Results by title

This book traces the development of feminist consciousness in Japan from 1871 to 1941. Taeko Shibahara uncovers some fascinating histories as she examines how middle-class women navigated between domestic and international influences to form ideologies and strategies for reform. They negotiated a humanitarian space as Japan expanded its nationalist, militarist, imperialist, and patriarchal power. 

 

Focusing on these women's political awakening and activism, Shibahara shows how Japanese feminists channeled and adapted ideas selected from international movements and from interactions with mainly American social activists. 

 

Japanese Women and the Transnational Feminist Movement before World War II also connects the development of international contacts with the particular contributions of Ichikawa Fusae to the suffrage movement, Ishimoto Shidzue to the birth control movement, and Gauntlett Tsune to the peace movement by touching on issues of poverty, prostitution, and temperance. The result provides a window through which to view the Japanese women's rights movement with a broader perspective.

This fascinating interdisciplinary collection of essays brings gender issues to the foreground in order to redress a profound imbalance in the historiography of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, and in the early years of the State of Israel. Although male discourse still dominates this field, some initial studies have begun to create an authentic and multifaceted Hebrew-Israeli voice by examining the activities and contributions of women. This research has led to a number of basic questions: What was the reality of life for women in Jewish society in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine (Eretz Israel), and in the early years of the State? What was the contribution of women to the renewal of Israeli society and culture? What is the place of gender perceptions in the study of the new local identity? The original articles in this anthology forge an innovative response to one or more of these questions, and reflecting the state of research in the field.

 

From the mid-1940s to the late 1950s, Jill Craigie wrote, produced, and directed the innovative films that stood at the center of her diverse career in British cinema, radio, television, and print journalism. Yvonne Tasker and Sadie Wearing analyze Craigie’s oeuvre while delving into the filmmaker’s use of the medium as the space for her distinctive feminist engagement with key cultural, social, and political questions.

Tasker and Wearing reconsider Craigie’s place and reputation in the history of British Cinema. Craigie created work that showed a strong critical voice and at the same time challenged contemporary modes of filmmaking with both documentary and drama. Tasker and Wearing examine her feminist and working-class influences and also emphasize the democratic impulse that drove Craigie to include her subjects’ participation, and her commitment to representing them on screen. Throughout, Tasker and Wearing analyze Craigie’s work against the backdrop of postwar concerns and preoccupations.

Distinctive and nuanced, Jill Craigie reconsiders the career of a groundbreaking woman director.

In the continuing estrangement between the West and the Muslim Middle East, human rights are becoming increasingly enmeshed with territorial concerns. Marked by both substance and rhetoric, they are situated at the heart of many foreign policy decisions and doctrines of social change, and often serve as a justification for aggressive actions.

In humanitarian and political debates about the topic, women and children are frequently considered first. Since the 1990s, human rights have become the most legitimate and legitimizing juridical and cultural claim made on a woman's behalf. But what are the consequences of equating women's rights with human rights? As the eleven essays in this volume show, the impact is often contradictory.

Bringing together some of the most respected scholars in the field, including Inderpal Grewal, Leela Fernandes, Leigh Gilmore, Susan Koshy, Patrice McDermott, and Sidonie Smith, Just Advocacy? sheds light on the often overlooked ways that women and children are further subjugated when political or humanitarian groups represent them solely as victims and portray the individuals that are helping them as paternal saviors.

Drawn from a variety of disciplinary perspectives in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, Just Advocacy? promises to advance a more nuanced and politically responsible understanding of human rights for both scholars and activists.