After The Rise And Stall Of American Feminism

It is more than fifty years since Betty Friedan diagnosed malaise among suburban housewives and the National Organization of Women was founded. Across the decades, the feminist movement brought about significant progress on workplace discrimination, reproductive rights, and sexual assault. Yet, the proverbial million-dollar question remains: why is there still so much to be done? With this book, Lynn S. Chancer takes stock of the American feminist movement and engages with a new burst of feminist activism. She articulates four common causes—advancing political and economic equality, allowing intimate and sexual freedom, ending violence against women, and expanding the cultural representation of women—considering each in turn to assess what has been gained (or not). It is around these shared concerns, Chancer argues, that we can continue to build a vibrant and expansive feminist movement. After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism takes the long view of the successes and shortcomings of feminism(s). Chancer articulates a broad agenda developed through advancing intersectional concerns about class, race, and sexuality. She advocates ways to reduce the divisiveness that too frequently emphasizes points of disagreement over shared aims. And she offers a vision of individual and social life that does not separate the "personal" from the "political." Ultimately, this book is about not only redressing problems, but also reasserting a future for feminism and its enduring ability to change the world.

For over a century and in scores of countries, patriarchal presumptions and practices have been challenged by women and their male allies. “Sexual harassment” has entered common parlance; police departments are equipped with rape kits; more than half of the national legislators in Bolivia and Rwanda are women; and a woman candidate won the plurality of the popular votes in the 2016 United States presidential election. But have we really reached equality and overthrown a patriarchal point of view? The Big Push exposes how patriarchal ideas and relationships continue to be modernized to this day. Through contemporary cases and reports, renowned political scientist Cynthia Enloe exposes the workings of everyday patriarchy—in how Syrian women civil society activists have been excluded from international peace negotiations; how sexual harassment became institutionally accepted within major news organizations; or in how the UN Secretary General’s post has remained a masculine domain. Enloe then lays out strategies and skills for challenging patriarchal attitudes and operations. Encouraging self-reflection, she guides us in the discomforting curiosity of reviewing our own personal complicity in sustaining patriarchy in order to withdraw our own support for it. Timely and globally conscious, The Big Push is a call for feminist self-reflection and strategic action with a belief that exposure complements resistance.

In this sweeping literary, cultural, and political history, French sociologist Ginette Castro vividly and dramatically tells the story of the contemporary women's movement in the United States. From the liberal feminists, like Betty Friedan, Mary Daly, and the members of NOW, to the radical feminists, including Kate Millett, Ti-Grace Atkinson, New York Radical Women, and Cell 16, Dr. Castro offers an enlivened yet balanced account of the many different ideological currents within the movement. Central to her contribution is the detailed reexamination of the role of the radical feminists, and her efforts to neutralize the sensationalism which has become attached to this segment of the movement. Captured here is the diversity of expression and yet the underlying unity, and potential for ideological synthesis in the American feminist movement. American Feminism makes an invaluable contribution to understanding the course of feminism in the United States and its radical roots.

This final volume in the Public Women, Public Words series focuses on what has come to be called the second wave of American feminism. It traces the resurgence of feminism in the late 1960s--from Betty Friedan and the National Organization for Women to the anarchist and lesbian identity dimensions of radical feminism. Including topics such as sexual autonomy, abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the black-feminist resistance to the white-dominated second wave, this volume reflects the unprecedented range of women's issues taken up by feminists during the 1970s and beyond. Volume III also charts the great diffusion of feminism with separate sections on multicultural feminism and the feminist presence in media and pop culture. Finally, through the recent writings of feminist intellectuals, it looks toward a third feminist wave for the new millennium. Public Women, Public Words: A Documentary History of American Feminism provides a comprehensive view of the many strands of feminist thought and actions and is essential for every women's studies and feminism collection.

Feminism is not dead. This groundbreaking book advances a radical and pioneering feminist manifesto for today's modern audience that exposes the real reasons as to why women are still oppressed and what feminist activism must do to counter it through a vibrant and original account of the global Reclaim the Night March.

"A collection of essays on the metaphysical, political, theological, ethical and psychological writings of Spinoza. Examines the ways in which his philosophy presents a resource for the re-conceptualization of friendship, sexuality, politics and ethics in contemporary life"--Provided by publisher.

The first comprehensive study to focus on the whole spectrum of American feminism, including both mainstream & divergent forces within the women's movement during this pivotal era.

Women, Method Acting, and the Hollywood Film is the first study dedicated to understanding the work of female Method actors on film. While Method acting on film has typically been associated with the explosive machismo of actors like Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, this book explores an alternate tradition within the Method—the work that women from the Actors Studio did in Hollywood. Covering the period from the end of the Second World War until the 1970s, this study shows how the women associated with the Actors Studio increasingly used Method acting in ways that were compatible with their burgeoning feminist political commitments and developed a style of feminist Method acting. The book examines the complex intersection of Method acting, sexuality, and gender by analyzing performances such as Kim Hunter’s in A Streetcar Named Desire, Julie Harris’s in The Member of the Wedding, Shelley Winters’s in The Big Knife, Geraldine Page’s in Sweet Bird of Youth, and Jane Fonda’s in Coming Home. Challenging the longstanding assumption that Method acting’s approaches were harmful to women and incompatible with feminism, this book argues that some of Hollywood’s most interesting female actors, and leading feminists, emerged from the Actors Studio in the period between the 1950s and the 1970s. Written for students and scholars of Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies, and Gender Studies, Women, Method Acting, and the Hollywood Film reshapes the way we think of a central strain in American screen acting, and in doing so, allows women a new stake in that tradition.