Making Sense Of Women S Lives

Making Sense of Women's Lives presents a wide range of writings about women's lives in the United States. Michele Plott and Lauri Umansky have drawn on their experiences as both students and professors to assemble the collection. Seeking to provide as full a sampling from a diverse and intellectually vibrant field as one volume permits, the editors have also chosen writing that makes an enjoyable read. A few of the selections here represent the undisputed 'classics' of the field. More of them constitute simply the works, drawn from academic and nonacademic sources alike, that could make a difference in understanding what it means to be female in America.

Making Sense of Women's Lives presents a wide range of writings about women's lives in the United States. Michele Plott and Lauri Umansky have drawn on their experiences as both students and professors to assemble the collection. Seeking to provide as full a sampling from a diverse and intellectually vibrant field as one volume permits, the editors have also chosen writing that makes an enjoyable read. A few of the selections here represent the undisputed 'classics' of the field. More of them constitute simply the works, drawn from academic and nonacademic sources alike, that could make a difference in understanding what it means to be female in America. Making Sense of Women's Lives is intended as the primary text in Women's Studies courses. With that usage in mind, Plott and Umansky have provided brief introductions to each article to help students understand the author's perspectives. Thought and discussion questions follow each selection. The book contains, as well, numerous "Flash Exercises" suggestions for class exercises and activities. The editors have used these activities in their courses over the past decade, in conjunction with readings in this volume, and have found that the full complement of materials coalesces into an intellectually powerful introduction to Women's Studies. A Collegiate Press book

Making Sense of Women's Health is a comprehensive guide for women of all ages. It offers information on complementary therapies such as lifestyle and diet, vitamin supplementation, and herbs to help women make informed choices about their specific health concerns.

A women’s health expert shares an empowering and informative guide to menopause as a gateway to a rich and vital elderhood. It’s time to change the way we think about menopause. Both medicine and popular culture fixate on menopause as a decline of women’s bodies and minds—without recognizing the powerful gifts that come to us in our elder years. “Nature did not create us to unravel and diminish in the prime of our lives,” says Susan Willson. With Making Sense of Menopause, this renowned women’s health practitioner offers a powerful guide to experiencing perimenopause and menopause as a natural gateway into the next vital, exciting, and meaningful phase of our lives. In this inspiring and highly practical guide, Willson dismantles the cultural falsehoods we’ve been taught about menopause and illuminates: • Menopause as metamorphosis—how the changes in our bodies literally transform us into new women with essential roles to play in our culture • How the biological arc of a woman’s life unfolds toward menopause—and how our earliest experiences inform the menopause we will have • Practical guidance for self-care—including sleep, nutrition, stress management, exercise, and social connections • Sexuality and relationships—deepening our emotional bonds and expanding our capacity to give and receive pleasure • Becoming the Wise Woman—stepping into the essential role of an elder in our youth-obsessed world Susan Willson has found that when women are presented with a positive, empowering perspective on menopause, something extraordinary occurs: “We find that we want to do the developmental work of midlife. We want to harness the power we feel rising up as we are finally able to stand for ourselves. We want to give our gifts.” With Making Sense of Menopause, this compelling author offers a much-needed guide for women making the physical, emotional, and spiritual transition to their wisdom years.

Over the past thirty years, a strong canon of Indigenous feminist literature has addressed how Indigenous women are uniquely and dually affected by colonialism and patriarchy. Indigenous women have long recognized that their intersectional realities were not represented in mainstream feminism, which was principally white, middle-class, and often ignored realities of colonialism. As Indigenous feminist ideals grew, Indigenous women became increasingly multi-vocal, with multiple and oppositional understandings of what constituted Indigenous feminism and whether or not it was a useful concept. Emerging from these dialogues are conversations from a new generation of scholars, activists, artists, and storytellers who accept the usefulness of Indigenous feminism and seek to broaden the concept. In Good Relation captures this transition and makes sense of Indigenous feminist voices that are not necessarily represented in existing scholarship. There is a need to further Indigenize our understandings of feminism and to take the scholarship beyond a focus on motherhood, life history, or legal status (in Canada) to consider the connections between Indigenous feminisms, Indigenous philosophies, the environment, kinship, violence, and Indigenous Queer Studies. Organized around the notion of “generations,” this collection brings into conversation new voices of Indigenous feminist theory, knowledge, and experience. Taking a broad and critical interpretation of Indigenous feminism, it depicts how an emerging generation of artists, activists, and scholars are envisioning and invigorating the strength and power of Indigenous women.

This book is overflowing with writings from a diversity of women about their own lives and the women with whom they work. Chapters include: ways of understanding gender relations; talking about birthing stories; making sense of illness narratives and eating issues; overcoming the effects of sexual abuse; women's experiences of immigration; the interface of gender and culture; dilemmas facing women's collectives; the stories of lesbian lives; working with older women ... and many, many more!

As family and work demands become more complex, who is left holding the baby? Tina Miller explores men's experiences of fatherhood and provides unique insights into paternal caring, changing masculinities and men's relations to paid work. She focuses on the narratives of a group of men as they first anticipate and then experience fatherhood for the first time. Her original, longitudinal research contributes to contemporary theories of gender against a backdrop of societal and policy change. The men's journeys into fatherhood are both similar and varied, and they illuminate just how deeply gender permeates individual lives, everyday practices and societal assumptions around caring for young children. This book acts as a companion to Making Sense of Motherhood (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and, together, these innovative studies reveal how gendered practices around caring become enacted.

Originally published in 1992. This book captures the dynamic confluence of feminist and communication scholarship by setting out some of the provocative questions that mark this intersection. Several of the essays in the book are theoretical in nature, and consider the changing complexion of the field in view of this cross-fertilization; other contributors tackle those individual forms of communication that pose certain challenges for women such as verbal harassment and pornography. The final section of the book, more ethnographic in nature, presents a number of case studies, written primarily by women of colour, which recount the various ways that communication forms such as television, journalism and spoken discourse construct and perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes.