affordable, safe products, menstruation is no longer something to whisper about. Weiss-Wolf shares her firsthand account in the fight for "period equity" and introduces readers to the leaders, pioneers, and everyday people who are making change happen. From societal attitudes of periods throughout history—in the United States and around the world—to grassroots activism and product innovation, Weiss-Wolf challenges readers to face stigma head-on and elevate an agenda that recognizes both the power—and the absolute normalcy—of menstruation.

Post-Traumatically Stressed Feminist: Survivors Reclaiming Their Truths


Darci McFarland - 2017
    Feminist artists and writers from various social and geographical locations have contributed to its birth – all are survivors of trauma.

Intersections of Identity and Sexual Violence on Campus: Centering Minoritized Students' Experiences


Jessica C. Harris - 2017
    This book makes an important contribution to and provides a foundation for better contextualizing and understanding sexual violence. Each chapter in this edited volume focuses on populations that are not often centered in the discourse of campus sexual violence and accounts for individuals' intersecting identities and how they interlock with larger systems of domination.Challenging dominant ideologies concerning assumptions of white women as the only victims-survivors, the racialization of aggressors, and the deleterious rape myths present in both research and practice, this book draws attention to the complexities of sexual violence on the college campus by highlighting populations that are frequently invisible in research, reporting, and practice. The book places sexual violence on campus in a historical context, centering the experiences of populations relegated to the margins, and highlighting the relationship between racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of domination to sexual violence. The final chapters of the book explore how critical models of intervention and prevention and a critical analysis of existing institutional policies may be implemented across college campuses to better address sexual violence for multiple populations and identities in higher education.This book will expand educators' understanding of sexual violence to inform more effective policies, procedures, practice, and research that reaches beyond preventing sexual violence and addresses the dominant systems from which sexual violence stems, in an attempt to eradicate, not just prevent, the act and the issue.

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85: A Sourcebook


Catherine Janet Morris - 2017
    It showcases the work of black women artists such as Emma Amos, Maren Hassinger, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O'Grady, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, and Betye Saar, making it one of the first major exhibitions to highlight the voices and experiences of women of color. In so doing, it reorients conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and art history in this significant historical period. The accompanying Sourcebook republishes an array of rare and little-known documents from the period by artists, writers, cultural critics, and art historians such as Gloria Anzaldúa, James Baldwin, bell hooks, Lucy R. Lippard, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Lowery Stokes Sims, Alice Walker, and Michelle Wallace. These documents include articles, manifestos, and letters from significant publications as well as interviews, some of which are reproduced in facsimile form. The Sourcebook also includes archival materials, rare ephemera, and an art-historical overview essay. Helping readers to move beyond standard narratives of art history and feminism, this volume will ignite further scholarship while showing the true breadth and diversity of black women’s engagement with art, the art world, and politics from the 1960s to the 1980s.We Wanted a Revolution will also be on display at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles from October 13, 2017 through January 14, 2018; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York from February 17, 2018 through May 27, 2018; and at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston from June 26, 2018 through September 30, 2018. Published by the Brooklyn Museum and distributed by Duke University Press

Women Who Changed the World


Alex Fabrizio - 2017
    Write page-turning stories with Jane Austen, plant trees with Wangari Maathai, and create art with Frida Kahlo.This celebratory board book introduces the next generation of readers to the resilient women who have shaped our world into what it is today. Perfect for inspiring little learners to see themselves as the hero in their story.From Starry Forest Books, Baby's Big World introduces babies to big concepts―everything from rocket science to music―for the very first time.

He/She/They - Us: Essential information, vocabulary, and concepts to help you become a better ally to the transgender and gender diverse people in your life


Jessica Soukup - 2017
    Transgender and gender diverse people and their families, friends, work associates and others just want to find themselves and live in peace. This book is glue to hold people together through the process of self exploration. It covers basic vocabulary, concepts, challenges and some ways to be a supportive ally. It was written for the layperson not well versed in the terms and language of gender and transition. It attempts to begin to provide some answers for the questions everyone has.

Consuming Religion


Kathryn Lofton - 2017
    In eleven essays exploring soap and office cubicles, Britney Spears and the Kardashians, corporate culture and Goldman Sachs, Lofton shows the conceptual levers of religion in thinking about social modes of encounter, use, and longing. Wherever we see people articulate their dreams of and for the world, wherever we see those dreams organized into protocols, images, manuals, and contracts, we glimpse what the word “religion” allows us to describe and understand. With great style and analytical acumen, Lofton offers the ultimate guide to religion and consumption in our capitalizing times.

True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century


Emily Skidmore - 2017
     In 1883, Frank Dubois gained national attention for his life in Waupun, Wisconsin. There he was known as a hard-working man, married to a young woman named Gertrude Fuller. What drew national attention to his seemingly unremarkable life was that he was revealed to be anatomically female. Dubois fit so well within the small community that the townspeople only discovered his "true sex" when his former husband and their two children arrived in the town searching in desperation for their departed wife and mother. At the turn of the twentieth century, trans men were not necessarily urban rebels seeking to overturn stifling gender roles. In fact, they often sought to pass as conventional men, choosing to live in small towns where they led ordinary lives, aligning themselves with the expectations of their communities. They were, in a word, unexceptional. In True Sex, Emily Skidmore uncovers the stories of eighteen trans men who lived in the United States between 1876 and 1936. Despite their "unexceptional" quality, their lives are surprising and moving, challenging much of what we think we know about queer history. By tracing the narratives surrounding the moments of "discovery" in these communities - from reports in local newspapers to medical journals and beyond -- this book challenges the assumption that the full story of modern American sexuality is told by cosmopolitan radicals. Rather, True Sex reveals complex narratives concerning rural geography and community, persecution and tolerance, and how these factors intersect with the history of race, identity and sexuality in America.

Sons of Feminism: Men Have Their Say


Janice Fiamengo - 2017
    

Trying to Make the Personal Political: Feminism and Consciousness-Raising


Mariame Kaba - 2017
    It is expanded with a new forward by Mariame Kaba and an afterword by Jacqui Shine.There is much to consider about Consciousness-Raising (CR) as a political education strategy. There are questions about why CR mostly appealed to white middle class women. There are questions about whether CR laid a foundation for contemporary concerns about trigger warnings and the politics of identity. In the afterword of this booklet, writer and historian Jacqui Shine extends our knowledge about the social context in which CR emerged as a practice among certain feminists.In her forward, Mariame Kaba writes:"Published in 1975 by the Women’s Action Alliance, the “Consciousness-Raising Guidelines” in A Practical Guide to the Women’s Movement add to our understanding of how some women sought to liberate themselves from patriarchy at a particular historical moment in the U.S. As a historical document, these guidelines and questions are a window into second-wave (white) feminist organizing.As such, I decided that it would be both informative and useful to reprint this document in the 21st century. After a 2016 general election when the first woman nominee of a major party (Hillary Clinton) lost after being widely expected to win, this publication is particularly timely. Clinton came of age during the 1960s and is a product of (white) second wave feminism. The majority of white women voters in 2016 chose to cast their ballots for Donald Trump. White feminists have to account for this fact in their future organizing efforts."In addition to the main text, forward, and afterword, there is a section of Supplemental Guidelines for Black Women prepared by Lori Sharpe, and Supplemental Guidelines for Youth Women (14-19) prepared by Jane Ginsburg and Gail Gordon.Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, and curator. She is the founder of Project NIA, a grassroots organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. Mariame is a founding member of Survived & Punished, a group focused on supporting criminalized survivors of violence. She is a feminist and an abolitionist. Her work has appeared in the Nation, In These Times, Truthout, the Guardian, and other publications.Jacqui Shine is a writer and historian. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Boston Review, The Believer, The Sun, Slate, the Journal of Social History, and other publications.

Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure


Lynn Comella - 2017
    Boldly reimagining who sex shops were for and the kinds of spaces they could be, these entrepreneurs opened sex-toy stores like Eve’s Garden, Good Vibrations, and Babeland not just as commercial enterprises, but to provide educational and community resources as well. In Vibrator Nation Lynn Comella tells the fascinating history of how these stores raised sexual consciousness, redefined the adult industry, and changed women's lives. Comella describes a world where sex-positive retailers double as social activists, where products are framed as tools of liberation, and where consumers are willing to pay for the promise of better living—one conversation, vibrator, and orgasm at a time.

Everyone I Know Wants to be Castrated and Kill Their Family


Porpentine Charity Heartscape - 2017
    its kind of like a word bezoar, of things i set aside because they didn't fit anywhere else, too personal or short or radioactive. they believe a bezoar can neutralize poison poured upon it...but no promises!"

The New Woman: Literary Modernism, Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory


Emma Heaney - 2017
    It then demonstrates that this medical figure became an archetype for the "sexual anarchy" of the Modernist period in works by  Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, Djuna Barnes, T. S. Eliot, and Jean Genet.Thus illuminating the trans feminine's Modernist provenance, the book examines foundational works of Queer Theory that resuscitated the trans feminine allegory at the end of the twentieth century. Insightful and seminal, The New Woman debunks the pervasive reflex beginning in the 1990s to connect trans experience to a late twentieth-century collapse of sexual differences by revealing the Modernist roots of that very formulation.

From Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures


Rusty Barrett - 2017
    Within each subculture, unique patterns of language use challenge normative assumptions about gender and sexual identity. Rusty Barrett's analyses of these subcultures emphasize the ways in which gay male constructions of gender are intimately linked to other forms of social difference.In From Drag Queens to Leathermen, Barrett presents an extension of his earlier work among African American drag queens in the 1990s, emphasizing the intersections of race and class in the construction of gender. An analysis of sacred music among radical faeries considers the ways in which expressions of gender are embedded in a broader neo-pagan religious identity. The formation of bear as an identity category (for heavyset and hairy men) in the late 1980s involves the appropriation of linguistic stereotypes of rural Southern masculinity. Among regular attendees of circuit parties, language serves to differentiate gay and straight forms of masculinity. In the early 2000s, barebackers (gay men who eschew condoms) used language to position themselves as rational risk takers with an innate desire for semen. For participants in the International Mr. Leather contest, a disciplined, militaristic masculinity links expressions of patriotism with BDSM sexual practice.In all of these groups, the construction of gendered identity involves combining linguistic forms that would usually not co-occur. These unexpected combinations serve as the foundation for the emergence of unique subcultural expressions of gay male identity, explicated at length in this book.

Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory's Defiant Subjects


Mari Ruti - 2017
    How should we understand this stance? Is it the best foundation for queer theory? In The Ethics of Opting Out, Mari Ruti cautions queer theorists against turning antinormativity into a new norm while highlighting the ways in which opting out rewrites ethical theory and practice in genuinely transformative ways. She offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of queer theory, including debates about affect theory, subjectivity, negativity, defiance, agency, and bad feelings. In doing so, Ruti provides an accessible yet theoretically rigorous account of the political divisions that have animated the field over the last decade. The Ethics of Opting Out grapples with queer negativity, particularly in the work of Lee Edelman, Jack Halberstam, and Lynne Huffer, and with the rhetoric of bad feelings found in the work of Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, José Muñoz, David Eng, and Heather Love. In this wide-ranging and thoughtful book, Ruti maps the parameters of contemporary queer theory to rethink the foundational assumptions of the field.

homecoming queens


J.E. Sumerau - 2017
    In Homecoming Queens, this decision sets in motion events that will dramatically transform the three spouses, their understanding of the past, and the town itself. As Jackson Garner leaves Tampa, he introduces us to Queens, a small town in Georgia situated between Atlanta and Augusta. In Queens, Jackson, Crystal and Lee encounter supportive regulars at the diner they take over from Crystal’s father as well as hostile locals who find bisexuality, polyamory, and other “alternative” lifestyles unsavory. They also confront the traumatic event that led Crystal and Lee to leave town after high school. Along the way, they face the history and ghosts of the town, the tension between an LGBT friendly pastor and some of his anti-LGBT congregants, the struggles of a kid seeking gender transition, and the ongoing battle between progress and tradition in the American south. Homecoming Queens can be read purely for pleasure or used as supplemental reading for courses in sexualities, gender, relationships, sociology, families, religion, the life course, the American south, identities, culture, intersectionality, and arts-based research.

The Voice Book for Trans and Non-Binary People: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Authentic Voice and Communication


Matthew Mills - 2017
    It gives a thorough account of the process, from understanding the vocal mechanism through to assimilating new vocal skills and new vocal identity into everyday situations, and includes exercises to change pitch, resonance and intonation. Each chapter features insider accounts from trans and gender diverse individuals who have explored or are exploring voice and communication related to their gender expression, describing key aspects of their experience of creating and maintaining a voice that feels true to them.This guide is an essential, comprehensive source for trans and non-binary individuals who are interested in working towards achieving a different, more authentic voice, and will be a valuable resource for speech and language therapists/pathologists, voice coaches and healthcare professionals.

The Oxford Handbook of Criminology


Alison Liebling - 2017
    Each chapter details relevant theory, recent research, policy developments, and current debates. Extensive references aidfurther research.Extensively revised, the sixth edition has been expanded to include all the major topics and significant new issues such as zemiology; green criminology; domestic violence; prostitution and sex work; penal populism; and the significance of globalization for criminology.The Oxford Handbook of Criminology is accompanied by a suite of online resources providing additional teaching and learning materials for both students and lecturers. This includes selected chapters from previous editions, essay questions for each chapter, web links to aid further research, andguidance on how to answer essay questions.

Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing, and Slavery in Jamaica


Sasha Turner - 2017
    However, as Sasha Turner shows in this illuminating study, for almost thirty years before the slave trade ended, Jamaican slaveholders and doctors adjusted slave women's labor, discipline, and health care to increase birth rates and ensure that infants lived to become adult workers. Although slaves' interests in healthy pregnancies and babies aligned with those of their masters, enslaved mothers, healers, family, and community members distrusted their owners' medicine and benevolence. Turner contends that the social bonds and cultural practices created around reproductive health care and childbirth challenged the economic purposes slaveholders gave to birthing and raising children.Through powerful stories that place the reader on the ground in plantation-era Jamaica, Contested Bodies reveals enslaved women's contrasting ideas about maternity and raising children, which put them at odds not only with their owners but sometimes with abolitionists and enslaved men. Turner argues that, as the source of new labor, these women created rituals, customs, and relationships around pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing that enabled them at times to dictate the nature and pace of their work as well as their value. Drawing on a wide range of sources--including plantation records, abolitionist treatises, legislative documents, slave narratives, runaway advertisements, proslavery literature, and planter correspondence--Contested Bodies yields a fresh account of how the end of the slave trade changed the bodily experiences of those still enslaved in Jamaica.

Trance Speakers: Femininity and Authorship in Spiritual Séances, 1850-1930


Claudie Massicotte - 2017
    Moodie, like many other women, found in her communications with the departed an important space to question her commitment to authorship and her understanding of femininity. Retracing the history of possession and mediumship among women following the emergence of spiritualism in mid-nineteenth-century Canada – and unearthing a vast collection of archival documents and photographs from séances – Claudie Massicotte pinpoints spiritualism as a site of conflict and gender struggle and redefines modern understandings of female agency. Trance Speakers offers a new feminist and psychoanalytical approach to the religious and creative practice of trance, arguing that by providing women with a voice for their conscious and unconscious desires, this phenomenon helped them resolve their inner struggles in a society that sought to confine their lives. Drawing attention to the fascinating history of spiritualism and its persistent appeal to women, Massicotte makes a strong case for moving this practice out of the margins of the past. A compelling new reading of spiritual possession as a response to conflicting interpretations of authorship, agency, and gender, Trance Speakers shines a much-needed light on women’s religious practices and on the history of spiritualist traditions and travels across North America and Europe.

Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars


Carolyn Sufrin - 2017
    What happens to them as they carry their pregnancies in a space of punishment? In this time when the public safety net is frayed, incarceration has become a central and racialized strategy for managing the poor. Using her ethnographic fieldwork and clinical work as an ob-gyn in a women's jail, Carolyn Sufrin explores how jail has, paradoxically, become a place where women can find care. Focusing on the experiences of incarcerated pregnant women as well as on the practices of the jail guards and health providers who care for them, Jailcare describes the contradictory ways that care and maternal identity emerge within a punitive space presumed to be devoid of care. Sufrin argues that jail is not simply a disciplinary institution that serves to punish. Rather, when understood in the context of the poverty, addiction, violence, and racial oppression that characterize these women's lives and their reproduction, jail can become a safety net for women on the margins of society.

Assigned: Life with Gender


Lisa Wade - 2017
    Selected from around the web by Lisa Wade, winner of the ASA's Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award, the essays in this book present a revealing picture of gender in the United States today: socially constructed, sometimes fun but almost always problematic, fluid but forced into binaries, deeply ingrained but often misunderstood. Topics range from parenting and sports to inequality and breasts (both men's and women's). Together, these diverse and engaging voices capture the depth and complexity of gender from the sociological perspective.

Native Apparitions: Hollywood's Indians Through an American Indian Studies Lens


Steve Pavlik - 2017
    "A timely and much-needed analysis and critique of Hollywood's representation of Native Americans in mainstream films"--Provided by publisher.

Introduction to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches


L. Ayu Saraswati - 2017
    Introduction to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary andIntersectional Approaches is the first text to reflect the exciting changes taking place in this field. Emphasizing both interdisciplinarity and intersectionality, this innovative mix of anthology and textbook includes key primary historical sources, debates on contemporary issues, and recent workin science, technology, and digital cultures. Readings from a range of genres-including poetry, short stories, op-eds, and feminist magazine articles-complement the scholarly selections and acknowledge the roots of creative and personal expression in the field. While the majority of selections arefoundational texts, the book also integrates new work from established scholars and emerging voices to expand current debates in the field. The text is enhanced by thorough overviews that begin each section, robust and engaging pedagogy that encourages students to think critically andself-reflexively-and also to take action-as well as supplemental online resources for instructors.

Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress


Elizabeth Bucar - 2017
    But Liz Bucar's take on clothing worn by Muslim women is a far cry from this older feminist attitude toward veiling. She argues that modest clothing represents much more than social control or religious orthodoxy. Today, headscarves are styled to frame the head and face in interesting ways, while colors and textures express individual tastes and challenge aesthetic preconceptions. Brand-name clothing and accessories serve as conveyances of social distinction and are part of a multimillion-dollar ready-to-wear industry. Even mainstream international chains are offering lines especially for hijabis. More than just a veil, this is pious fashion from head to toe, which engages with a range of aesthetic values related to moral authority, consumption, and selfhood.Writing in an appealing style based on first-hand accounts, Bucar invites readers to join her in three Muslim-majority nations as she surveys how women approach the question "What to wear?" By looking at fashion trends in the bustling cities of Tehran, Yogyakarta, and Istanbul--and at the many ways clerics, designers, politicians, and bloggers try to influence Muslim women's choices--she concludes that pious fashion depends to a large extent on local aesthetic and moral values, rather than the dictates of religious doctrine.Pious Fashion defines modesty in Islamic dress as an ever-changing social practice among Muslim women who--much like non-Muslim women--create from a range of available clothing items and accessories styles they think will look both appropriate and attractive.

No Ordinary Woman: The Life of Edith Penrose


Angela Penrose - 2017
    Her work as an economist made a mark in several distinct but overlapping areas - on the patent system, on thetheory of the firm, on multinational enterprises, the oil industry, and the economics of the Middle East. Her best known work, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm was originally published in 1959, and has formed the basis of the current dominant perspective in strategic management, the resourcebased view of the firm.Edith Penrose's approach to explaining the nature of the firm, her fundamental insights, and the concepts she developed are still being applied and extended to new fields of enquiry. Her reformulation of the theory of the firm has had a major influence on the study of the business enterprise, andsome argue, the economy itself. She had a distinguished academic and public service career, and wrote extensively on the understanding of the interface between the strategies and activities of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and the nation states--particularly the developingcountries--in which they operated.This is the first biography of Edith Penrose, drawing on unpublished diaries and letters, the personal memories of her family, friends, and colleagues, and describes her eventful life, her extensive output and influence. The book tells her personal and professional story, weaving it through theextraordinary upheavals of the twentieth century in which she played a part. The book builds up a picture of a vital, energetic woman who lived life to the full, defied convention, made an impression on all who met her and left a significant intellectual legacy.

The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria


Nancy M. Wingfield - 2017
    Rather than treating prostitutes solely as victims or problems to be solved, as so often has been the case in much of the literature, Nancy M. Wingfield seeks to find the historical subjects behind fin-de-siecle constructions of prostitutes, to restore agency to the women who participated in commercial sex, illuminate their quotidian experiences, and to place these women, some of whom made a rational economic decision to sell their bodies, in the larger social context of late imperial Austria. Wingfield investigates the interactions of both registered and clandestine prostitutes with the vice police and other supervisory agents, including physicians and court officials, as well as with the inhabitants of these women's world, including brothel clients and madams, and pimps, rather than focusing top-down on the state-constructed apparatus of surveillance.Close reading of a broad range of primary and secondary sources shows that some prostitutes in late imperial Austria took control over their own fates, at least as much as other working-class women, in the last decades before the end of the Monarchy. And after 1918, bureaucratic transition did not necessarily parallel political transition. Thus, there was no dramatic change in the regulation of prostitution in the successor states. Legislation, which changed regulation only piecemeal after the war, often continued to incorporate forms of control, reflecting continuity in attitudes about women's sexuality.

Communicative Biocapitalism: The Voice of the Patient in Digital Health and the Health Humanities


Olivia Banner - 2017
    Yet digital technologies are not neutral; they are developed from an existing set of assumptions about their potential users and contexts for use, and they reflect dominant ideologies of health, dis/ability, gender, and race. Using patient-networking websites, the Quantified Self, and online breast cancer narratives,  Communicative Biocapitalism examines the cultural, technological, economic, and rhetorical logics that shape the “voice of the patient” in digital health to identify how cultural understandings and social locations of race, gender, and disability shape whose voices are elicited and how they are interpreted.

Queering Contemporary Asian American Art


Laura Kina - 2017
    Taken together, these nine original artist interviews, cutting-edge visual artworks, and seven critical essays explore contemporary currents and experiences within Asian American art, including the multiple axes of race and identity, queer bodies and forms, kinship and affect, and digital identities and performances.Using the verb and critical lens of "queering" to capture transgressive cultural, social, and political engagement and practice, the contributors to this volume explore the connection points in Asian American experience and cultural production of surveillance states, decolonization and diaspora, transnational adoption, and transgender bodies and forms, as well as heteronormative respectability, the military, and war. The interdisciplinary and theoretically informed frameworks in the volume engage readers to understand global and historical processes through contemporary Asian American artistic production.

Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics


Marjorie J. Spruill - 2017
    The legacy of that rift is still evident today in American politics and social policies.Although much has been written about the role that social issues have played in politics, little attention has been given to the historical impact of women activists on both sides. DIVIDED WE STAND reveals how the battle between feminists and their conservative challengers divided the nation as Democrats continued to support women's rights and Republicans cast themselves as the party of family values. The women's rights movement and the conservative women's movement have irrevocably affected the course of modern American history. We cannot fully understand the present without appreciating the events leading up to Houston and thereafter.

Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration


Allison McKim - 2017
    Many point to an apparently promising solution to reduce the prison population: addiction treatment.   In Addicted to Rehab, Bard College sociologist Allison McKim gives an in-depth and innovative ethnographic account of two such rehab programs for women, one located in the criminal justice system and one located in the private healthcare system—two very different ways of defining and treating addiction. McKim’s book shows how addiction rehab reflects the race, class, and gender politics of the punitive turn. As a result, addiction has become a racialized category that has reorganized the link between punishment and welfare provision. While reformers hope that treatment will offer an alternative to punishment and help women, McKim argues that the framework of addiction further stigmatizes criminalized women and undermines our capacity to challenge gendered subordination. Her study ultimately reveals a two-tiered system, bifurcated by race and class.

Hackerspaces: Making the Maker Movement


Sarah R. Davies - 2017
    The age of making. From bits to atoms. Many people are excited by the possibilities offered by new fabrication technologies like 3D printers, and the way in which they are being used in hacker and makerspaces. But why is the power of hacking and making an idea whose time has come? Hackerspaces: Making the Maker Movement takes the rise of the maker movement as its starting point. Hacker and makerspaces, fab labs, and DIY bio spaces are emerging all over the world. Based on a study of hacker and makerspaces across the US, the book explores cultures of hacking and making in the context of wider social changes, arguing that excitement about the maker movement is not just about the availability of new technologies, but the kinds of citizens we are expected to be.

The Woman Who Turned Into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico


Lisa Sousa - 2017
    In this expansive account, Lisa Sousa focuses on four native groups in highland Mexico—the Nahua, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe—and traces cross-cultural similarities and differences in the roles and status attributed to women in prehispanic and colonial Mesoamerica.Sousa intricately renders the full complexity of women's life experiences in the household and community, from the significance of their names, age, and social standing, to their identities, ethnicities, family, dress, work, roles, sexuality, acts of resistance, and relationships with men and other women. Drawing on a rich collection of archival, textual, and pictorial sources, she traces the shifts in women's economic, political, and social standing to evaluate the influence of Spanish ideologies on native attitudes and practices around sex and gender in the first several generations after contact. Though catastrophic depopulation, economic pressures, and the imposition of Christianity slowly eroded indigenous women's status following the Spanish conquest, Sousa argues that gender relations nevertheless remained more complementary than patriarchal, with women maintaining a unique position across the first two centuries of colonial rule.

Disability and Rurality: Identity, Gender and Belonging


Karen Soldatic - 2017
    The book focuses particularly on the ways disabled people give, and are given, meaning and value in relation to ethical rural considerations of place, physical strength, productivity and social reciprocity.A range of different perspectives to the issues of living rurally with a disability inform this work. It includes the lived experience of people with disabilities through the use of life history methodologies, rich qualitative accounts and theoretical perspectives. It goes beyond conventional notions of rurality, grounding its analysis in a range of disability spaces and places and including the work of disability sociologists, geographers, cultural theorists and policy analysts. This interdisciplinary focus reveals the contradictory and competing relations of rurality for disabled people and the resultant impacts and effects upon disabled people and their communities materially, discursively and symbolically.Of interest to all scholars of disability, rural studies, social work and welfare, this book provides a critical intervention into the growing scholarship of rurality that has bypassed the pivotal role of disability in understanding the lived experience of rural landscapes.

Gender and Islam in Indonesian Cinema


Alicia Izharuddin - 2017
    It considers scholarship on gender in Indonesian cinema through the lens of power relations. With key themes such as nationalism, women's rights, polygamy, and terrorism which have preoccupied local filmmakers for decades, Indonesia cinema resonates with the socio-political changes and upheavals in Indonesia's modern history and projects images of the nation through the debates on gender and Islam. The text also sheds light on broader debates and questions about contemporary Islam and gender construction in contemporary Indonesia. Offering cutting edge accounts of the production of Islamic cinema, this new book considers gendered dimensions of Islamic media creation which further enrich the representations of the 'religious' and the 'Islamic' in the everyday lives of Muslims in South East Asia.

A Brief History of The Men’s Rights Movement: From 1856 to the present


Peter Wright - 2017
    The movement is sometimes referred to as the Men’s Human Rights Movement (MHRM), with human rights serving as a central focus that encompasses the same rights called civil liberties or civil rights but also including those rights that are not encoded in law - such as compassionate and respectful behavior toward men and indeed toward all human beings. The purpose of the movement has occasionally been a misunderstood, this partly because it has been poorly documented. To correct that oversight this book attempts to provide a brief overview of both the historical beginnings and goals of the movement over the last 150 years. A historical survey reveals that the MRM is concerned with a large array of issues impacting men and boys such as alimony, genital mutilation of male infants, male homelessness, mental illness, false accusations, family court bias, suicide, child custody, low funding for male health issues, educational performance, and misandry in mainstream culture just to name a few. The following pages provide examples of the early MRM in action, focusing in Parts 1 – 3 on the rise of men’s advocacy in the 1800s. Part four provides a sample list of men’s rights initiatives from the 1800s to recent times, and Part five provides a few personal and co-authored essays penned between the years 2012 – 2017 that give a taste of contemporary thinking, with the concluding essay by Robert Brockway giving a general overview of concerns of the modern MRM. With the publication of this material in one volume it is hoped that the historical footprint of the MRM will be set straight.

US Marine Corps Women's Reserve: ‘They Are Marines’: Uniforms and Equipment in the Second World War


Jim Moran - 2017
    

The Specter of the Indian: Race, Gender, and Ghosts in American Seances, 1848-1890


Kathryn Troy - 2017
    By pulling together cultural and political history; the studies of religion, race, and gender; and the ghostly, Kathryn Troy offers a new layer of understanding to the prevalence of mystically styled Indians in American visual and popular culture. The connections between Spiritualist print and contemporary Indian policy provide fresh insight into the racial dimensions of social reform among nineteenth-century Spiritualists. Troy draws fascinating parallels between the contested belief of Indians as fading from the world, claims of returned apparitions, and the social impetus to provide American Indians with a means of existence in white America. Rather than vanishing from national sight and memory, Indians and their ghosts are shown to be ever present. This book transports the readers into dimly lit parlor rooms and darkened cabinets and lavishes them with detailed seance accounts in the words of those who witnessed them. Scrutinizing the otherworldly whisperings heard therein highlights the voices of mediums and those they sought to channel, allowing the author to dig deep into Spiritualist belief and practice. The influential presence of Indian ghosts is made clear and undeniable.

Kingdom of Free Love (Where Women Rule! #3)


Simon Bird - 2017
    This is where a man or a woman can have as many sexual partners as they want, without getting married. Any children produced are exclusively owned by the woman and her side of the family – fathers in the conventional sense of the word do not exist! With much of the patriarchal world blindly insisting the man should be in charge of the relationship, perhaps the Mosuo can show us a more satisfying alternative way of life, not just in the bedroom, but in society too. Join us on a quest that delves into the structure of family and social hierarchy to find a real-life matriarchy! Books in the series Where Women Rule! Book1: Warrior Women of the Isthmus Book2: Unexpected Matriarchs Book3: Kingdom of Free Love Book4: Land of Lost Male Rights Described as feminist books for men, the authors give a balanced and humorous account of their experiences in some of the world's most unusual cultures. Authors: Simon Bird is an artist from the United Kingdom who specialises in working with the social dynamics of culture. Simon has over twenty years’ experience creating arts based projects and film with indigenous tribes from India, Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. Find more on his website: www.travelartist.info Katerina Karaskova is a human rights and development professional from the Czech Republic who has worked in the field for more than eight years in Guatemala, Uganda, Kenya, London and Prague. Katerina has published the Czech language version of the Where Women Rule project called Kde ženy vládnou with Krigl publishing house. Discover more on her website: www.katerinakaraskova.cz

Imperfect Pregnancies: A History of Birth Defects and Prenatal Diagnosis


Ilana Löwy - 2017
    At first, prenatal testing was proposed only to women at a high risk of giving birth to an impaired child. But in the following decades, such testing has become routine. In Imperfect Pregnancies, Ilana Löwy argues that the generalization of prenatal diagnosis has radically changed the experience of pregnancy for tens of millions of women worldwide. Although most women are reassured that their future child is developing well, others face a stressful period of waiting for results, uncertain prognosis, and difficult decisions. Löwy follows the rise of biomedical technologies that made prenatal diagnosis possible and investigates the institutional, sociocultural, economic, legal, and political consequences of their widespread diffusion. Because prenatal diagnosis is linked to the contentious issue of selective termination of pregnancy for a fetal anomaly, debates on this topic have largely centered on the rejection of human imperfection and the notion that we are now perched on a slippery slope that will lead to new eugenics. Imperfect Pregnancies tells a more complicated story, emphasizing that there is no single standardized way to scrutinize the fetus, but there are a great number of historically conditioned and situated approaches. This book will interest students, scholars, health professionals, administrators, and activists interested in issues surrounding new medical technologies, screening, risk management, pregnancy, disability, and the history and social politics of women’s bodies.