LibGuides: Women & Gender Studies: Home

New & Coming Soon!

No Real Choice: How Culture and Politics Matter for Reproductive Autonomy by Katrina Kimport In the United States, the "right to choose" an abortion is the law of the land. But what if a woman continues her pregnancy because she didn't really have a choice? What if state laws, federal policies, stigma, and a host of other obstacles push that choice out of her reach?     Based on candid, in-depth interviews with women who considered but did not obtain an abortion, No Real Choice punctures the myth that American women have full autonomy over their reproductive choices. Focusing on the experiences of a predominantly Black and low-income group of women, sociologist Katrina Kimport finds that structural, cultural, and experiential factors can make choosing abortion impossible-especially for those who experience racism and class discrimination. From these conversations, we see the obstacles to "choice" these women face, such as bans on public insurance coverage of abortion and rampant antiabortion claims that abortion is harmful. Kimport's interviews reveal that even as activists fight to preserve Roe v. Wade, class and racial disparities have already curtailed many women's freedom of choice.    No Real Choice analyzes both the structural obstacles to abortion and the cultural ideologies that try to persuade women not to choose abortion. Told with care and sensitivity, No Real Choice gives voice to women whose experiences are often overlooked in debates on abortion, illustrating how real reproductive choice is denied, for whom, and at what cost. 
Call Number: E-Book
Publication Date: 2022
Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought by Bettina Judd How creativity makes its way through feeling--and what we can know and feel through the artistic work of Black women   Feeling is not feelin. As the poet, artist, and scholar Bettina Judd argues, feelin, in African American Vernacular English, is how Black women artists approach and produce knowledge as sensation: internal and complex, entangled with pleasure, pain, anger, and joy, and manifesting artistic production itself as the meaning of the work. Through interviews, close readings, and archival research, Judd draws on the fields of affect studies and Black studies to analyze the creative processes and contributions of Black women--from poet Lucille Clifton and musician Avery*Sunshine to visual artists Betye Saar, Joyce J. Scott, and Deana Lawson.   Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought makes a bold and vital intervention in critical theory's trend toward disembodying feeling as knowledge. Instead, Judd revitalizes current debates in Black studies about the concept of the human and about Black life by considering how discourses on emotion as they are explored by Black women artists offer alternatives to the concept of the human. Judd expands the notions of Black women's pleasure politics in Black feminist studies that include the erotic, the sexual, the painful, the joyful, the shameful, and the sensations and emotions that yet have no name. In its richly multidisciplinary approach, Feelin calls for the development of research methods that acknowledge creative and emotionally rigorous work as productive by incorporating visual art, narrative, and poetry.
Call Number: E-Book
Publication Date: 2023
Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice by Kelly Struthers Montford (Editor); Chloë Taylor (Editor) Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice explores the intersections of the carceral in projects of oppression, while at the same time providing intellectual, pragmatic, and undetermined paths toward abolition. Prison abolition is at once about the institution of the prison, and a broad, intersectional political project calling for the end of the social structured by settler colonialism, anti-black racism, and related oppressions. Beyond this, prison abolition is a constructive project that imagines and strives for a transformed world in which justice is not equated with punishment, and accountability is not equated with caging. Composed of sixteen chapters by an international team of scholars and activists, with a Foreword by Perry Zurn and an Afterword by Justin Piché, the book is divided into four themes: *　Prisons and Racism *　Prisons and Settler Colonialism *    Anti-Carceral Feminisms *　Multispecies Carceralities. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, activists, and scholars working in the areas of Critical Prison Studies, Critical Criminology, Native Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Black Studies, Critical Race Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Critical Animal Studies, with particular chapters being of interest to scholars and students in other fields, such as, Feminist Legal Studies, Animal Law, Critical Disability Studies, Queer Theory, and Transnational Feminisms.
Call Number: Print and E-Book Copies
Publication Date: 2022
Cultural Appropriation in Fashion and Entertainment by Yuniya Kawamura; Jung-Whan Marc de Jong Is it ever appropriate to "borrow" culturally inspired ideas? Who has ownership over intangible culture? What role does power inequality play? These questions are often at the center of heated public debates around cultural appropriation, with new controversies breaking seemingly every day. Cultural Appropriation in Fashion and Entertainment offers a sociological perspective on the debate, exploring appropriation of cultures embedded in race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and religion in entertainment as well as the clothing, textiles, jewelry, accessories, hairstyles, and tattoos we wear. Case studies are drawn from K-pop, Bollywood dance, J-pop, Bhangra music, Jamaican reggae, hip hop and EDM fashion to explore how, when, and why cultural borrowing or appreciation can become cultural appropriation. There's also discussion of subcultural territories that extend beyond geography, race and ethnicity, such as cosplay and LGBTQI+ communities. By providing a range of global perspectives on the adoption, adaptation, and application of both tangible and intangible cultural objects, Kawamura and de Jong help move the conversation beyond simply criticizing designers and creators to encourage nuanced discussion and raise awareness of diverse cultures in the creative industries.
Call Number: E-book
Publication Date: 2022
Indigenous Women and Street Gangs by Amber; Bev; Chantel; Jazmyne; Faith; Jorgina; Robert Henry Amber, Bev, Chantel, Jazmyne, Faith, and Jorgina are six Indigenous women previously involved in street gangs or street lifestyles. In Indigenous Women and Street Gangs they collaborate with Robert Henry (Métis) to share an emancipatory expression of their lives through photovoice. Each author shares a narrative that begins with her earliest memory and continues to the present. This is followed by a selection of photographs the woman took to show how she has changed with her experiences. Readers can expect difficult life stories imbued with hope and humour. Throughout, these women show us the meaning of survivance; a process of survival, resistance, resurgence, and growth."Don't ever fucking feel sorry for me. Why do you feel sorry for me? First of all, you shouldn't feel sorry for me; you should be happy for me because I am here. We're fucking human beings. We have been through shit, made some bad choices and mistakes. But like I said, in the end, if I want the help, I will ask." -Chantel"I don't think there is any such thing as bad; it's called healing, you know? It is starting to fix yourself inside your heart, you know? You just got to keep doing it, that's all I got to say."-Jazmyne
Call Number: HV 6439 C22 I63 2021
Publication Date: 2021
The Routledge Global History of Feminism by Bonnie G. Smith (Editor); Nova Robinson (Editor) Based on the scholarship of a global team of diverse authors, this wide-ranging handbook surveys the history and current status of pro-women thought and activism over millennia. The book traces the complex history of feminism across the globe, presenting its many identities, its heated debates, its racism, discussion of religious belief and values, commitment to social change, and the struggles of women around the world for gender justice. Authors approach past understandings and today's evolving sense of what feminism or womanism or gender justice are from multiple viewpoints. These perspectives are geographical to highlight commonalities and differences from region to region or nation to nation; they are also chronological suggesting change or continuity from the ancient world to our digital age. Across five parts, authors delve into topics such as colonialism, empire, the arts, labor activism, family, and displacement as the means to take the pulse of feminism from specific vantage points highlighting that there is no single feminist story but rather multiple portraits of a broad cast of activists and thinkers. Comprehensive and properly global, this is the ideal volume for students and scholars of women's and gender history, women's studies, social history, political movements and feminism.
Call Number: E-book
Publication Date: 2022
Transverse Disciplines: Queer-Feminist, Anti-Racist, and Decolonial Approaches to the University by edited by Simone Pfleger and Carrie Smith "For at least a decade, university foreign language programs have been in decline throughout the English-speaking world. As programs close or are merged into large multi-language departments, disciplines like German studies find themselves struggling to survive. Transverse Disciplines offers an overview of the current research on the humanities and the academy at large and proposes creative and courageous ideas for the university of the future. Using German studies as a case study, the book examines localized academic work in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States in order to model new ideas for invigorated thinking beyond disciplinary specificity, university communities, and entrenched academic practices. In contributions that are theoretical, speculative, experimental, and deeply personal, contributors suggest that German studies might do better to stop trying to protect existing national and disciplinary arrangements. Instead, the discipline should embrace feminist, queer, anti-racist, and decolonial academic practices and commitments, including community-based work, research-creation, and scholar activism. Interrogating the position of researchers, teachers, and administrators inside and outside academia, Transverse Disciplines takes stock of the increasingly tenuous position of the humanities and stakes a claim for the importance of imagining new disciplinary futures within the often restrictive and harmful structures of the academy."-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: E-book
Publication Date: 2022