The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages?


Deborah Cameron - 2007
    In this wide-ranging and thoroughly readable book, Deborah Cameron, Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication at Oxford University and author of a number of leading texts in the field of language and gender studies, draws on over 30 years of scientific research to explain what we really know and to demonstrate how this is often very different from the accounts we are familiar with from recent popular writing. Ambitious in scope and exceptionally accessible, The Myth of Mars and Venus tells it like it is: widely accepted attitudes from the past and from other cultures are at heart related to assumptions about language and the place of men and women in society; and there is as much similarity and variation within each gender as between men and women, often associated with social roles and relationships. The author goes on to consider the influence of Darwinian theories of natural selection and the notion that girls and boys are socialized during childhood into different ways of using language, before addressing problems of miscommunication surrounding, for example, sex and consent to sex, and women's relative lack of success in work and politics. Arguing that what linguistic differences there are between men and women are driven by the need to construct and project personal meaning and identity, Cameron concludes that we have an urgent need to think about gender in more complex ways than the prevailing myths and stereotypes allow.

Feminist Film Theory: A Reader


Sue Thornham - 1999
    This anthology charts the history of those debates, bringing together the key, classic essays in feminist film theory. Feminist Film Theory maps the impact of major theoretical developments on this growing field-from structuralism and psychoanalysis in the 1970s, to post-colonial theory, queer theory, and postmodernism in the 1990s.Covering a wide range of topics, including oppressive images, woman as fetishized object of desire, female spectatorship, and the cinematic pleasures of black women and lesbian women, Feminist Film Theory is an indispensable reference for scholars and students in the field.Contributors include Judith Butler, Carol J. Clover, Barbara Creed, Michelle Citron, Mary Ann Doane, Teresa De Lauretis, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Molly Haskell, bell hooks, Claire Johnston, Annette Kuhn, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, Tania Modleski, Laura Mulvey, B. Ruby Rich, Kaja Silverman, Sharon Smith, Jackie Stacey, Janet Staiger, Anna Marie Taylor, Valerie Walkerdine, and Linda Williams.

The Juggler


Rachilde - 1900
    Its author, Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (1860-1953), who used the pseudonym Rachilde, was a prolific novelist (over sixty works of fiction), playwright, literary critic and reviewer, and a forceful presence in French literary society of her time. The protagonist of the novel, Eliante Donalger, is in some sense an exaggerated double for her creator--bizarre in appearance, clothing, and interests. Instinctively grasping a medical and psychological truth that the turn-of-the-century scientific world was only beginning to understand, Eliante maintains that there is nothing "natural" about human sexual expression. She claims to be in love with an inanimate (though anthropomorphic and sexually ambiguous) object, a Greek amphora, and the novel traces the rivalry between this faithful partner and an ardent human suitor, a young medical student. It is only through juggling, both literally and metaphorically, that Eliante is able to use her seductive power to maintain desire. The surprise ending challenges the limits of such power in a controversial and surprising twist. Although Rachilde's work has been neglected in the past, the women's movement and feminist criticism have stimulated renewed interest in her fiction. The Juggler is a major rediscovery.

The Lady with the Borzoi: Blanche Knopf, Literary Tastemaker Extraordinaire


Laura Claridge - 2016
    Knopf with her husband in 1915. With her finger on the pulse of a rapidly changing culture, Blanche quickly became a driving force behind the firm.A conduit to the literature of Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance, Blanche also legitimized the hard-boiled detective fiction of writers such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler; signed and nurtured literary authors like Willa Cather, Elizabeth Bowen, and Muriel Spark; acquired momentous works of journalism by John Hersey and William Shirer; and introduced American readers to Albert Camus, André Gide, and Simone de Beauvoir, giving these French writers the benefit of her consummate editorial taste.As Knopf celebrates its centennial, Laura Claridge looks back at the firm’s beginnings and the dynamic woman who helped to define American letters for the twentieth century. Drawing on a vast cache of papers, Claridge also captures Blanche’s “witty, loyal, and amusing” personality, and her charged yet oddly loving relationship with her husband. An intimate and often surprising biography, The Lady with the Borzoi is the story of an ambitious, seductive, and impossibly hardworking woman who was determined not to be overlooked or easily categorized.

Roxana


Daniel Defoe - 1724
    Its narrator tells the story of her own wicked life as the mistress of rich and powerful men.

Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction


Malcolm Gaskill - 2010
    Indeed, from childhood most of us develop some mental image of a witch--usually an old woman, mysterious and malignant. But why do witches still feature so heavily in our cultures and consciousness? From Halloween superstitions to literary references such as Faust and, of course, Harry Potter, witches seem ever-present in our lives. In this Very Short Introduction, Malcolm Gaskill takes a long historical perspective, from the ancient world to contemporary paganism. This is a book about the strangeness of the past, and about contrasts and change; but it's also about affinity and continuity. He reveals that witchcraft is multi-faceted, that it has always meant different things to different people, and that in every age it has raised questions about the distinction between fantasy and reality, faith and proof. Delving into court records, telling anecdotes, and challenging myths, Gaskill re-examines received wisdom, especially concerning the European witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He also explores the modern memory and reinvention of witchcraft--as history, religion, fiction, and metaphor.

The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers


Mark T. Conard - 2008
    They had already made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, among others. No Country is just one of many Coen brothers films to center on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To

Writing Science in Plain English


Anne E. Greene - 2013
    But, as Anne E. Greene shows in Writing Science in Plain English,writers from all scientific disciplines can learn to produce clear, concise prose by mastering just a few simple principles.   This short, focused guide presents a dozen such principles based on what readers need in order to understand complex information, including concrete subjects, strong verbs, consistent terms, and organized paragraphs. The author, a biologist and an experienced teacher of scientific writing, illustrates each principle with real-life examples of both good and bad writing and shows how to revise bad writing to make it clearer and more concise. She ends each chapter with practice exercises so that readers can come away with new writing skills after just one sitting.  Writing Science in Plain English can help writers at all levels of their academic and professional careers—undergraduate students working on research reports, established scientists writing articles and grant proposals, or agency employees working to follow the Plain Writing Act. This essential resource is the perfect companion for all who seek to write science effectively.

Through Women's Eyes: An American History With Documents


Ellen Carol DuBois - 2005
    history while ensuring a balanced sense of the broad diversity of American women. Modeling for students how historians gather and interpret evidence, DuBois and Dumenil provide a textbook rooted in recent scholarship yet accessible to all introductory students.

Nothing Sacred


Angela Carter - 1982
    One of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation, here, for the first time, her work as a journalist and critic is collected.Angela Carter is a great traveller, on many fronts. Long autobiographical pieces on her life in South Yorkshire and South London are followed by highly individual inspections of home and abroad. Some of her most brilliant writing is devoted to Japan, that strange and unfathomable country—exotically and erotically described here—so perfectly suited to the Carter pen. Domestically, Angela Carter used her mordant wit and accurate eye to inspect England and Englishness as it manifested itself throughout the land. On the home front, she writes on Zoos and Fun Fairs, on fashion and make-up, on sexual fads and fripperies, on film and television—and Britain in the gone-but-not-forgotten 60s and 70s springs to life. Finally she turns her attention to her own craft, and her book reviews are masterpieces—at last Katherine Mansfield and Colette are assessed by their equal; Linda Lovelace, Gay Talese and Judith Krantz get a literary spanking where it hurts most; D.H. Lawrence may rise again, but it seems unlikely.Critics have always used superlatives to describe the work of Angela Carter. What these writings show is that she is also one of the funniest, most perceptive critics of our age, a maverick who has lived through our life and times, and hasn't missed a thing.

The Grit Factor: Courage, Resilience, and Leadership in the Most Male-Dominated Organization in the World


Shannon Huffman Polson - 2020
    McKinley. A native of Alaska, she went on to reach the summits of Mt. Rainier and Mt. Kilimanjaro and spent more than a decade traveling the world. Yet it wasn't until she joined the military, as one of the Army's first female attack helicopter pilots, and went on to lead platoons on deployment to Bosnia-Herzegovina, that she learned the secrets of leadership that changed her forever.Where did these insights come from? From her own crucibles of experience--and from other women. Polson made it her mission to become acquainted with an elite pack of tough, impressive female iconoclasts who shared their candid stories of combat and career. This decorated cast of characters includes Heather Penney, one of the first female F-16 pilots who was put on a "suicide mission" for 9/11; General Ann Dunwoody, first female four-star general in the Army; Marine Commander Amy McGrath, first woman to fly the F/A-18 in combat and a 2018 Congressional candidate--and dozens of other unstoppable women who got there first, including Polson herself.These women learned to lead at the highest levels in the most complicated, challenging, and male-dominated organization in the world. Now, in the post–#MeToo era, when all women can break through the barriers to lead, and when all of us are looking for inspiration and guidance to change institutional progress, Polson brings these voices together, sharing her own life lessons and theirs with storytelling flair, keen insight, and incisive analysis of current, relevant research.With relatable takeaways like "your story is your strategy" and "push through the pushback," The Grit Factor is both inspiring and pragmatic, a book that will motivate current and aspiring leaders everywhere--whether male or female.

Truth and Method


Hans-Georg Gadamer - 1960
    An astonishing synthesis of literary criticism, philosophy, theology, the theory of law and classical scholarship, it is undoubtedly one of the most important texts in twentieth century philosophy. Looking behind the self-consciousness of science, he discusses the tense relationship between truth and methodology. In examining the different experiences of truth, he aims to "present the hermeneutic phenomenon in its fullest extent."

The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman


Penelope Shuttle - 1978
    . . entirely praiseworthy.”—The Sunday TimesThis is a book of many questions and some answers. What is this menstruation that half the world undergoes? Has it any use, or any purpose? Which is it, blessing or curse?This groundbreaking study of the facts, fantasies, and taboos surrounding menstruation has helped bring about a profound shift in attitudes toward a natural phenomenon that has been reviled and denigrated over the centuries. Thoroughly researched yet highly readable, combining psychology, anthropology, and poetry, Shuttle and Redgrove illustrate their theories using examples ranging from the Bible to such modern-day pop horrors as vampire movies and the cult film The Exorcist.

The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction


Michel Foucault - 1976
    Michel Foucault offers an iconoclastic exploration of why we feel compelled to continually analyze and discuss sex, and of the social and mental mechanisms of power that cause us to direct the questions of what we are to what our sexuality is.

Self Portrait


Man Ray - 1961
    In this brilliant memoir, Man Ray paints a vivid picture of his own life, his friends -- including Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway -- and the many women in his life -- such as Kiki Montparnesse and photographer Lee Miller. Originally published in 1963, Self Portrait is a classic artist's memoir.