Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?


Linda Nochlin - 1971
    It is considered a pioneering essay for both feminist art history and feminist art theory.In this essay, Nochlin explores the institutional – as opposed to the individual – obstacles that have prevented women in the West from succeeding in the arts. She divides her argument into several sections, the first of which takes on the assumptions implicit in the essay's title, followed by "The Question of the Nude," "The Lady's Accomplishment," "Successes," and "Rosa Bonheur." In her introduction, she acknowledges "the recent upsurge of feminist activity" in America as a condition for her interrogation of the ideological foundations of art history, while also invoking John Stuart Mill's suggestion that "we tend to accept whatever is as natural". In her conclusion, she states: "I have tried to deal with one of the perennial questions used to challenge women's demand for true, rather than token, equality by examining the whole erroneous intellectual substructure upon which the question "Why have there been no great women artists?" is based; by questioning the validity of the formulation of so-called problems in general and the "problem" of women specifically; and then, by probing some of the limitations of the discipline of art history itself."

A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The True Story of a Nice Jewish Boy Who Joins the Church of Scientology and Leaves Twelve Years Later to Become the Lovely Lady She is Today


Kate Bornstein - 2012
    A few years later, she stopped calling herself a woman and became famous as a gender outlaw.Kate Bornstein—gender theorist, performance artist, author—is set to change lives with her compelling memoir. Wickedly funny and disarmingly honest, this is Bornstein's most intimate book yet, encompassing her early childhood and adolescence, college at Brown, a life in the theater, three marriages and fatherhood, the Scientology hierarchy, transsexual life, LGBTQ politics, and life on the road as a sought-after speaker.

Sylvia Plath: A Biography


Linda Wagner-Martin - 1987
    20 pages of photos.

Priya's Shakti


Ram Devineni - 2014
    Received the Tribeca Film Institute New Media Fund from Ford Foundation for innovation and social impact.

Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap


Peggy Orenstein - 1994
    The result was a groundbreaking book in which she brought the disturbing statistics to life with skill and flair of an experienced journalist. Orenstein plumbs the minds of both boys and girls who have learned to equate masculinity with opportunity and assertiveness, and femininity with reserve and restraint. She demonstrates the cost of this insidious lesson, by taking us into the lives of real young women who are struggling with eating disorders, sexual harassment, and declining academic achievement, especially in math and science. Peggy Orenstein's SchoolGirls is a classic that belongs on the shelf with the work of Carol Gilligan, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, and Mary Pipher. It continues to be read by all who care about how our schools and our society teach girls to shortchange themselves.

The Porning of America: The Rise of Porn Culture, What it Means, and Where We Go from Here


Carmine Sarracino - 2008
    Carmine Sarracino and Kevin Scott argue that porn has seeped into and been absorbed by every defining aspect of our culture: language, entertainment, fashion, advertising, sexual behavior, even politics. Cultural absorption is so complete that we no longer have to purchase pornography to get porn because we increasingly live porn on a daily basis.In tracing porn's transformation-from the Civil War to the golden age of comic books in the 1940s and 1950s to the adult film industry's golden decade of the 1970s and up to today-the authors illustrate that what began in the dark alleys of American life has now emerged as an unapologetic multibillion-dollar industry. In this astonishingly comprehensive book, Sarracino and Scott profile such "porn exemplars"-those who have been pivotal to the mainstreaming of porn-as Russ Meyer, Snoop Dogg, Jenna Jameson, and Paris Hilton; they document how mainstream advertising uses porn culture to sell commercial goods now to an even younger, "tween" audience; and they pose crucial questions: How has porn shaped the way we view our own and others' bodies? Sarracino and Scott examine porned advertising of everything from Clinique to Orbit gum to Old Spice. How has porn influenced our relationships and how do current sexual behaviors, such as the "hookup," mimic porn? The authors look to MySpace and Craigslist for answers. And how does porn shape our identity, as individuals and as a nation? Sarracino and Scott argue that the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib exposed our porned sensibilities.Not an anti-porn diatribe, The Porning of America is resolutely pro-sex. Sarracino and Scott contend that, to make the most of our hard-won sexual freedom, we must thoughtfully-and honestly-evaluate what might be liberating about porn as well as what might be damaging. Nuanced, timely, and urgent, The Porning of America will change how you see the world around you.

I Am Change


Suzy Zail - 2019
    They were wrong.“What if I don’t want to marry?” Lillian held her breath. She had never said the words out loud. “Not want to marry?” Her aunt frowned. “What else would you do?” Set in a Ugandan village, Lilian has learned to shrink herself to fit other people’s ideas of what a girl is. In her village a girl is not meant to be smarter than her brother. A girl is not meant to go to school or enjoy her body or decide who to marry. Especially if she is poor.

Wild Life


Molly Gloss - 2000
    The sole provider for her five young boys, Charlotte is a fiercely independent, freethinking woman of the West who fully embraces the scientific spirit that is sweeping the nation at the dawn of the industrial age. Thumbing her nose at convention, she dresses in men's clothes, avoids housework whenever possible, and proudly supports her family by writing popular women's adventure stories. Ready to show off her knowledge of the local flora and fauna and have an adventure of her own, Charlotte joins a search party for a child who has disappeared in the deepwood wilderness on the border between Oregon and Washington. But when she gets lost herself, she is thrust into a mysterious world that not only tests her courage but challenges her entire concept of reality. Starving and half dead from exposure, Charlotte is rescued by a band of elusive, quasi-human beasts. As she becomes a part of the creatures' extended family, Charlotte is forced to reconsider her previous notions about the differences between animals and humans, men and women, and above all, between wilderness and civilization. Beautifully written and historically accurate, "Wild Life" is a highly original tale set at the very edge of civilization, where one woman takes on the untamed world of nature, and in the process, discovers much about the deepest recesses of her very own human nature. Putting a surprising, revitalizing, feminine spin on the classic legend of Tarzan and other wildman sagas, award-winning novelist Molly Gloss delivers a rich portrait of America's northwestern frontier at the start of the twentieth century.

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom


Bettina L. Love - 2019
    She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom--not merely reform--teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.

Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection


Debora L. Spar - 2013
    Spar spent most of her life avoiding feminism. Raised after the tumult of the 1960s, she presumed that the gender war was over. “We thought we could glide into the new era with babies, board seats, and husbands in tow,” she writes. “We were wrong.”Spar should know. One of the first women professors at Harvard Business School, she went on to have three children and became the chair of her department. Now, she’s the president of Barnard College, arguably the most important women’s college in the country, and an institution firmly committed to feminism. Wonder Women is Spar’s story, but it is also the culture’s. Armed with reams of new research, she examines how women’s lives have, and have not, changed over the past fifty years—and how it is that the struggle for power has become a quest for perfection. Wise, often funny, and always human, Wonder Women asks: How far have women really come? And what will it take to get true equality for good?

The Power of Women


June Sarpong - 2018
    Feminism is often presented as a women’s movement, but the truth is that harnessing women’s untapped potential will make everyone better off… including men!Looking to our personal relationships, social and cultural climate and business and economic potential, The Power of Women debunks the myths around feminism, and proves why an intersectional approach to bringing women to the table is key to personal, social and economic progress for society as a whole.Praise for June Sarpong’s Diversify:‘June Sarpong examines the research behind diversity and discrimination while grounding them in personal narratives, highlighting our common humanity.’ Kofi Annan, co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize‘I am so glad June Sarpong is working on this matter of diversity.’ Desmond Tutu“A passionately written polemic” You Magazine‘An engaging read with lots of important and good ideas’ Stylist‘May prove to be our handbook to negotiate these troubled times’ Psychologies

Death in Ten Minutes: Kitty Marion: Activist. Arsonist. Suffragette.


Fern Riddell - 2018
    But in the aftermath of World War One, the dangerous and revolutionary actions of Kitty and other militant suffragettes were quickly hushed up and disowned by the previously proud movement, and the women who carried out these attacks were erased from our history. Now, for the first time, their untold story will be brought back to life.Telling a new history of the women's movement in the light of new and often shocking revelations, this book will ask the question: Why has the life of this incredible woman, and the violence of the suffragettes been forgotten? And, one hundred years later, why are women suddenly finding themselves under threat again?

Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers, 1852-1923


Leslie S. KlingerRegina Miriam Bloch - 2020
    Weird Women, edited by award-winning anthologists Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger, collects some of the finest tales of terror by authors as legendary as Louisa May Alcott, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Charlotte Gilman-Perkins, alongside works of writers who were the bestsellers and critical favorites of their time—Marie Corelli, Ellen Glasgow, Charlotte Riddell—and lesser known authors who are deserving of contemporary recognition.As railroads, industry, cities, and technology flourished in the mid-nineteenth century, so did stories exploring the horrors they unleashed. This anthology includes ghost stories and tales of haunted houses, as well as mad scientists, werewolves, ancient curses, mummies, psychological terrors, demonic dimensions, and even weird westerns. Curated by Klinger and Morton with an aim to presenting work that has languished in the shadows, all of these exceptional supernatural stories are sure to surprise, delight, and frighten today’s readers.

Boy Gets Girl


Rebecca Gilman - 2000
    When Theresa goes on an awkward blind date with a friend of a friend, she sees no reason to continue the relationship--but the man, an attractive fellow named Tony, thinks otherwise. While Theresa is at first annoyed yet flattered by his continuing attention, her attitude gradually changes to one of fear and fury when he starts violently to menace her and those around her.In brilliantly delineating the kind of terror a woman in full control of her life feels when everything around her suddenly seems to be a threat, Gilman probes the dark side of relationships in the 1990s with the rich insight and compelling characterizations that have distinguished her earlier plays and made her one of the most exciting young playwrights working today.

Poems from the Women's Movement (American Poets Project)


Honor Moore - 2009
    THE WOMEN S MOVEMENT OF THE 1960s 70s AND 80s generated an extraordinary outpouring of poetry that captured an age of expectancy of defiant purpose and exuberant exploration Here brought together for the first time are the poems that gave voice to a revolution including works by Sylvia Plath Adrienne Rich Muriel Rukeyser Anne Sexton Sonia Sanchez Lucille Clifton May Swenson Alice Walker Anne Waldman Sharon Olds and many others THE WOMENS MOVEMENT OF THE 1960s 70s AND 80s generated an extraordinary outpouring of poetry that captured an age of expectancy of defiant purpose and exuberant exploration Here brought together for the first time are the poems that gave voice to a revolution including works by Sylvia Plath Adrienne Rich Muriel Rukeyser Anne Sexton Sonia Sanchez Lucille Clifton May Swenson Alice Walker Anne Waldman Sharon Olds and many others THE WOMENS MOVEMENT OF THE 1960s 70s AND 80s generated an extraordinary outpouring of poetry that captured an age of expectancy of defiant purpose and exuberant exploration Here brought together for the first time are the poems that gave voice to a revolution including works by Sylvia Plath Adrienne Rich Muriel Rukeyser Anne Sexton Sonia Sanchez Lucille Clifton May Swenson Alice Walker Anne Waldman Sharon Olds and many others