Download or read book Women in the Western written by Matheson Sue Matheson and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Westerns, women transmit complicated cultural coding about the nature of westward expansionism, heroism, family life, manliness and American femininity. As the genre changes and matures, depictions of women have transitioned from traditional to more modern roles. Frontier Feminine charts these significant shifts in the Western's transmission of gender values and expectations and aims to expand the critical arena in which Western film is situated by acknowledging the importance of women in this genre.
Download or read book Reading the Romance written by Janice A. Radway and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-11-18 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1984, Reading the Romance challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's engagement with the text. Radway's provocative approach combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychology. Asking readers themselves to explore their reading motives, habits, and rewards, she conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers whom she met through Dorothy Evans, a chain bookstore employee who has earned a reputation as an expert on romantic fiction. Evans defends her customers' choice of entertainment; reading romances, she tells Radway, is no more harmful than watching sports on television. "We read books so we won't cry" is the poignant explanation one woman offers for her reading habit. Indeed, Radway found that while the women she studied devote themselves to nurturing their families, these wives and mothers receive insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women find not only escape from the demanding and often tiresome routines of their lives but also a hero who supplies the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect. The heroines admired by Radway's group defy the expected stereotypes; they are strong, independent, and intelligent. That such characters often find themselves to be victims of male aggression and almost always resign themselves to accepting conventional roles in life has less to do, Radway argues, with the women readers' fantasies and choices than with their need to deal with a fear of masculine dominance. These romance readers resent not only the limited choices in their own lives but the patronizing atitude that men especially express toward their reading tastes. In fact, women read romances both to protest and to escape temporarily the narrowly defined role prescribed for them by a patriarchal culture. Paradoxically, the books that they read make conventional roles for women seem desirable. It is this complex relationship between culture, text, and woman reader that Radway urges feminists to address. Romance readers, she argues, should be encouraged to deliver their protests in the arena of actual social relations rather than to act them out in the solitude of the imagination. In a new introduction, Janice Radway places the book within the context of current scholarship and offers both an explanation and critique of the study's limitations.
Download or read book Circle of Women written by Kim Barnes and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This striking array of stories, essays, and poems reflects women’s experiences in the American West. Though the tales they tell reflect a variety of viewpoints, these writers share the struggle against the overwhelming isolation brought on by gender and the physical environment. Contributors include:Christina Adam, Gretel Ehrlich, Anita Endrezze, Tess Gallagher, Molly Gloss, Pam Houston, Teresa Jordan, Cyra McFadden, Deirdre McNamer, Melanie Rae Thon, Marilynne Robinson, Annick Smith, Terry Tempest Williams, and Claire Davis
Download or read book Re orienting Western Feminisms written by Chilla Bulbeck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The agenda of contemporary western feminism focuses on equal participation in work and education, reproductive rights, and sexual freedom. But what does feminism mean to the women of rural India who work someone else's fields, young Thai girls in the sex industry in Bangkok, or Filipino maids working for wealthy women in Hong Kong? In this 1998 book, Chilla Bulbeck presents a bold challenge to the hegemony of white, western feminism in this incisive and wide-ranging exploration of the lived experiences of 'women of colour'. She examines debates on human rights, family relationships, sexuality, and notions of the individual and community to show how their meanings and significance in different parts of the world contest the issues which preoccupy contemporary Anglophone feminists. She then turns the focus back on Anglo culture to illustrate how the theories and politics of western feminism are viewed by non-western women.
Download or read book Reading the West written by Michael Kowalewski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-02-23 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American West of myth and legend has always exerted a strong hold on the popular imagination, and the essays in Reading the West examine some of the basis of that fascination. Reading the West, first published in 1996, is a collection of critical essays by writers, independent scholars and critics on the literature of the American West in the last two centuries. It showcases new ways of reading and understanding western writing. Arguing for the importance of 'place' in literature, these essays explore what makes representative literary works 'western'. They also explore the multicultural and ecological dimensions of western writing. This volume helps enrich our understanding of a distinguished body of literary work which has sometimes been unjustly ignored. It deals not only with literature but with the changing conception of the West in the American imagination.
Download or read book Western Women s Lives written by Sandra Schackel and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of essays about 20th-century women living in the western U.S., showing that the image of the pioneer woman has been replaced not with another dominant one, but with many.
Download or read book The Invention of Women written by Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1997-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "woman question", this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western contruction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures. Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age.
Download or read book Images of Persephone written by Elizabeth T. Hayes and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though Persephone resisted fiercely, Hades seized her and carried her off, screaming in shrill voice. Her cries echoed from the mountain peaks to the depths of the sea, and her noble mother Demeter heard her. "This book's originality rests upon its intertextual approach to some of the most powerful archetypes of Western literature. . . . A sample study of women's responses to well-entrenched Western patriarchal values."--Marcelle Maistre Welch, Florida International University "An exemplary model for the intersection of the feminist/literary/archetypal approaches. . . . All the essays [are] informative, well-substantiated, and interesting."--Kathleen Ashley, University of Southern Maine Images of Persephone have appeared in the works of male and female writers for hundreds of years. Because the story of Persephone and Demeter is so moving, embodying archetypes of the "loving and terrible" mother and the rite of passage for women in patriarchal cultures, the myth resonates throughout Western consciousness. These essays explore the myth through critical analysis of literary texts, the authors of which include Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Atwood, Cixous, and Morrison. The essays converge at three important areas of study: the feminist/cultural, the archetypal, and the literary/textual. They explore women's relationships and experiences within patriarchal cultures that range from Homer's classical Greece to Cixous's postmodern France, from Chaucer's England to Alice Walker's contemporary America. Contents The Persephone Myth in Western Literature, by Elizabeth T. Hayes Chaucer's Use of the Proserpina Myth in "The Knight's Tale" and "The Merchant's Tale," by Marta Powell Harley "Like an Old Tale Still": Paulina, "Triple Hecate," and the Persephone Myth in The Winter's Tale by Janet S. Wolf Sexual and Artistic Politics under Louis XIV: The Persephone Myth in Quinault and Lully's Proserpine, by Michele Vialet and Buford Norman The Persephone Myth in Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales, by Laura Laffrado Through the Golden Gate: Madness and the Persephone Myth in Gertrude Atherton's "The Foghorn," by Melissa McFarland Pennell "Lost" Girls: D. H. Lawrence's Versions of Persephone, by Virginia Hyde Ghosts of Themselves: The Demeter Women in Beckett, by Mary A. Doll Dark Persephone and Margaret Atwood's Procedures for Underground, by Eileen Gregory From Persephone to Demeter: A Feminist Experience in Cixous's Fiction, by Martine Motard-Noar "Like seeing you buried": Persephone in The Bluest Eye, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and The Color Purple, by Elizabeth T. Hayes Elizabeth T. Hayes is assistant professor of English at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, and has published in The Southern Literary Journal.
Download or read book A Feminist Reading of China s Digital Public Sphere written by Altman Yuzhu Peng and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes an original contribution to the field of feminist cultural studies through an analysis of the gender-politics axis established in China’s digital public sphere. While a growing body of literature in contemporary feminist cultural studies has turned attention to the Chinese environment, scholarship remains limited in exploring the intersection of gender and politics in the context of Chinese digital cultures. This book addresses this timely topic. It will appeal to both scholars and students interested in exploring the complex, dynamic interplay between digital cultures, public expressions, as well as representations and perceptions of gender reflected in Chinese Internet users’ everyday communicative practice from a feminist media studies perspective.
Download or read book Feminism for the Americas written by Katherine M. Marino and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book chronicles the dawn of the global movement for women's rights in the first decades of the twentieth century. The founding mothers of this movement were not based primarily in the United States, however, or in Europe. Instead, Katherine M. Marino introduces readers to a cast of remarkable Latin American and Caribbean women whose deep friendships and intense rivalries forged global feminism out of an era of imperialism, racism, and fascism. Six dynamic activists form the heart of this story: from Brazil, Bertha Lutz; from Cuba, Ofelia Domingez Navarro; from Uruguay, Paulina Luisi; from Panama, Clara Gonzalez; from Chile, Marta Vergara; and from the United States, Doris Stevens. This Pan-American network drove a transnational movement that advocated women's suffrage, equal pay for equal work, maternity rights, and broader self-determination. Their painstaking efforts led to the enshrinement of women's rights in the United Nations Charter and the development of a framework for international human rights. But their work also revealed deep divides, with Latin American activists overcoming U.S. presumptions to feminist superiority. As Marino shows, these early fractures continue to influence divisions among today's activists along class, racial, and national lines. Marino's multinational and multilingual research yields a new narrative for the creation of global feminism. The leading women introduced here were forerunners in understanding the power relations at the heart of international affairs. Their drive to enshrine fundamental rights for women, children, and all people of the world stands as a testament to what can be accomplished when global thinking meets local action.
Download or read book Unbearable Weight written by Susan Bordo and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Unbearable Weight is brilliant. From an immensely knowledgeable feminist perspective, in engaging, jargonless (!) prose, Bordo analyzes a whole range of issues connected to the body—weight and weight loss, exercise, media images, movies, advertising, anorexia and bulimia, and much more—in a way that makes sense of our current social landscape—finally! This is a great book for anyone who wonders why women's magazines are always describing delicious food as 'sinful' and why there is a cake called Death by Chocolate. Loved it!"—Katha Pollitt, Nation columnist and author of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (2001)
Download or read book The Western Women s Reader written by Lillian Schlissel and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 2000 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking anthology compiles writing and photography from women who have called the American West home for the past three centuries. These women helped shaped the nation's history by leading protest movements and making their voices heard.
Download or read book Lillian s Legacy written by Carmen Peone and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lillian Gardner, a healer in the making using natural medicines, is certain she is the black sheep of the family. In an attempt to prove she is of value, she sets off into the wilds of Eastern Washington and Indian Territory with Doctor Mali Maddox, an elderly Welsh female physician whose husband has recently passed away. She hopes to marry her knowledge of herbal remedies learned from her mother and an Indian healer with new ways of western medicine. Will Lillian discover her true calling? Will she be respected as a female physician in training?
Download or read book America s West written by David M. Wrobel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-11 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American West has influenced important national developments throughout the twentieth century, not only in the cultural arena, but also in economic development, in political ideology and action, and in natural resource conservation and preservation. Using regionalism as a lens for illuminating these national trends, America's West: A History, 1890–1950 examines this region's history and explores its influence on the rest of America. Moving chronologically from the late nineteenth- to the mid-twentieth century, David M. Wrobel examines turn-of-the-century expansion, the Progressive Era, the 1920s, the Great Depression and the New Deal, World War II, and the early Cold War years. He emphasizes cultural and political history, showing how developments in the West frequently indicated the future direction of the country.
Download or read book Reading Deadwood written by David Lavery and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2006-07-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Apart from its brilliance as television, it's amazing what "Deadwood" gets away with. This acclaimed series from HBO, which premiered in 2004, is set in the teeming outlaw camp of 'Deadwood'. It has been described by "Variety" as 'a vulgar, gritty, at times downright nasty take on the Old West brimming with all the dark genius that series creator and sceenwriter extraordinaire David Milch has at his fingertips'. All this and more. The international cast of authoritative contributors assess "Deadwood's" many facets: its profane language, its characters, from Al Swearengen (who lives up to his name) and Calamity Jane, to B.B. Farnham and Mr. Wu, its place in the western genre, "Deadwood" and serial fiction, prostitution, the making of American civil society, "Deadwood's" Chinese, the opening credits, Reverend Smith and much more. Episode and character guides complete the book - the "Deadwood" companion for fans and students to swear by.
Download or read book The Reader s Companion to U S Women s History written by Wilma Pearl Mankiller and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1998 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains articles on fashion and style, household workers, images of women, jazz and blues, maternity homes, Native American women, Phillis Wheatley, homes, picture brides, single women, and teaching.
Download or read book Reading Arab Women s Autobiographies written by Nawar Al-Hassan Golley and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authors of autobiographies are always engaged in creating a "self" to present to their readers. This process of self-creation raises a number of intriguing questions: why and how does anyone choose to present herself or himself in an autobiography? Do women and men represent themselves in different ways and, if so, why? How do differences in culture affect the writing of autobiography in various parts of the world? This book tackles these questions through a close examination of Arab women's autobiographical writings. Nawar Al-Hassan Golley applies a variety of western critical theories, including Marxism, colonial discourse, feminism, and narrative theory, to the autobiographies of Huda Shaarawi, Fadwa Tuqan, Nawal el-Saadawi, and others to demonstrate what these critical methodologies can reveal about Arab women's writing. At the same time, she also interrogates these theories against the chosen texts to see how adequate or appropriate these models are for analyzing texts from other cultures. This two-fold investigation sheds important new light on how the writers or editors of Arab women's autobiographies have written, documented, presented, and organized their texts.
