Best of
Womens-Studies

2010

Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women


Rebecca Traister - 2010
    A woman won a state presidential primary contest (quite a few of them, actually) for the first time in this country's history. Less than a year later, a vice-presidential candidate concluded her appearance in a national debate and immediately reached for her newborn baby. A few months after that, an African American woman moved into the White House not as an employee but as the First Lady. She is only the third First Lady in American history to have a postgraduate degree, and for most of her marriage, she has out-earned her husband. In Big Girls Don't Cry, Rebecca Traister, a Salon.com columnist whose election coverage garnered much attention, makes sense of this moment in American history, in which women broke barriers and changed the country's narrative in completely unexpected ways: How did the volatile, exhilarating events of the 2008 election fit together? What lessons can be learned from these great political upheavals about women, politics, and the media? In an utterly engaging, razor-sharp narrative interlaced with her first-person account of being a young woman navigating this turbulent and exciting time, Traister explores how—thanks to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, and the history-making work and visibility of Michelle Obama, Tina Fey, Rachel Maddow, Katie Couric, and others—women began to emerge stronger than ever on the national stage.

Seeing in the Dark: Myths and Stories to Reclaim the Buried, Knowing Woman


Clarissa Pinkola Estés - 2010
    Clarissa Pinkola Estés refers to as “the one who knows”—the instinctive, intuitive nature. This, she teaches, is the source of creativity and understanding that lies out of sight in darkness, often called the unconscious.On Seeing in the Dark, we join the esteemed Jungian psychoanalyst and bestselling author to learn how to perceive through the eyes of the soul as well as through the eyes of the ego. This dual way of seeing, being, and acting, Dr. Estés explains, is the most direct way to reclaim the gifts of the “healing apothecary” set into each soul at birth. On two CDs of empowering insights, special blessing prayers, and original stories—told here for the first time—Dr. Estés inspires us to find our one-of-a-kind voice and trust in our ability to “see beyond the obvious, to see beyond the cultural,” as she introduces: “The Fire Owl””—an all-new tale about reclaiming the fire of enthusiasm when others would try to steal it away• “The Corpse Bride””—an all-new story about the hope which cannot die and the power of redemption• “The Erl König,” “The Rebbe in Prison,” “The Man Who Sought Treasure Afar,” and more“We are weakly linked or else severed from the wild and wise self,” says Dr. Estés. “Yet, deep creative life is informed by the realm of mystery, dreams, sudden knowings; the shadow.” Seeing in the Dark is an inspiring call to “mine the raw gems of spirit, soul, and creative life”—again, or for the very first time. Note: Portions of this program excerpted from the full-length audio course Mother Night.

Frida Kahlo: Her Photos


Frida Kahlo - 2010
    Pellicer selected some paintings, drawings, photographs, books and ceramics, maintaining the space just as Kahlo and Rivera had arranged it to live and work in. The rest of the objects, clothing, documents, drawings and letters, as well as over 6,000 photographs collected by Kahlo over the course of her life, were put away in bathrooms that had been converted into storerooms. This incredible trove remained hidden for more than half a century, until, just a few years ago, these storerooms and wardrobes were opened up. Kahlo's photograph collection was a major revelation among these finds, a testimony to the tastes and interests of the famous couple, not only through the images themselves but also through the telling annotations inscribed upon them. Frida Kahlo: Her Photos allows us to speculate about Kahlo's and Rivera's likes and dislikes, and to document their family origins; it supplies a thrilling and hugely significant addition to our knowledge of Kahlo's life and work.

Gurlesque


Lara Glenum - 2010
    At the turn of the millennium, we are witnessing the emergence of a vital--perhaps viral--new strain of female poetics: the "Gurlesque," a term that describes writers who perform femininity in their poems in a campy or overtly mocking manner, risking the grotesque to shake the foundations of acceptable female behavior and language. Built from the bric-a-brac of girl culture, these works charm and repel: this work is fun, subversive, and important. Poets include Brenda Coultas, Brenda Shaghnessy, Cathy Park Hong, Matthea Harvey, and Sarah Vap.

Celebrate People's History!: The Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution


Josh MacPhee - 2010
    Celebrate People's History presents these essential works as a visual tour through decades and across continents, from the perspective of some of the most socially engaged artists working today.This beautifully rendered book includes artwork by Cristy Road, Swoon, Nicole Schulman, Christopher Cardinale, Sabrina Jones, Eric Drooker, Klutch, Carrie Moyer, Laura Whitehorn, Dan Berger, Ricardo Levins Morales, Chris Stain, and more. Celebrate People's History is a treasure trove of images and stories that will inspire anyone looking to better understand the history and legacy of activism.

A Woman's Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot


Mary Walton - 2010
    In 1907, a scholarship took her to England, where she developed a passionate devotion to the suffrage movement. Upon her return to the United States, Alice became the leader of the militant wing of the American suffrage movement. Calling themselves "Silent Sentinels," she and her followers were the first protestors to picket the White House. Arrested and jailed, they went on hunger strikes and were force-fed and brutalized. Years before Gandhi's campaign of nonviolent resistance, and decades before civil rights demonstrations, Alice Paul practiced peaceful civil disobedience in the pursuit of equal rights for women.With her daring and unconventional tactics, Alice Paul eventually succeeded in forcing President Woodrow Wilson and a reluctant U.S. Congress to pass the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote. Here at last is the inspiring story of the young woman whose dedication to women's rights made that long-held dream a reality."Alice Paul was a visionary and a pioneer. Her struggle for women's rights was built on the premise that no society or nation can reach its full potential if half of the population is left behind." -- Hillary Rodham Clinton

Feminaissance


Christine WertheimMeiling Cheng - 2010
    Fiction. Essays. Women's Studies. FEMINAISSANCE = collectivity; feminine ecriture; the politics of writing; text and voice; the body as a site of contestation, insurgence and pleasure; race and writing; gender as performance; writing about other women writers; economic inequities; Helene Cixous; monstrosity; madness; and aesthetics.FEMINAISSANCE = Dodie Bellamy, Caroline Bergvall, Meiling Cheng, Wanda Coleman, Bhanu Kapil, Chris Kraus, Susan McCabe, Tracie Morris, Eileen Myles, Maggie Nelson, Vanessa Place, Juliana Spahr, Christine Wertheim, Stephanie Young, Lidia Yuknavitch.FEMINAISSANCE = "If the fact that women do not say 'We' was one of the constitutive problems for 20th century feminism, the fact that women do and still clearly feel the need to say 'We' is just as rich and interesting a topic for feminism today. The writings gathered here prove feminism to be alive and more relevant to all genders than ever: not just because feminist discourse remains a political necessity, but because of its artistic and intellectual pleasures." Sianne Ngai"

Surreal Friends: Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Kati Horna


Stefan van Raaij - 2010
    Until her early death in 1963 she produced a wealth of paintings inspired by the spirit and freedom of Mexico, in which magic, humour and illusion feature strongly.Kati Horna was born in Hungary and moved to Paris to pursue a career as a photographer. With her partner José Horna she documented the Spanish Civil War, before moving with him to Mexico City in 1939. In Mexico she became a photojournalist for various newspapers and also took on more personal photography projects, much of this work suffused with a Surrealist thread.For all three women, Mexico offered freedom to explore their art. Surreal Friends tells the fascinating story of their artistic friendship.

Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East


Isobel Coleman - 2010
    Their challenge in the Middle East has been intensified by the rise of a political Islam that too often condemns women’s empowerment as Western cultural imperialism or, worse, anti-Islamic. In Paradise Beneath Her Feet, Isobel Coleman shows how Muslim women and men are fighting back with progressive interpretations of Islam to support women’s rights in a growing movement of Islamic feminism. In this timely book, Coleman journeys through the strategic crescent of the greater Middle East—Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—to reveal how activists are working within the tenets of Islam to create economic, political, and educational opportunities for women. Coleman argues that these efforts are critical to bridging the conflict between those championing reform and those seeking to oppress women in the name of religious tradition. Success will bring greater stability and prosperity to the Middle East and stands to transform the region.    Coleman highlights a number of Muslim men and women who are among the most influential Islamic feminist thinkers, and brilliantly illuminates the on-the-ground experiences of women who are driving change: Sakena Yacoobi, an Afghan educator, runs more than forty women’s centers across Afghanistan, providing hundreds of thousands of women with literacy and health classes and teaching them about their rights within Islam. Madawi al-Hassoon, a successful businesswoman, is challenging conservative conventions to break new ground for Saudi professional women. Salama al-Khafaji, a devout dentist-turned-politician, relies on moderate interpretations of Islam to promote opportunities for women in Iraq’s religiously charged environment. These quiet revolutionaries are using Islamic feminism to change the terms of religious debate, to fight for women’s rights within Islam instead of against it. There is no mistaking that women and women’s issues are very much on the front lines of a war that is taking place between advocates of innovation, tolerance, and plurality and those who use violence to reject modernity in Muslim communities around the world. Ultimately,  Paradise Beneath Her Feet offers a message of hope: Change is happening—and more often than not, it is being led by women.

The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present (Modern Library Chronicles)


Christine Stansell - 2010
    Stansell's comprehensive history tracks major and minor moments that highlight promise both realized and unmet. Beginning with the release of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and concluding with the connection of modern American feminism to global human rights, Stansell constructs a sweeping narrative that puts the accomplishments of specific players, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the oft-overlooked Maria Stewart, into a larger historical context, and also chronicles leaders, organizations, and acts of protest that defined feminism in the 20th century. She examines the partnership between abolition and suffrage that led to respective political victories and indentifies the missteps (like an early partnership with white supremacists) that compromised progress, creating a truly balanced history for future generations. The volume's breadth means some details and individuals are lost, but in plotting the points of a long overdue narrative, Stansell fulfills her promise.

How to Thrive in Changing Times: Simple Tools to Create True Health, Wealth, Peace, and Joy for Yourself and the Earth


Sandra Ingerman - 2010
    She guides readers towards a conscious life where their thoughts and words impact on the world they live in.

Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust


Sonja M. Hedgepeth - 2010
    The book goes beyond previous studies, and challenges claims that Jewish women were not sexually violated during the Holocaust. This anthology by an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars addresses topics such as rape, forced prostitution, assaults on childbearing, artistic representations of sexual violence, and psychological insights into survivor trauma. These subjects have been relegated to the edges or completely left out of Holocaust history, and this book aims to shift perceptions and promote new discourse.

Chinnamasta: The Aweful Buddhist & Hindu Tantri Goddess (Buddhist Traditions)


Elizabeth Anne Benard - 2010
    The entire Hindu ''Chinnamastatantra'' section from the Sakta Pramoda, the Buddhist ''Chinnamunda Vajravarahisadhana'' and the ''Trikayavajrayoginistuti'' are translated for the first time into English. Since Chinnamasta is a rare goddess, her texts were not popularized or made ''fashionable'' according to the dictates of a particular group at a particular time. The earliest extant texts date from the ninth and tenth centuries-a time when Hindu and Buddhist Tantras were developing under common influences in the same places in India. Having such texts about Chinnamasta Chinnamasta from these centuries, one can begin to understand the mutuality of a general Tantric tradition and the exclusivity of a particular Hindu or Buddhist Tantric tradition. Hence the study, not only examines Chinnamasta, but also attempts to understand what is a Tantric tradition.

The Complete Guide to Growing Healing and Medicinal Herbs: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply


Wendy Vincent - 2010
    With more than 50,000 strains of herb from around the world currently catalogued by various botanical societies and a small percentage of those serving solid, universally recognized medical purposes, it is no wonder that many people have taken up the hobby of growing their own herbs at home to help with basic things like healing burns or relieving headaches. This book will guide you through the step-by-step process of learning about and growing your own healing herbs, starting with the basics of what each herb can do and proceeding to show you everything you need to cultivate them yourself. The first things you will learn in this guide are the basics of all healing herbs, starting with a complete breakdown of the numerous healing herbs known to be easily cultivated in temperate climates. Matching the right herbs to your region, you will then be able to start learning about how herbs grow, what they need from the soil, water, the weather, and feeding. You will learn which pests are most likely to appear with each herb plant and which planting conditions are best for your herbs, from indoor potting to outdoor containers, or in ground fields. You will learn which plants grow best together and which style of herbs are going to be best for selling and which are best for personal growing. Experts in the field of healing herbs have provided their insights into issues such as how to harvest the healing herbs best and how to dry or preserve them for use as healing materials. Learn how you can make a number of common treatments for various ailments with your herbs and how you can benefit best from your new found gardens. This book is a complete guide for anyone who has ever wanted to try something different and grow it themselves. Atlantic Publishing is a small, independent publishing company based in Ocala, Florida. Founded over twenty years ago in the company president s garage, Atlantic Publishing has grown to become a renowned resource for non-fiction books. Today, over 450 titles are in print covering subjects such as small business, healthy living, management, finance, careers, and real estate. Atlantic Publishing prides itself on producing award winning, high-quality manuals that give readers up-to-date, pertinent information, real-world examples, and case studies with expert advice. Every book has resources, contact information, and web sites of the products or companies discussed.

Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas


Rosa-Linda Fregoso - 2010
    Violence against women has increased throughout Mexico and in other countries, including Argentina, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Peru. Law enforcement officials have often failed or refused to undertake investigations and prosecutions, creating a climate of impunity for perpetrators and denying truth and justice to survivors of violence and victims’ relatives. Terrorizing Women is an impassioned yet rigorously analytical response to the escalation in violence against women in Latin America during the past two decades. It is part of a feminist effort to categorize violence rooted in gendered power structures as a violation of human rights. The analytical framework of feminicide is crucial to that effort, as the editors explain in their introduction. They define feminicide as gender-based violence that implicates both the state (directly or indirectly) and individual perpetrators. It is structural violence rooted in social, political, economic, and cultural inequalities. Terrorizing Women brings together essays by feminist and human rights activists, attorneys, and scholars from Latin America and the United States, as well as testimonios by relatives of women who were disappeared or murdered. In addition to investigating egregious violations of women’s human rights, the contributors consider feminicide in relation to neoliberal economic policies, the violent legacies of military regimes, and the sexual fetishization of women’s bodies. They suggest strategies for confronting feminicide; propose legal, political, and social routes for redressing injustices; and track alternative remedies generated by the communities affected by gender-based violence. In a photo essay portraying the justice movement in Chihuahua, relatives of disappeared and murdered women bear witness to feminicide and demand accountability.Contributors: Pascha Bueno-Hansen, Adriana Carmona López, Ana Carcedo Cabañas, Jennifer Casey, Lucha Castro Rodríguez , Angélica Cházaro, Rebecca Coplan, Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba, Marta Fontenla, Alma Gomez Caballero, Christina Iturralde, Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos, Julia Estela Monárrez Fragoso, Hilda Morales Trujillo, Mercedes Olivera, Patricia Ravelo Blancas, Katherine Ruhl, Montserrat Sagot, Rita Laura Segato, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, William Paul Simmons, Deborah M. Weissman, Melissa W. Wright

Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture


Cheryl Suzack - 2010
    A vital and sophisticated discussion, these timely essays will change the way we think about modern feminism and Indigenous women.

Spirit of Flight: Believing In Ourselves (mini book)


Rene J. Smith - 2010
    ''Fantasy gives me the opportunity to portray the world as I would like it to be,'' says Jo, who has a wish ''to inspire in her audience a personal journey into the magical world of their own imagination.'' This little book of beauty and inspiring wisdom will help readersespecially those with a fondness for fairies and fantasyfly as far as their wings will take them. 80-page mini hardcover gift book with full-color dust jacket Keep the 24K gold-plated bird charm on the ribbon bookmark or wear it on a bracelet

Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse


Suzie Burke - 2010
    The book provides hope and inspiration for the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of such torture. For counselors and other psychology professionals, her journey offers techniques and approaches that should benefit other survivors. And for the general public, the story sheds light on the subjects of ritual abuse, as well as how the mind stores and can recover traumatic memories. Wholeness also demonstrates the undeniable power of repressed memory and disassociation. As a psychology doctoral student, Suzie Burke (pen name) studied how the mind can repress and wall off traumatic events for defensive purposes. The ability of the mind to hide traumatic memories deep within our unconscious mind in disassociated parts of ourselves is well documented with those who have survived early-age sexual abuse, torture and many other instances of severe psychological trauma. In her first-hand experience, Dr. Burke tells how the reality of her own childhood was hidden in her unconscious until events nearly three decades later provided triggers that could not be ignored. Her journey to wholeness was filled with incidents of re-living events which included body memories of physiological shock, choking and vomiting. The account goes beyond the psychological elements of her recovery. It is also a spiritual journey to wholeness in which she discovers that she is indeed a loving, compassionate woman.

Gender and the Making of Modern Medicine in Colonial Egypt


Hibba Abugideiri - 2010
    It argues that the colonial state effectively transformed Egyptian medical practice and medical knowledge in ways that were decidedly gendered. On the one hand, women medical professionals who had once trained as 'doctresses' (hakimas) were now restricted in their medical training and therefore saw their social status decline despite colonial modernity's promise of progress. On the other hand, the introduction of colonial medicine gendered Egyptian medicine in ways that privileged men and masculinity. Far from being totalized colonial subjects, Egyptian doctors paradoxically reappropriated aspects of Victorian science to forge an anticolonial nationalist discourse premised on the Egyptian woman as mother of the nation. By relegating Egyptian women - whether as midwives or housewives - to maternal roles in the home, colonial medicine was determinative in diminishing what control women formerly exercised over their profession, homes and bodies through its medical dictates to care for others. By interrogating how colonial medicine was constituted, Hibba Abugideiri reveals how the rise of the modern state configured the social formation of native elites in ways directly tied to the formation of modern gender identities, and gender inequalities, in colonial Egypt.

Playing Smart: New York Women Writers and Modern Magazine Culture


Catherine Keyser - 2010
    . . Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, Anita Loos, Lois Long, Jessie Fauset, Dawn Powell, Mary McCarthy, and others imagined New York as a place where they could claim professional status, define urban independence, and shrug off confining feminine roles. It might be said that during the 1920s and 1930s these literary artists painted the town red on the pages of magazines like Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. Playing Smart, Catherine Keyser's homage to their literary genius, is a captivating celebration of their causes and careers.Through humor writing, this "smart set" expressed both sides of the story-promoting their urbanity and wit while using irony and caricature to challenge feminine stereotypes. Their fiction raised questions about what it meant to be a woman in the public eye, how gender roles would change because men and women were working together, and how the growth of the magazine industry would affect women's relationships to their bodies and minds. Keyser provides a refreshing and informative chronicle, saluting the value of being "smart" as incisive and innovative humor showed off the wit and talent of women writers and satirized the fantasy world created by magazines.

African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900-1960


Charlene B. Regester - 2010
    Charlene Regester poses questions about prevailing racial politics, on-screen and off-screen identities, and black stardom and white stardom. She reveals how these women fought for their roles as well as what they compromised (or didn't compromise). Regester repositions these actresses to highlight their contributions to cinema in the first half of the 20th century, taking an informed theoretical, historical, and critical approach.

Women and Nazis: Perpetrators of Genocide and Other Crimes During Hitler's Regime,1933-1945


Wendy Adele-Marie Sarti - 2010
    Despite the Nazis' masculine-oriented policies towards women many women sought ways to become involved in Hitler's party and government. Professor Sarti's remarkable research discusses the women who not only agreed with the Hitler's Weltanschauung but took an active part in mass genocide. Scholarship has tended to fundamentally overlook or dismiss the actions of this group; Sarti brings them to the fore of her remarkable investigation into their numbers and their influence. Professor Sarti discusses the broad narrative of women as perpetrators (not as unwilling accomplices) of brutal genocidal acts. She also studies a number of individuals such as some of the nineteen in the Belsen trial of 1945 and others brought to trial by the Allies and also German authorities in postwar West Germany. In reality far fewer women were even processed for trial than men and this in the face of research that points to a much higher number of women guards and supervisors than the Allied forces acknowledged. This work, based on primary sources, is sure to be of great interest to students of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany and genocide as a modern phenomena as well as scholars involved in women and gender studies.

Writing the Black Revolutionary Diva: Women's Subjectivity and the Decolonizing Text


Kimberly Nichele Brown - 2010
    Brown traces the emergence of this new consciousness from its roots in the Black Aesthetic Movement through important milestones such as the anthology The Black Woman and Essence magazine to the writings of Angela Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, and Jayne Cortez.

Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women's Activism in the Beauty Industry


Tiffany M. Gill - 2010
    Tiffany M. Gill argues that the beauty industry played a crucial role in the creation of the modern black female identity and that the seemingly frivolous space of a beauty salon actually has stimulated social, political, and economic change.From the founding of the National Negro Business League in 1900 and onward, African Americans have embraced the entrepreneurial spirit by starting their own businesses, but black women's forays into the business world were overshadowed by those of black men. With a broad scope that encompasses the role of gossip in salons, ethnic beauty products, and the social meanings of African American hair textures, Gill shows how African American beauty entrepreneurs built and sustained a vibrant culture of activism in beauty salons and schools. Enhanced by lucid portrayals of black beauticians and drawing on archival research and oral histories, Beauty Shop Politics conveys the everyday operations and rich culture of black beauty salons as well as their role in building community.

Alternative Approaches in Music Education


Ann C. Clements - 2010
    Outlined in twenty-five unique case studies, each program offers a new perspective on music teaching and learning, often falling outside the standard music education curriculum. Find innovative ideas and models of successful practice to incorporate into your teaching, whether in school, university, or community settings. Close the gap between music inside and outside the music classroom and spark student interest. The diversity of these real-world case studies will inspire questioning and curiosity, stimulate lively discussion and innovation, and provide much food for thought. Designed for music teachers, preservice music education students, and music education faculty, this project was supported by Society for Music Teacher Education's (SMTE) Areas of Strategic Planning and Action on Critical Examination of the Curriculum, which will receive a portion of the proceeds.

Birth, Death, and Femininity: Philosophies of Embodiment


Robin May Schott - 2010
    The contributors to this volume unravel the gendered aspects of the classical philosophical discourses on death, bringing in discussions about birth, creativity, and the entire chain of human activity. By linking their work to major thinkers such as Heidegger, Nietzsche, Beauvoir, and Arendt, and to major philosophical currents such as ancient philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, and social and political philosophy, they challenge prevailing feminist articulations of birth and death. These philosophical reflections add an important sexual dimension to current thinking on identity, temporality, and community.

America's First Woman Lawyer: The Biography of Myra Bradwell


Jane M Friedman - 2010