In Tendings, Nathan Snaza brings contemporary feminist and queer popular culture’s resurging interest in esoteric practices like tarot and witchcraft into conversation with Black feminist and new materialist thought. Analyzing writing and performances by Maryse Condé, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Starhawk, Christina Sharpe, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and others, Snaza introduces his theory of tending as a concept that links ontology, attunement, care, and anticipatory action to explore how worlds persist through everyday acts of participation. In contrast to the universalizing presuppositions of the enlightenment, Snaza shows how certain feminist occult and esoteric practices constitute what he calls an endarkenment that embraces decolonial spiritual knowledge. Highlighting how endarkenment practices challenge universal presumptions and reject the racializing and colonialist mission of enlightenment modernity, Snaza demonstrates the ways esoterism affirms a pluriversal worldview that reimagines what it means to live in a more-than-human world.

In The Terrible We Cameron Awkward-Rich thinks with the bad feelings and mad habits of thought that persist in both transphobic discourse and trans cultural production. Observing that trans studies was founded on a split from and disavowal of madness, illness, and disability, Awkward-Rich argues for and models a trans criticism that works against this disavowal. By tracing the coproduction of the categories of disabled and transgender in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century and analyzing transmasculine literature and theory by Eli Clare, Elliott DeLine, Dylan Scholinski, and others, Awkward-Rich suggests that thinking with maladjustment might provide new perspectives on the impasses arising from the conflicted relationships among trans, feminist, and queer. In so doing, he demonstrates that rather than only impeding or confining trans life, thought, and creativity, forms of maladjustment have also been and will continue to be central to their development.

Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

Young feminists have grown up with a plethora of cultural choices and images­­in the distance from Gloria Steinem to Courtney Love, a chasm has been traversed and an entire history made. In Third Wave Agenda, feminists born between the years 1964 and 1973 discuss the things that matter now, both in looking back at the accomplishments and failures of the past and in planning for the challenges of the future. The women and men writing here are activists, teachers, cultural critics, artists, and journalists. They distinguish themselves from a group of young, conservative feminists, including Naomi Wolf and Katie Roiphe, who criticize second wave feminists and are regularly called on to speak for the "next generation" of feminism. In contrast, Third Wave Agenda seeks to complicate our understanding of feminism by not only embracing the second wave critique of beauty culture, sexual abuse, and power structures, but also emphasizing ways that desires and pleasures such as beauty and power can be used to enliven activist work, even while recognizing the importance of maintaining a critique of them. Combining research, theory, and social practice with an autobiographical style, these writers are hard at work creating a new feminism that draws on the submerged histories of other feminisms--black feminism, "womanism," and working-class feminism, among others. Some topics explored in Third Wave Agenda include feminism in popular music, interracial coalitions, and tensions between individual ambitions and collective action. "Yes, the volume's strong thinkers are eager to refine and reshape the feminism they were raised on-and that they're sometimes frustrated with-but they're determined to do so without disregarding its tremendous positive influence. These girls have theory and they know how to use it-while having a good time, of course." --Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture "It is clear from the analyses of popular culture and the personal narratives combined in this collection that feminism continues to find a place in the mainstream of American culture; it is not confined to the ivory tower or the esoteric debates of feminist theorists." --Composition Studies Contents Part I: What is the Third Wave? Third Wave Cultural Contexts Living in McJobdom: Third Wave Feminism and Class Inequity, Michelle Sidler We Learn America like a Script: Activism in the Third Wave; or, Enough Phantoms of Nothing, Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake Reading between the Waves: Feminist Historiography in a "Postfeminist" Moment, Deborah L. Siegel Hues Magazine: The Making of a Movement, Tali Edut with Dyann Logwood and Ophira Edut Part II: The Third Wave and Representation Part Animal, Part Machine: Self-Definition, Rollins Style, Leigh Shoemaker Roseanne: A "Killer Bitch" for Generation X, Jennifer Reed A Tale of Two Feminisms: Power and Victimization in Contemporary Feminist Debate, Carolyn Sorisio Part III: Third Wave Negotiations Deconstructing Me: On Being (Out) in the Academy, Carol Guess Feminism and a Discontent, Lidia Yukman Masculinity without Men: Women Reconciling Feminism and Male Identification, Ana Marie Cox, Freya Johnson, Annalee Newitz, and Jillian Sandel Part IV: Third Wave Activism and Youth Music Culture Duality and Redefinition: Young Feminism and the Alternative Music Community, Melissa Klein Doin' It for the Ladies­­Youth Feminism: Cultural Productions/Cultural Activism, Jen Smith Hip-Hop Matters: Rewriting the Sexual Politics of Rap Music, Jeff Niesel Contributors: Barry Baldridge; Ana Marie Cox; Ophira Edut; Tali Edut; Carol Guess; Freya Johnson; Melissa Klein; Dyann Logwood; Annalee Newitz; Jeff Niesel; Jennifer Reed; Jillian Sandel; Leigh Shoemaker; Michelle Sidler; Deborah L. Siegel; Jen Smith; Carolyn Sorisio; Lidia Yukman. Leslie Heywood is assistant professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where she teaches gender and cultural studies and twentieth-century literature. She is the author of several books, including Built to Win (2003), Pretty Good for a Girl (2000), and Bodymakers (1998). Jennifer Drake is assistant professor of English and women's studies at Indiana State University, where she teaches multicultural American literature, U.S. women writers, and creative writing.

In A Time of One’s Own Catherine Grant examines how contemporary feminist artists are turning to broad histories of feminism ranging from political organizing and artworks from the 1970s to queer art and activism in the 1990s. Exploring artworks from 2002 to 2017 by artists including Sharon Hayes, Mary Kelly, Allyson Mitchell, Deirdre Logue, Lubaina Himid, Pauline Boudry, and Renate Lorenz, Grant maps a revival of feminism that takes up the creative and political implications of forging feminist communities across time and space. Grant characterizes these artists’ engagement with feminism as a fannish, autodidactic, and collective form of learning from history. This fandom of feminism allows artists to build relationships with previous feminist ideas, artworks, and communities that reject a generational model and embrace aspects of feminism that might be seen as embarrassing, queer, or anachronistic. Accounting for the growing interest in feminist art, politics, and ideas across generations, Grant demonstrates that for many contemporary feminist artists, the present moment can only be understood through an embodied engagement with history in which feminist pasts are reinhabited and reimagined.

Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.

Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade