The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries


Kathi Weeks - 2011
    While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have “depoliticized” it, or removed it from the realm of political critique. Employment is now largely privatized, and work-based activism in the United States has atrophied. We have accepted waged work as the primary mechanism for income distribution, as an ethical obligation, and as a means of defining ourselves and others as social and political subjects. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation. Work, she contends, is a legitimate, even crucial, subject for political theory.

The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers


Johnny Saldana - 2009
    In total, 29 different approaches to coding are covered, ranging in complexity from beginner to advanced level and covering the full range of types of qualitative data from interview transcripts to field notes. For each approach profiled, Johnny Saldana discusses the method's origins in the professional literature, a description of the method, recommendations for practical applications, and a clearly illustrated example.Also included in the book is an introduction to how codes and coding initiate qualitative data analysis, their applications with qualitative data analysis software, the writing of supplemental analytic memos, and recommendations for how to best use the manual for particular studies.

Feminist Therapy


Laura S. Brown - 2009
    Feminist therapy has become a practice that encompasses work with women, men, children, families, and larger systems. In this book, Dr. Brown presents and explores this approach, its theory, history, the therapy process, primary change mechanisms, empirical basis, and future developments.

Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others


Sara Ahmed - 2006
    Focusing on the “orientation” aspect of “sexual orientation” and the “orient” in “orientalism,” Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be situated in space and time. Bodies take shape as they move through the world directing themselves toward or away from objects and others. Being “orientated” means feeling at home, knowing where one stands, or having certain objects within reach. Orientations affect what is proximate to the body or what can be reached. A queer phenomenology, Ahmed contends, reveals how social relations are arranged spatially, how queerness disrupts and reorders these relations by not following the accepted paths, and how a politics of disorientation puts other objects within reach, those that might, at first glance, seem awry.Ahmed proposes that a queer phenomenology might investigate not only how the concept of orientation is informed by phenomenology but also the orientation of phenomenology itself. Thus she reflects on the significance of the objects that appear—and those that do not—as signs of orientation in classic phenomenological texts such as Husserl’s Ideas. In developing a queer model of orientations, she combines readings of phenomenological texts—by Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Fanon—with insights drawn from queer studies, feminist theory, critical race theory, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. Queer Phenomenology points queer theory in bold new directions.

The Essential Feminist Reader


Estelle B. Freedman - 2007
    Anthony, Simone de Beauvoir, W.E.B. Du Bois, Hélène Cixous, Betty Friedan, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emma Goldman, Guerrilla Girls, Ding Ling, Audre Lorde, John Stuart Mill, Christine de Pizan, Adrienne Rich, Margaret Sanger, Huda Shaarawi, Sojourner Truth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Virginia Woolf.The Essential Feminist Reader is the first anthology to present the full scope of feminist history. Prizewinning historian Estelle B. Freedman brings decades of teaching experience and scholarship to her selections, which span more than five centuries. Moving beyond standard texts by English and American thinkers, this collection features primary source material from around the globe, including short works of fiction and drama, political manifestos, and the work of less well-known writers. Freedman’s cogent Introduction assesses the challenges facing feminism, while her accessible, lively commentary contextualizes each piece. The Essential Feminist Reader is a vital addition to feminist scholarship, and an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of women.

Sexual Politics


Kate Millett - 1969
    Her work rocked the foundations of the literary canon by castigating time-honored classics for their use of sex to degrade women.

Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics


Judith Lorber - 1998
    of New York) gives an overview of organized feminism, its types, its approach to gender equality, and its theories and politics. She then offers a series of classic and new readings in gender reform feminism (liberal, Marxist, socialist, post-colonial), gender resistance (radical, lesbian, psychoanalytic, standpoint) and gender rebe

The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980


Elaine Showalter - 1985
    A vital counter-interpretation of madness in women, showing how it is often a consequence of, rather than a deviation from, the traditional female role.

The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality


Sandra Lipsitz Bem - 1993
    Sandra Lipsitz Bem argues that these assumptions, which she calls the lenses of gender, shape not only perceptions of social reality but also the more material things—like unequal pay and inadequate daycare—that constitute social reality itself. Her penetrating and articulate examination of these hidden cultural lenses enables us to look at them rather than through them and to better understand recent debates on gender and sexuality.According to Bem, the first lens, androcentrism (male-centeredness), defines males and male experience as a standard or norm and females and female experience as a deviation from that norm. The second lens, gender polarization, superimposes male-female differences on virtually every aspect of human experience, from modes of dress and social roles to ways of expressing emotion and sexual desire. The third lens, biological essentialism, rationalizes and legitimizes the other two lenses by treating them as the inevitable consequences of the intrinsic biological natures of women and men.After illustrating the pervasiveness of these three lenses in both historical and contemporary discourses of Western culture, Bem presents her own theory of how the individual either acquires cultural gender lenses and constructs a conventional gender identity or resists cultural lenses and constructs a gender-subversive identity. She contends that we must reframe the debate on sexual inequality so that it focuses not on the differences between men and women but on how male-centered discourses and institutions transform male-female difference into female disadvantage.

Women, Men, and Society


Claire M. Renzetti - 1989
    The approach, which focuses on intersecting inequalities, illustrates how racism, social class, ageism and heterosexism can compound the consequences of gender inequality. Although it focuses primarily on women and men in the United States, international issues and data are incorporated throughout.

Race, Class, & Gender: An Anthology


Margaret L. Andersen - 1992
    The author's selection of very accessible articles show how race, class, and gender shape people's experiences, and help students to see the issues in an analytic, as well as descriptive way. The book also provides conceptual grounding in understanding race, class, and gender; has a strong historical and sociological perspective; and is further strengthened by conceptual introductions by the authors.Students will find the readings engaging and accessible, but may gain the most from the introduction sections that highlight key points and relate the essential concepts. Included in the collection of readings are narratives aimed at building empathy, and articles on important social issues such as prison, affirmative action, poverty, immigration, and racism, among other topics.IncludesWhy race, class, and gender still matter by M.L. Andersen and P.H. CollinsMissing people and others, joining together to expand the circle by A. MadridSystems of power and inequality by M.L. Andersen and P.H. CollinsRace and racism, Racism without "racists" by E. Bonilla-SilvaClass and inequality, Growing gulf between rich and the rest of us by H. SklarGender and sexism, Sex and gender through the prism of difference by M.B. Zinn, P. Hondahneu-Sotelo, and M. MessnerEthnicity and nationality, Is this a white country, or what? by L. RubinSexuality and heterosexism, "You talkin' to me?" by J. KilbourneStructure of social institutions by M.L. Andersen and P.H. CollinsWork and economic transformation, Race, class, gender, and women's works by T. Amott and J. MatthaeiFamilies, Our mothers' grief, racial-ethnic women and the maintenance of families by B.T. DillMedia and culture, Racist stereotyping in the English language by R.B. MooreHealth and social welfare, Can education eliminate race, class, and gender inequality? by R.A. Mickelson and S.S. SmithState institutions and violence, First Americans, American Indians by C.M. SnippSocial change and sites of change by M.L. Andersen and P.H. CollinsSites of change, Starbucks paradox by K. FellnerProcesses of change, How the new working class transform urban America by R.D.G. Kelley

The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis


Barbara Creed - 1993
    In The Monstrous-Feminine Barbara Creed challenges this patriarchal view by arguing that the prototype of all definitions of the monstrous is the female reproductive body.With close reference to a number of classic horror films including the Alien trilogy, The Exorcist and Psycho, Creed analyses the seven `faces' of the monstrous-feminine: archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire, witch, possessed body, monstrous mother and castrator. Her argument that man fears woman as castrator, rather than as castrated, questions not only Freudian theories of sexual difference but existing theories of spectatorship and fetishism, providing a provocative re-reading of classical and contemporary film and theoretical texts.

Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud


Thomas W. Laqueur - 1990
    It tells the astonishing story of sex in the West from the ancients to the moderns in a precise account of developments in reproductive anatomy and physiology. We cannot fail to recognize the players in Thomas Laqueur's story--the human sexual organs and pleasures, food, blood, semen, egg, sperm--but we will be amazed at the plots into which they have been woven by scientists, political activists, literary figures, and theorists of every stripe.Laqueur begins with the question of why, in the late eighteenth century, woman's orgasm came to be regarded as irrelevant to conception, and he then proceeds to retrace the dramatic changes in Western views of sexual characteristics over two millennia. Along the way, two "master plots" emerge. In the one-sex story, woman is an imperfect version of man, and her anatomy and physiology are construed accordingly: the vagina is seen as an interior penis, the womb as a scrotum, the ovaries as testicles. The body is thus a representation, not the foundation, of social gender. The second plot tends to dominate post-Enlightenment thinking while the one-sex model is firmly rooted in classical learning. The two-sex story says that the body determines gender differences, that woman is the opposite of man with incommensurably different organs, functions, and feelings. The two plots overlap; neither ever holds a monopoly. Science may establish many new facts, but even so, Laqueur argues, science was only providing a new way of speaking, a rhetoric and not a key to female liberation or to social progress. Making Sex ends with Freud, who denied the neurological evidence to insist that, as a girl becomes a woman, the locus of her sexual pleasure shifts from the clitoris to the vagina; she becomes what culture demands despite, not because of, the body. Turning Freud's famous dictum around, Laqueur posits that destiny is anatomy. Sex, in other words, is an artifice.This is a powerful story, written with verve and a keen sense of telling detail (be it technically rigorous or scabrously fanciful). Making Sex will stimulate thought, whether argument or surprised agreement, in a wide range of readers.

Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film


Carol J. Clover - 1992
    Carol Clover argues, however, that these films work mainly to engage the viewer in the plight of the victim-hero - the figure, often a female, who suffers pain and fright but eventually rises to vanquish the forces of oppression.

He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know


Jessica Valenti - 2008
    Women deal with them every day. Take the common truism that women who sleep around are sluts while men are studs. Why is it that men grow distinguished and sexily gray as they age while women just get saggy and haggard? Have you ever wondered how a young woman is supposed to be both virginal and provocatively enticing at the same time? Isn’t it unfair that working moms are labeled “bad” for focusing on their careers while we shake our heads in disbelief when we hear about the occasional stay-at-home dad?In 50 Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, author Jessica Valenti calls out the double standards that affect every woman. Whether Valenti is pointing out the wage-earning discrepancies between men and women or revealing all of the places that women still aren’t equal to their male counterparts—be it in the workplace, courtroom, bedroom, or home—she maintains her signature wittily sarcastic tone. With sass, humor, and in-your-face facts, this book informs and equips women with the tools they need to combat sexist comments, topple ridiculous stereotypes (girls aren’t good at math?), and end the promotion of double standards.