"The number of women who have ruled as queens or empresses, or governed as presidents or prime ministers, remains but a small subset of the total of those who have attained ultimate political power. But this elite group of women have reached the hights of political and ceremonial leadership, including some of the most charismatic figures." -- BOOK JACKET.

"Following the great success of Pioneers of the Possible, Angella Nazarian returns with an extraordinary sequel, Visionary Women. Featuring a foreword by Melanne Verveer, the director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, this new title highlights twenty more innovative and forward-thinking women. From Malala Yousafzai as the youngest Nobel Prize laureate and Carmen Amaya beginning her remarkable dance career at age four to swimmer Diana Nyad breaking a world record at sixty-four and Doris Lessing still penning stories into her nineties, this inspiring volume will compel readers to reconnect with their own dreams and envision new goals to challenge themselves at any stage of life"--Publisher's description.

"Radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin was a caricature of the manhater in the popular imagination as well as a polarizing figure within the women's movement, infamous for her antipornography stance in the 1970s and 1980s. Now, more than a decade after her death, this timely collection of her writing showcases the prescience of her analyses: of the genocidal character of sexual violence; of the devastating nihilism of white male supremacy, and of the toll it takes--especially on those who resist. This rediscovery of Dworkin's work will serve as a flashpoint for crucial feminist conversations today. Why is the cost of speaking out against abuse and inequality still so high? Why is the problematic work of brilliant women forced into oblivion, when that of flawed great men is embraced? What can we learn from the bitter divisions and discarded ideas of previous generations?"--Page 4 of cover.

The role, status, and treatment of women is one of the major issues confronting the military today. This volume provides a range of perspectives on the magnitude of concerns, the sources of problems, how issues might best be addressed, and the future for women in the armed services. It is based on a special issue of the journal Gender Issues , supplemented with additional contributions from leading scholars. Historical and theoretical perspectives are provided by Lorry M. Fenner and Jean Bethke Elshtain. Fenner focuses on the role of women in the military since 1940, and argues for broader inclusion of women as well as other groups that have previously been restricted from full participation. Elshtain analyzes the extraordinary ability of war to draw both women and men into civic life, and observes how it calls forth and establishes a sense of particular identity for both men and women. Critical views are provided by other scholars. Laura L. Miller examines the feminist movement's insistence on full participation in combat units. Former Army chaplain Marie deYoung provides qualitative and quantitative data on military readiness and unit cohesion in mixed gender units. Leading military scholars (Mady W. Segal, David R. Segal, Jerald G. Bachman, Peter Freedman-Doan, and Patrick M. O'Malley) review national surveys comparing male and female high school seniors' responses to surveys conducted on questions about their propensity to enlist. Male-female differences are also addressed by Judith Hicks Steihm, who looks at the opinions each group has about the capabilities and performance of women. She finds differences by rank on questions as to how hard female soldiers work as compared to male soldiers and whether women are ready for combat duty. Historically, the military has provided minorities equal opportunity. Brenda L. Moore and Schulyler C. Webb examine whether or not this is still perceived to be the case in today's Navy. They focus on different perceptions by women and men, and by African American women in particular. Finally, William O'Neill examines whether the post-cold war downsized military will find women soldiers more or less important. Drawing upon social science research, historical data, and contemporary opinion surveys, Women in the Military is a cutting-edge assessment of a major gender issue in the United States. It will be valuable to researchers in women's studies, as well as those teaching courses in sociology, history, and military studies. Rita James Simon is University Professor in the School of Public Affairs and the Washington College of Law at American University. She is the editor of Gender Issues and author of The American Jury, the Insanity Defense: A Critical Assessment of Law and Policy in the Post-Hinkley Era (with David Aaronson), Adoption, Race and Identity (with Howard Alstein), In the Golden Land: A Century of Russian and Soviet Jewish Immigration, Social Science Data and Supreme Court Decisions (with Rosemary Erickson), and Abortion: Statutes, Policies, and Public Attitudes the World Over.

"Virginia Woolf wrote that in order to be a writer, a woman needs a room of one's own. Now, in [this book], acclaimed author Deborah Levy concludes her ground-breaking trilogy of living autobiographies with an exhilarating, boldly intimate meditation on home and the specters that haunt it. In this vibrant memoir, Levy employs her characteristic indelible writing, sharp wit, and acute insights to craft a searing examination of womanhood and ownership. Her inventory of possessions, real and imagined, pushes readers to question our cultural understanding of belonging and belongings and to consider the value of a woman's intellectual and personal life. Blending personal history, gender politics, philosophy, and literary theory, [this book] is a brilliant, compulsively readable narrative" --

Inalienable Possessions tests anthropology's traditional assumptions about kinship, economics, power, and gender in an exciting challenge to accepted theories of reciprocity and marriage exchange. Focusing on Oceania societies from Polynesia to Papua New Guinea and including Australian Aborigine groups, Annette Weiner investigates the category of possessions that must not be given or, if they are circulated, must return finally to the giver. Reciprocity, she says, is only the superficial aspect of exchange, which overlays much more politically powerful strategies of "keeping-while-giving." The idea of keeping-while-giving places women at the heart of the political process, however much that process may vary in different societies, for women possess a wealth of their own that gives them power. Power is intimately involved in cultural reproduction, and Weiner describes the location of power in each society, showing how the degree of control over the production and distribution of cloth wealth coincides with women's rank and the development of hierarchy in the community. Other inalienable possessions, whether material objects, landed property, ancestral myths, or sacred knowledge, bestow social identity and rank as well. Calling attention to their presence in Western history, Weiner points out that her formulations are not limited to Oceania. The paradox of keeping-while-giving is a concept certain to influence future developments in ethnography and the theoretical study of gender and exchange.

While women's experience encompasses all that is human, while women have participated in history and the making of history through all time, until very recently they have been largely excluded from the writing of that history. Most of what we know of the past experience of women comes to us largely through the distorting lens of men's reflections and observations. In the now classic The Female Experience, Gerda Lerner describes history as seen by women, as colored by their values. What she creates is fascinating narrative of the lives and history of ordinary women, a book that provides a new framework for the study of their past experience. If women's history is now a healthy and ever-growing discipline, we have in a large part this award-winning author to thank. Avoiding the traditional chronological periods by which U.S. history is most often studied, Lerner groups her sources--many taken from manuscripts previously unknown, and others only available in research libraries--according to the lifecycle of women, their roles in a male-defined society, in the workplace, in politics, and finally in the contemporary world where feminism is creating an altogether new consciousness. From "runaway wives" in eighteenth-century America, through an anonymous account of a mother's death during childbirth, to appeals in our century for freedom of sexual preference, The Female Experience recounts history from the woman's point of view, and goes a long way toward reconstructing a female past and analyzing it with appropriate concepts. In the general introduction and chapter essays Lerner offers commentary that not only knits these disparate primary sources together, but also interprets them in an innovative way. Now brought up to date with a new preface, The Female Experience is a book that pulses with life, a stunning testament not only to the long-ignored role of women in society, but a pioneering effort to reinvent the way we look at history.

How secularism has been used to justify the subordination of women. Joan Wallach Scott's acclaimed and controversial writings have been foundational for the field of gender history. With Sex and Secularism, Scott challenges one of the central claims of the “clash of civilizations” polemic - the false notion that secularism is a guarantee of gender equality. Drawing on a wealth of scholarship by second-wave feminists and historians of religion, race, and colonialism, Scott shows that the gender equality invoked today as a fundamental and enduring principle was not originally associated with the term “secularism” when it first entered the lexicon in the nineteenth century. In fact, the inequality of the sexes was fundamental to the articulation of the separation of church and state that inaugurated Western modernity. Scott points out that Western nation-states imposed a new order of women's subordination, assigning them to a feminized familial sphere meant to complement the rational masculine realms of politics and economics. It was not until the question of Islam arose in the late twentieth century that gender equality became a primary feature of the discourse of secularism. Challenging the assertion that secularism has always been synonymous with equality between the sexes, Sex and Secularism reveals how this idea has been used to justify claims of white, Western, and Christian racial and religious superiority and has served to distract our attention from a persistent set of difficulties related to gender difference - ones shared by Western and non-Western cultures alike.

The question of difference - between women and men and among women - is at the heart of feminist theory and the history of feminism. Feminists have long debated the meanings of sexual difference: is it an underlying truth of nature or the result of changing social belief? Are women the same as or different from men? Feminism and History argues that sexual difference, indeed that all forms of social differentiation, cannot be understood apart from history. It brings together the best critical articles available to analyze the ways in which differences among women (along the lines of class, ethnicity, race, and sexuality) and between women and men have been produced. The articles range across many countries and time periods (from the Middle Ages to the present) and they include analyses of western and non-western experiences. There are discussions of race in the United States and in colonial contexts. A variety of theoretical approaches to the question of difference is included; but in all cases, difference is the focus of the historian's analysis.

Lauded for its contribution to the theory and conceptualization of the field of women's history and for its sensitivity to the differences of class, ethnicity, race, and culture among women, The Majority Finds Its Past became a classic volume in wo

A finalist for the 2017 George Freedley Memorial Award "A compelling, absolutely unputdownable story . . . And, in case you're wondering, yes, the book is funny. In places, very funny. A remarkable story, magnificently told." -- Booklist In this richly reported, scene-driven narrative, Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv from its unlikely beginnings in McCarthy-era Chicago. We witness the chance meeting between Mike Nichols and Elaine May, hang out at the after-hours bar where Dan Aykroyd hosted friends like John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner, and go behind the scenes of cultural landmarks from The Graduate to The Colbert Report . Along the way, we befriend pioneers such as Harold Ramis, Chevy Chase, Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Alan Arkin, Tina Fey, Judd Apatow, and many others. Wasson shows why improv deserves to be considered the great American art form of the last half century. " One of the most important stories in American popular culture . . . Wasson may be the first author to explain [improv's] entire history . . . For that reason alone, it's a valuable book . " -- New York Times Book Review "A compelling history . . . It holds the element of surprise--true to the spirit of its subject." -- Entertainment Weekly

It's the summer of 1822 and Edinburgh is abuzz with rumours of King George IV's impending visit. In botanical circles, however, a different kind of excitement has gripped the city. In the newly-installed Botanic Garden, the Agave Americana plant looks set to flower, an event that only occurs once every few decades. When newly widowed Elizabeth arrives in Edinburgh to live with her late husband's aunt Clementina, she's determined to put her unhappy past in London behind her. As she settles into her new home, she becomes fascinated by the beautiful Botanic Garden which borders the grand house and offers her services as an artist to record the rare plant's impending bloom. In this pursuit, she meets Belle Brodie, a vivacious young woman with a passion for botany and the lucrative, dark art of perfume creation. Belle is determined to keep both her real identity and the reason for her interest the Garden secret from her new friend. But as Elizabeth and Belle are about to discover, secrets don't last long in this Enlightenment city.

On August 10, 1938, Lucy S. Dawidowicz set sail from New York to Vilna, Poland, to study at the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO). For a year, while she studied the Jewish past, she immersed herself in Vilna's present, getting to know the Jewish rich and poor, witnessing Poland's brutal anti-Semitism. Then she was forced to flee Vilna, just a week before German tanks and troops rumbled into Poland and eventually destroyed this citadel of East European Jewish culture forever. After the war Lucy Dawidowicz again sailed to Europe -- this time to work with Jewish survivors and to identify the remnants of the precious YIVO library of Vilna.

Inventing Herself is an account of women, from the 18th century to the present, who lived life on a grand scale. Elaine Showalter uncovers the lives of feminist intellectuals, focusing on figures ranging from Mary Wollstoncraft to Camille Paglia, her sources as diverse as A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Scream 2. She also scrutinizes the fragmenting feminism of the nineties - neo-conservative backlash, Paglia whiplash, Wolfian eyelash - and addresses the dreams and aspirations of women who do not see themselves as part of the feminist movement. In conclusion, she shows how the intellectual standard for modern feminists has been compromised by the spectre of celebrity.

In this engrossing biography, acclaimed novelist Muriel Spark recreates Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's turbulent life and career and persuasively defends the enigmatic writer's place among the giants of literary history.

Larry Kramer has been described by Susan Sontag as "one of America's most valuable troublemakers." As Frank Rich writes in his Foreword to this new collection of writings for the screen and stage, "his plays are almost journalistic in their observation of the fine-grained documentary details of life ... that may well prove timeless." The title work, the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Women in Love, is a movie "as sensuous as anything you've probably ever seen on film" (The New York Times). The screenplay is accompanied by Kramer's reflections on the history of the production, sure to be of interest to any student of film. This volume also includes several early plays, Sissies' Scrapbook, A Minor Dark Age, and the political farce Just Say No, illuminating the development of one of our most important literary figures. "Since his screenplay for Women in Love, Kramer has been a prophet of psychic health and catastrophe among us." -- from The American Academy of Arts and Letters citation

Where does perversion begin? Who is perverse? Ever since the word first appeared in the Middle Ages, anyone who delights in evil and in the destruction of the self or others has been described as 'perverse'. But while the experience of perversion is universal, every era has seen it and dealt with it in its own way. The history of perversion in the West is told here through a study of great emblematic figures of the perverse - Gilles de Rais, the mystical saints and the flagellants in the middle ages, the Marquis de Sade in the eighteenth century, the masturbating child, the male homosexual and the hysterical woman nineteenth century, Nazism in the twentieth century, and the complementary figures of the paedophile and the terrorist in the twenty-first. The perverse are rarely talked about and when they are it is usually only to be condemned. They are commonly viewed as monstrous and cruel, as something alien to the very nature of being human. And yet, perversion can also attest to creativity and self-transcendence, to the refusal of individuals to submit to the rules and prohibitions that govern human life. Perversion fascinates us precisely because it can be both abject and sublime. Whether they are sublime because they turn to art or mysticism, or abject because they surrender to their murderous impulses, the perverse are part of us because they exhibit something that we always conceal: our own negativity and our dark side. -- Back cover.

All human beings are practicing historians," writes Gerda Lerner. "We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing." It is as important as breathing, too. History shapes our self-definition and our relationship to community; it locates us in time and place and helps to give meaning to our lives. History can be the vital thread that holds a nation together, as demonstrated most strikingly in the case of Jewish history. Conversely, for women, who have lived in a world in which they apparently had no history, its absence can be devastating. In Why History Matters, Lerner brings together her thinking and research of the last sixteen years, combining personal reminiscences with innovative theory that illuminate the importance of history and the vital role women have played in it.Why History Matters contains some of the most significant thinking and writing on history that Lerner has done in her entire career--a summation of her life and work. The chapters are divided into three sections, each widely different from the others, each revelatory of Lerner as a woman and a feminist. We read first of Lerner's coming to consciousness as a Jewish woman. There are moving accounts of her early life as a refugee in America, her return to Austria fifty years after fleeing the Nazis (to discover a nation remarkable both for the absence of Jews and for the anti-Semitism just below the surface), her slow assimilation into American life, and her decision to be a historian. If the first section is personal, the second focuses on more professional concerns. Included here is a fascinating essay on nonviolent resistance, tracing the idea from the Quakers (such as Mary Dyer), to abolitionists such as Theodore Dwight Weld (the "most mobbed man" in America), to Thoreau's essay Civil Disobedience, then across the sea to Tolstoy and Gandhi, before finally returning to America during the civil rights movement of the 1950s. There are insightful essays on "American Values" and on the tremendous advances women have made in the twentieth century, as well as Lerner's presidential address to the Organization of American Historians, which outlines the contributions of women to the field of history and the growing importance of women as a subject of history. The highlight of the final section of the book is Lerner's bold and innovative look at the issues of class and race as they relate to women, an essay that distills her thinking on these difficult subjects and offers a coherent conceptual framework that will prove of lasting interest to historians and intellectuals.A major figure in women's studies and long-term activist for women's issues, a founding member of NOW and a past president of the Organization of American Historians, Gerda Lerner is a pioneer in the field of Women's History and one of its leading practitioners. Why History Matters is the summation of the work and thinking of this distinguished historian.

"A leading anthropologist and historian places current controversies about sex and gender in the long history of the male/female relationship"--