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Why are manifestations of sexuality and ambiguity currently provoking so much interest? This collection of essays uncovers many reasons as it examines ambiguously gendered bodies--bodies that defy ideologically produced gender boundaries. In the course of identifying the social institutions and assumptions that repress or articulate gender ambiguity, Body Guards demonstrates that this ambiguity has a long history and a wide cultural reach.
Altered Conditions provides a bold new intervention into existing theories of the human body and its meanings in a variety of cultural contexts. By exploring the history of medical narratives, especially medical case histories, as well as the exciting work that has been done in feminist and lesbian and gay studies, Julia Epstein poses a number of provocative questions about the relations between bodies, selves, and identities. Epstein focuses on a number of diagnoses that shed light on what is at stake when cultures regulate human bodies, including hermaphroditism, birth malformations, and AIDS. She pays special attention to the regulation of sexual minorities and women and looks carefully at the ways in which cultures attempt to define and control behaviors seen as threatening or subversive.
Best known as a novelist and social satirist whose work anticipated Jane Austen's, Frances Burney (1752-1840) has also been recognized as an important writer in the history of feminist literature. Julia Epstein now offers a new interpretation of Burney and her work: that Burney's anger at the economic and social conditions of women emerges in her writing in moments of barely contained violence, and that her representations of violence and hostility provide a key to Burney's literary power. The Iron Pen situates Burney's writings within the sociopolitical context of the late eighteenth century and proposes a new approach to the development of the novel of manners. In addition, Epstein present...
In this path-breaking history of manhood and masculinity, Angus McLaren examines how nineteenth- and twentieth-century western society created what we now take to be the traditional model of the heterosexual male. "Inherently interesting. . . . Exhibitionism, pornography, and deception all have their place here."—Library Journal "An appealing wealth of evidence of what trials can reveal about the boundaries of men's roles around the turn of the century."—Kirkus Reviews "It is difficult to imagine a better guide to the most notorious scandals of our great-grandparents' day."—Graham Rosenstock, Lambda Book Report
Shaping Losses explores how traumatic loss affects identity and how those who are shaped by loss give shape, in turn, to the empty place where something--relationships, family, culture--was and is no longer. Taking the example of the decimation of European Jewry during the Nazi era, Shaping Losses confronts the problem of transforming trauma into cultural memory. This eloquent volume examines how memoirs, films, photographs, art, and literature, as well as family conversations and personal remembrances, embody the impulse to preserve what is destroyed. The contributors -- all distinguished women scholars, most of them survivors or daughters of survivors--examine classic memorializations such...
Examines the feminine, the domestic, the local, collective, sentimental and novelistic in the Romantic literary canon. This book questions romanticism, suppression of the feminine, the material, and the collective, and its opposition to readings centering on these concerns.
A fun book about genre fiction and the ways women have appropriated the hard-boiled tradition of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Mike Hammer and the writings of Hammet, Chandler, Spillane, and others. A story of texts, movies, TV shows, and publishing, it goes quite beyond textual analysis. A bit like Jan Radway's and Tania Modleski's analysis of culture in the making (and we'll probably have blurbs from both on the cover of our book).
Whether they graphically depict an individual's or a community's beliefs, express the defiance of authority, or brand marginalized groups, tattoos are a means of interpersonal communication that dates back thousands of years. Evidence of the tattoo's place in today's popular culture is all around--in advertisements, on the stereotypical outlaw character in films and television, in supermarket machines that dispense children's wash-away tattoos, and even in the production of a tattooed Barbie doll. This book explores the tattoo's role, primarily as an emblem of resistance and marginality, in recent literature, film, and television. The association of tattoos with victims of the Holocaust, slaves, and colonized peoples; with gangs, inmates, and other marginalized groups; and the connection of the tattoo narrative to desire and violence are discussed at length.
"... innovative and important thinking about the various relations between feminist theory, queer theory, and lesbian theory, as well as the possibility that liberation can be mutual rather than mutually exclusive." -- Lambda Book Report "Challenging and interesting." -- Just Out A collection of fifteen interdisciplinary essays examining the history, current condition, and evolving shape of lesbian alliances with U.S. feminists. Contributors explore the social and aesthetic significance of the terms "lesbian" and "feminist" with the interest of reforming and strengthening them.
"... best-of-all-biographies of Abigail Adams... " -- American Historical Review "Portia, a new study of Abigail Adams -- modern feminism's favorite Founding Mother -- is a refreshing change of pace." -- San Francisco Chronicle "... very well done, highly perceptive, and full of fresh ideas." -- Wilson Library Bulletin "... Adams's strength, courage, and wit (as well as her bouts of depression and gender conservatism) emerge more fully than they have in any previous work.... a well-rounded portrait of a remarkable figure."Â -- Choice "In this important and fascinating biography, Edith Gelles not only restores Abigail Adams to her rightful place at the center of her own story, she challenges the creaky conventions of 'traditional' male-defined biography." -- Susan Faludi, author of Backlash Portia, the first woman-centered biography of Abigail Adams, details the issues, events, and relationships of Adams's life. It is as much a social and cultural history of Adams's time as it is her life story.