In this innovative analysis of canonical British novels, Campbell identifies a new literary device—the surrogate family—as a signal of cultural anxieties about young women’s changing relationship to matrimony across the long eighteenth century. By assembling chosen families rather than families of origin, Campbell convincingly argues, female protagonists in these works compensate for weak family ties, explore the world and themselves, prepare for idealized marriages, or sidestep marriage altogether. Tracing the evolution of this rich convention from the female characters in Defoe’s and Richardson’s fiction who are allowed some autonomy in choosing spouses, to the more explicitly feminist work of Haywood and Burney, in which connections between protagonists and their surrogate sisters and mothers can substitute for marriage itself, this book makes an ambitious intervention by upending a traditional trope—the model of the hierarchal family—ultimately offering a new lens through which to regard these familiar works.
For law and legal theory the end of the twentieth century is a time of contradiction; while the newly emerging politics of Eastern Europe seek to establish a new rule of law, voices in this country proclaim the "death of law." For the former, law provides hope for stability and fairness. For the latter, the fundamental values that provide a grounding for legality seem no longer secure or satisfying. The Fate of Law is a collection of five original essays, each of which discusses the problems and prospects of law in the late twentieth century. The essays pay particular attention to the impact of broad intellectual and political movements, especially feminism and postmodernism, on law and legal theory.
The Fate of Law investigates what happens under the critical scrutiny of those movements and in an era of growing skepticism about law's central claim to objectivity, neutrality, and reason. It describes the struggles that ensue and the responses that are made. Each of the essays that comprise this books is written in its own style and voice; each makes it own judgments and assessments.
Feminine Feminists was first published in 1994. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
What does it mean to be a woman today in Italy, a country with the lowest birthrate in the world and the heaviest maternal stereotype? Does being a feminist exclude practices of cultural femininity? What are Italian women's cultural productions? These questions are at the center of this volume, which looks at how feminism and femininity are embedded in a broad spectrum of Italian cultural practices.
In recent years, several books have introduced the American public to Italian women's voices. This volume goes beyond others in its range of theoretical topics and modes, considering cultural practices not only in their popular, material appearance, but also in the disciplines and forms of knowledge that order information and circumscribe behavior.The essays, all by well-known scholars in Italian studies, reflect the authors' specific critical interests in cinema, fashion, literary texts, feminist theory, and popular culture, past and present. Some address the culture of everyday life, while others examine feminism and femininity in the context of philosophy, ethics, or national identity within a global culture. Some begin with the conviction that performing "femininity"—whether in appearance or in nurturing practices—can be culturally liberating. Others put this notion to the critical test. By situating the problem of femininity within the discussion of feminism, this volume takes on larger issues within feminist discourse. Its bold examination of the component of femininity within the context of women's experiences offers readers rare insight into Italian women's culture and into the multicultural possibilities of feminism.Contributors: Beverly Allen,
Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Renate Holub, Carol Lazzaro-Weis, Maria Marotti, Áine O'Healy, Graziella Parati, Eugenia Paulicelli, Robin Pickering-Iazzi, Maurizio Viano.Giovanna Miceli Jeffries is a lecturer in the department of French and Italian at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Contributors. Salwa Bakr, Claire Detels, Margaret Ferguson, Carla Freccero, Marjorie Garber, Barbara Harlow, Laura E. Lyons, Anne McClintock, Toril Moi, Linda Nicholson, Mary Poovey, Andrew Ross, David Simpson, Kathyrn Bond Stockton, Jennifer Wicke
What is a body? What are our perceptions of our inner bodies? How are these perceptions influenced?
In recent years, thinking about the body has become highly fashionable. However, the renewed focus, while certainly welcome, seems to always end at the corporeal surface. While recent sociological and feminist theory has made important claims about the process of cultural inscription on the body, and about the cultural representation of the body, what actually appears in this new theory seems to be, ironically, disembodied. If this newly theorized form has interiority, it is one that is explained predominantly through psychoanalysis. The physiological processes remain a mystery to be explained, if at all, only in the esoteric language of biomedicine.
As a trained biologist, Lynda Birke was frustrated by the gap between feminist cultural analysis and her own scientific background. In this book, she seeks to bridge this gap using ideas in anatomy and physiology to develop the feminist view that the biological body is socially and culturally constructed. Birke rejects the assumption that bodily function is somehow fixed and unchanging, claiming that biology offers more than just a deterministic narrative of how nature works. Feminism and the Biological Body brings natural science and feminist theory together and suggests that we need a new politics that includes, rather than denies, our flesh.
Embattled and belittled, demonized and deemed passé, feminism today seems becalmed without being calm. This is as true in literary criticism as elsewhere in the culture--yet it is in literary criticism that these essays locate the renewed promises, possibilities, and applications of feminist thought. In fresh readings of a wide array of texts--legal, literary, cinematic, philosophical, and psychoanalytical--renowned literary theorist Barbara Johnson demonstrates that the conflicts and uncertainties that beset feminism are signs not of a dead end, but of a creative turning-point.
Employing surprising juxtapositions, The Feminist Difference looks at fiction by black writers from a feminist/psychoanalytic perspective; at poetry from Phillis Wheatley to Baudelaire and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore; and at feminism and law, particularly in the work of Patricia Williams and the late Mary Joe Frug. Toni Morrison and Sigmund Freud, John Keats and Jane Campion, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nella Larson and Heinz Kohut are among the many occasions for Johnson's rich, stimulating, unfailingly close reading of moments at which feminism seems to founder in its own contradictions--moments that re-emerge here as sources of a revitalized critical awareness.
In the final analysis, Johnson argues, literature is essential for feminism because it is the place where impasses can be kept and opened for examination, where questions can be guarded and not forced into a premature validation of the available paradigms. In her book literature appears not as a predetermined set of works but as a mode of cultural work, the work of making readable those impossible and necessary things that cannot yet be spoken.
The first book-length investigation of a pioneering English professor and theorist at Vassar College, A Feminist Legacy: The Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Gertrude Buck explores Buck’s contribution to the fields of education and rhetoric during the Progressive Era. By contextualizing Buck’s academic and theoretical work within the rise of women’s educational institutions like Vassar College, the social and political movement toward suffrage, and Buck’s own egalitarian political and social ideals, Suzanne Bordelon offers a scholarly and well-informed treatment of Buck’s achievements that elucidates the historical and contemporary impact of her work and life.
Bordelon argues that while Buck did not call herself a feminist, she embodied feminist ideals by demanding the full participation of her female students and by challenging power imbalances at every academic, social, and political level.
A Feminist Legacy reveals that Vassar College is an undervalued but significant site in the history of women’s argumentation and pedagogy. Drawing on a rich variety of archival sources, including previously unexamined primary material, A Feminist Legacy traces the beginnings of feminist theories of argumentation and pedagogy and their lasting legacy within the fields of education and rhetoric.
Contemporary feminist scholarship has done much to challenge the many binary constructions at the heart of Western culture: white/nonwhite, theory/practice, and, most notably, masculine/feminine. Feminist criticism has reshaped these conceptions by breaking them apart and reconfiguring them into intersecting, relational fields of difference. The contributors to this collection look to the future of feminist theory and practice, specifically in terms of their complex relationship with the global and local configurations of postmodernity.
In the first part of this book, current feminist theory is assessed for possible future directions. Part two focuses primarily on political issues and part three on questions of the body. Topics include feminist success versus social backlash, global womens human rights, postcolonial feminism, the politics of reproduction, and narratives of womens aging in postmodern culture.
Contributors: Karen Barad, Anne C. Bellows, Charlotte Bunch, Nao Bustamante, Elaine K. Chang, Marianne DeKoven, Leela Fernandes, Susan Stanford Friedman, Coco Fusco, Radha S. Hegde, Cheryl Johnson-Odim, E. Ann Kaplan, Debra J. Liebowitz, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Cynthia Saltzman, Lynne Segal
Feminism and liberalism need each other, argues Judith Baer. Her provocative book, Feminist Post-Liberalism, refutes both conservative and radical critiques. To make her case, she rejects classical liberalism in favor of a welfare—and possibly socialist—post-liberalism that will prevent capitalism and a concentration of power that reinforces male supremacy. Together, feminism and liberalism can better elucidate controversies in American politics, law, and society.
Baer emphasizes that tolerance and self-examination are virtues, but within both feminist and liberal thought these virtues have been carried to extremes. Feminist theory needs liberalism's respect for reason, while liberal theory needs to incorporate emotion. Liberalism focuses too narrowly on the individual, while feminism needs a dose of individualism.
Feminist Post-Liberalism includes anthropological foundations of male dominance to explore topics ranging from crime to cultural appropriation. Baer develops a theory that is true to the principles of both feminist and liberal ideologies.
In Feminist Reflections on Childhood, Penny Weiss rediscovers the radically feminist tradition of advocating for the liberatory treatment of youth. Weiss looks at both historical and contemporary feminists to understand what issues surrounding the inequality experienced by both women and children were important to the authors as feminist activists and thinkers. She uses the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Simone de Beauvoir to show early feminist arguments for the improved status and treatment of youth. Weiss also shows how Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a socialist feminist, and Emma Goldman, an anarchist feminist, differently understood and re-visioned children’s lives, as well as how children continue to show up on feminist agendas and in manifestos that demand better conditions for children’s lives.
Moving to contemporary theory, Feminist Reflections on Childhood also looks at how feminist disability theory is well-positioned to recognize the voices of children, and how queer theory provides lessons on contemporary trends that provide visions and strategies for more constructive adult-child relations. Weiss, who includes her own experiences as a mother and foster mother throughout the book, closes her distinctively feminist takes on childhood with a consideration of speculative fiction stories that offer examples of what feminists think makes childhood (un)livable.
To contextualize a new and changed landscape for narratives in the history of rhetoric, Royster and Kirsch present four critical terms of engagement—critical imagination, strategic contemplation, social circulation, and globalization—as the foundation for a new analytical model for understanding, interpreting, and evaluating feminist rhetorical inquiry and the study and teaching of rhetoric in general. This model draws directly on the wealth of knowledge and understanding gained from feminist rhetorical practices, especially sensitivity toward meaningfully and respectfully rendering the work, lives, cultures, and traditions of historical and contemporary women in rhetorical scholarship.
Proposing ambitious new standards for viewing and valuing excellence in feminist rhetorical practice, Royster and Kirsch advocate an ethos of respect and humility in the analysis of communities and specific rhetorical performances neglected in rhetorical history, recasting rhetorical studies as a global phenomenon rather than a western one. They also reflect on their own personal and professional development as researchers as they highlight innovative feminist research over the past thirty years to articulate how feminist work is changing the field and pointing to the active participation of women in various discourse arenas and to the practices and genres they use.
Valuable to new and established scholars of rhetoric, Feminist Rhetorical Practice: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies is essential for understanding the theoretical, methodological, and ethical impacts of feminist rhetorical studies on the wider field.
Winner, 2014 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award
Although it is well known in other fields, the concept of “resilience” has not been addressed explicitly by feminist rhetoricians. This collection develops it in readings of rhetorical situations across a range of social contexts and national cultures. Contributors demonstrate that resilience offers an important new conceptual frame for feminist rhetoric, with emphasis on agency, change, and hope in the daily lives of individuals or groups of individuals disempowered by social or material forces. Collectively, these chapters create a robust conception of resilience as a complex rhetorical process, redeeming it from its popular association with individual heroism through an important focus on relationality, community, and an ethics of connection. Resilience, in this volume, is a specifically rhetorical response to complicated forces in individual lives. Through it, Feminist Rhetorical Resilience widens the interpretive space within which rhetoricians can work.
Is there such a thing as a "feminist technology"? If so, what makes a technology feminist? Is it in the design process, in the thing itself, in the way it is marketed, or in the way it is used by women (or by men)?
In this collection, feminist scholars trained in diverse fields consider these questions by examining a range of products, tools, and technologies that were specifically designed for and marketed to women. Evaluating the claims that such products are liberating for women, the contributors focus on case studies of menstrual-suppressing birth control pills, home pregnancy tests, tampons, breast pumps, Norplant, anti-fertility vaccines, and microbicides. In examining these various products, this volume explores ways of actively intervening to develop better tools for designing, promoting, and evaluating feminist technologies. Recognizing the different needs and desires of women and acknowledging the multiplicity of feminist approaches, Feminist Technology offers a sustained debate on existing and emergent technologies that share the goal of improving women's lives.
Contributors are Jennifer Aengst, Maia Boswell-Penc, Kate Boyer, Frances Bronet, Shirley Gorenstein, Anita Hardon, Deborah G. Johnson, Linda L. Layne, Deana McDonagh, and Sharra L. Vostral.
An acclaimed political theorist offers a fresh, interdisciplinary analysis of the politics of refusal, highlighting the promise of a feminist politics that does not simply withdraw from the status quo but also transforms it.
The Bacchae, Euripides’s fifth-century tragedy, famously depicts the wine god Dionysus and the women who follow him as indolent, drunken, mad. But Bonnie Honig sees the women differently. They reject work, not out of laziness, but because they have had enough of women’s routine obedience. Later they escape prison, leave the city of Thebes, explore alternative lifestyles, kill the king, and then return to claim the city. Their “arc of refusal,” Honig argues, can inspire a new feminist politics of refusal.
Refusal, the withdrawal from unjust political and economic systems, is a key theme in political philosophy. Its best-known literary avatar is Herman Melville’s Bartleby, whose response to every request is, “I prefer not to.” A feminist politics of refusal, by contrast, cannot simply decline to participate in the machinations of power. Honig argues that a feminist refusal aims at transformation and, ultimately, self-governance. Withdrawal is a first step, not the end game.
Rethinking the concepts of refusal in the work of Giorgio Agamben, Adriana Cavarero, and Saidiya Hartman, Honig places collective efforts toward self-governance at refusal’s core and, in doing so, invigorates discourse on civil and uncivil disobedience. She seeks new protagonists in film, art, and in historical and fictional figures including Sophocles’s Antigone, Ovid’s Procne, Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp, Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna, and Muhammad Ali. Rather than decline the corruptions of politics, these agents of refusal join the women of Thebes first in saying no and then in risking to undertake transformative action.
Figures of Resistance brings together the unpublished lectures and little-seen essays of internationally renowned theorist Teresa de Lauretis, spanning over twenty years of her finest work. Thirty years after the height of feminist theory, this collection invites us to reflect on the history of feminism and take a hard look at where it stands today. Selected essays include "Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation," "The Lure of the Mannish Lesbian," "Eccentric Subjects," "Habit Changes," "The Intractability of Desire," and the unpublished article "Figures of Resistance." An introduction from feminist film scholar Patricia White provides an overview of the development of de Lauretis's thought and of feminist theory over past decades.
In a tour de force of intellectual history, Siep Stuurman rediscovers the remarkable early Enlightenment figure François Poulain de la Barre. A dropout from theology studies at the Sorbonne, Poulain embraced the philosophy of Descartes, became convinced of the injustice and absurdity of the subjection of women, and assembled an entirely original social philosophy. His writings challenging male supremacy and advocating gender and racial equality are the most radically egalitarian texts to appear in Europe before the French Revolution.
In exploring Poulain's breakthrough, Stuurman sheds new light on the origins of the Enlightenment, the history of feminism, the emergence of rational Christianity, and the social and political implications of Descartes's philosophy. This groundbreaking work, the first comprehensive study of Poulain, brings to life the men and women of the Radical Enlightenment, who pioneered ideas about equality that would shape humankind to this day. Impeccably researched, cogently argued, and lucidly written, this is truly a masterpiece of scholarship.
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