From Jennifer Baumgardner, one of the leading voices of Third Wave feminism, comes this provocative, thoughtful, often funny collection of essays and... interviews that offers a state of the union on contemporary feminist issues.F 'em! is a mix of old and new essays by Baumgardner, ranging in tone from laugh-out-loud confessional to sobering analysis. She investigates topics as varied as purity balls, sexuality, motherhood, and shared breastfeeding; rape, reproductive rights, and the future of feminism. The essays in F 'em! are rounded out by candid one-on-one interviews with leading feminists who have influenced Baumgardner's perspectives—including Riot Grrrls' Kathleen Hanna, Native American activist Winona LaDuke, transgender activist Julia Serano, and artists like Ani DiFranco, Björk, and Amy Ray. At turns intimate, fierce, philosophical, and funny, they are an intimate window into the minds and hearts of Third Wave pioneers. Holding it all together is Baumgardner's insightful thinking about what it means to be a feminist today, as she answers frequently-asked questions: What does it mean to be a woman today? Do we even need feminism anymore?Thought-provoking and cutting-edge, F 'em! provides a clearer and more complete understanding of feminism—its past, its present, and its future.

When it was originally published in 1991, Feminine Endings was immediately controversial for its unprecedented intermingling of cultural criticism and... musical studies, an approach that came to be called "the New Musicology." Through case studies of works ranging from the canonical-operas by Monteverdi and Bizet-to the contemporary-the performance art of Diamanda Galás and popular songs by Madonna-Susan McClary focuses on the ways music produces images of gender, desire, pleasure, and the body, and explores the gender-based metaphors that circulate in discourse about music. The now classic work features a new introduction that discusses the critical reception it received and the debates it has inspired. "A major book . . . [McClary's] achievement borders on the miraculous." Village Voice "McClary writes with a racy, vigorous, and consistently entertaining style. . . . What she has to say specifically about the music and the text is sharp, accurate, and telling; she hears what takes place musically with unusual sensitivity." New York Review of Books Susan McClary, professor of musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, specializes in the cultural criticism of music, both the European canon and contemporary popular genres. Her most recent book is Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form (2000).

The book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world.Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely describe the... earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since. A national bestseller, with over 1 million copies sold.

As a psychoanalytic pioneer, Karen Horney questioned some of Freud's formulations of psychosexual development, particularly in relation to women.In this... collection of papers, many previously unavailable in English, she brings to the subject of femininity her acute clinical observations and a rigorous testing of both her own hypotheses and those formulated by Freud. The topics she discusses include frigidity, the problem of the monogamous ideal, maternal conflicts, the distrust between the sexes, feminine masochism, and the neurotic need for love. Throughout the book, Dr. Horney draws on her experience as a therapist and at the same time consistently evaluates psychological factors within the context of cultural forces.

Jacques Lacan is arguably the most controversial psychoanalyst of our time.Psychoanalysis is certainly one of the most contested areas of debate within... feminism. This book presents articles on feminine sexuality by Lacan and members of the école freudienne, the school of psychoanalysis that Lacan directed in Paris from 1964 to 1980. The question of feminine sexuality has divided the psychoanalytic movement since the 1920s. Despite their opposition to each other, contemporary psychoanalysis and feminism both reject Freud's phallocentrism. This book forcefully reasserts the importance of the castration complex in Freud's work and of the phallus in the work of Lacan, offering them not as a reflection of a theory based on male supremacy and privilege but as the terms through which any such privilege is exposed as a fraud. Lacan's rereading of Freud is seen here to reveal, in a way that no other account has been able to do, the arbitrary and fictional nature of both male and female sexual identity and, specifically, the fantasy behind the category "woman" as the dominant fetish of our culture. These texts reveal that women constantly exceed the barriers of the definition to which they are confined.

Bartky draws on the experience of daily life to unmask the many disguises by which intimations of inferiority are visited upon women. She critiques... both the male bias of current theory and the debilitating dominion held by notions of "proper femininity" over women and their bodies in patriarchal culture.

“In her new chic outfit, she looks like anything but a stewardess working. But work she does. Hard, too. And you hardly know it.” So read the text... of a 1969 newspaper advertisement for Delta Airlines featuring a picture of a brightly smiling blond stewardess striding confidently down the aisle of an airplane cabin to deliver a meal.From the moment the first stewardesses took flight in 1930, flight attendants became glamorous icons of femininity. For decades, airlines hired only young, attractive, unmarried white women. They marketed passenger service aloft as an essentially feminine exercise in exuding charm, looking fabulous, and providing comfort. The actual work that flight attendants did—ensuring passenger safety, assuaging fears, serving food and drinks, all while conforming to airlines’ strict rules about appearance—was supposed to appear effortless; the better that stewardesses performed by airline standards, the more hidden were their skills and labor. Yet today flight attendants are acknowledged safety experts; they have their own unions. Gone are the no-marriage rules, the mandates to retire by thirty-two. In Femininity in Flight, Kathleen M. Barry tells the history of flight attendants, tracing the evolution of their glamorized image as ideal women and their activism as trade unionists and feminists.Barry argues that largely because their glamour obscured their labor, flight attendants unionized in the late 1940s and 1950s to demand recognition and respect as workers and self-styled professionals. In the 1960s and 1970s, flight attendants were one of the first groups to take advantage of new laws prohibiting sex discrimination. Their challenges to airlines’ restrictive employment policies and exploitive marketing practices (involving skimpy uniforms and provocative slogans such as “fly me”) made them high-profile critics of the cultural mystification and economic devaluing of “women’s work.” Barry combines attention to the political economy and technology of the airline industry with perceptive readings of popular culture, newspapers, industry publications, and first-person accounts. In so doing, she provides a potent mix of social and cultural history and a major contribution to the history of women’s work and working women’s activism.

The sheer number of publications on Feminism make it difficult for students who approach the subject for the first time to gain a sense of what the main... issues and interpretations are. This book addresses this by offering students an overview of feminism and its history across several countries and time periods, along with an annotated guide to direct them in their further reading. Feminism by June Hannam provides comprehensive coverage right from how feminists began to write the history of their movement as early as the late nineteenth century to the impact feminism has had on higher education. The text also looks in depth at propaganda and the cult of the heroine in suffrage campaigning and how ‘first wave’ feminists constructed their own history which then affected future generations of historians, and activists.

Feminism is arguably the most significant social movement of the last century and it is far from over. By highlighting the themes that form the three... waves, taking powerful examples from feminist campaigns, and tackling timely issues such as genocide and war rape, Scholz invites us to join in with the lively debates and contemporary challenges of feminism.

Are feminists really angry, unreasoning, man-haters who argue only from an emotional perspective as some claim? Does the incessant repetition of this... trope make anti-feminism and misogyny a routine element in everyday speech? And does this repetition work towards delegitimizing feminist arguments and/or undermining feminist politics? How do skilled feminist writers deploy affect to advance feminist ideas? In Feminism and Affect at the Scene of Argument, Barbara Tomlinson addresses these questions, providing a lucid examination of the role of affect in feminist and antifeminist academic arguments. Using case studies from controversies in socio-legal studies, musicology, and science studies, among other disciplines, Tomlinson examines the rhetorics of anger, contempt, betrayal, intensification, and ridicule. She employs a set of critical toolsofeminist "socio-forensic" discursive analysisothat will prove indispensible for understanding and countering tropes like that of the angry feminist. Moreover, these tools will advance feminism, which, she argues, is generated in and by arguments with allies and antagonists. In an era of debates that generate more heat than light, Feminism and Affect at the Scene of Argument offers a timely provocation for transforming the terms of reading and writing in scholarship and civic life.

Some have raised the question: Is it possible, at the same time, to be a Christian and a feminist? Japinga asks the question a bit differently: Is it... possible not to be? Like the other titles in the Essential Guides series, the purpose of this book is simple: to introduce college and seminary students to the basic questions and issues that arise from a feminist interpretation of Christianity. The author explores the central ideas of Christian feminism, including its critique of patriarchy in Christianity and its recovery of the presence, actions, and ideas of women. What has been troublesome in Christianity for feminists and why? How have Christian feminists dealt with these issues? What resources are there in Christianity for the empowering and encouragement of women? Beginning with an examination of women and the Bible, the book explores biblical texts which define women negatively as well as those which emphasize women's strengths and ability, and then outlines the various feminist approaches to the interpretation of Scripture. It then moves to an overview of women in the history of Christianity and, specifically, of religion in America, presenting both prevailing attitudes about women and the (usually unheard) stories of women. After surveying the main questions a feminist method brings to the study of theology, Japinga then explores certain theological questions--How do we speak of God? Who is Christ? What does it mean to be human? Written from a moderate feminist perspective, this book provides a broad overview of feminist approaches to theological disciplines.  It emphasizes consensual scholarship rather than points of controversy.  It acquaints students with feminist analysis by way of the central themes common to feminist approaches to several disciplines and introduces readers to this material in ways that lessen the possibility that they will be threatened, intimidated, or angered by it.  While the book offers professors an affordable and accessible textbook choice, it is also accessible for lay study groups in congregations.

Feminism and Composition collects the most influential and frequently cited articles published in feminist composition over the last 25 years. A... valuable reference, the volume surveys the history of feminist pedagogy, theory, and research, as well as the politics of the profession.

This book brings together carefully selected essays on feminism and film with a view to tracing major developments in theory, criticism, and practices... from 1973 to the present. It illuminates the powerful, if controversial, role feminist research has played in the emergence of Film Studies as a discipline during these years. Kaplan reprints pioneering essays that traced the ensuing debates and challenges to key theories that shaped the field. She details the Euro-American contexts within which feminist film theories and practices emerged and traces the changing influences of French, German, and American intellectual movements on feminist film research. After a wide-ranging introduction that sets the selection of essays in context, readers will find examples of social-role, psychoanalytic, structuralist, post-structuralist, gay and lesbian, postmodern, and postcolonial feminist film criticism, prefaced by introductory notes.

This stimulating volume offers a cross-disciplinary selection of recent articles on feminist history. Dismissing essentialist accounts of a universal... female identity, the contributors examine how ideas about sexual difference are shaped by specific socio-historical circumstances. How, for example, do issues such as race, class, gender, and sexuality impact on the experience of "women"? How are such categories defined in widely disparate cultures and time periods? Refreshingly open to non-western, as well as western, perspectives, Feminism and History addresses subjects from the experience of women in Colonial Asia to the ideology of sexual difference in Nazi Germany. Timely, provocative, and influential, these essays raise intriguing questions about the future direction of women's history.