Sex Objects

New York Times Bestseller - An NPR Best Book of the Year “Sharp and prescient… The appeal of Valenti’s memoir lies in her ability to trace objectification through her own life, and to trace what was for a long time her own obliviousness to it…Sex Object is an antidote to the fun and flirty feminism of selfies and self-help.” — New Republic Author and Guardian US columnist Jessica Valenti has been leading the national conversation on gender and politics for over a decade. Now, in a darkly funny and bracing memoir, Valenti explores the toll that sexism takes from the every day to the existential. Sex Object explores the painful, funny, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti’s adolescence and young adulthood in New York City, revealing a much shakier inner life than the confident persona she has cultivated as one of the most recognizable feminists of her generation. In the tradition of writers like Joan Didion and Mary Karr, this literary memoir is sure to shock those already familiar with Valenti’s work and enthrall those who are just finding it.

The declaration that a work of art is “about sex” is often announced to the public as a scandal after which there is nothing else to say about the work or the artist-controversy concludes a conversation when instead it should begin a new one. Moving beyond debates about pornography and censorship, Jennifer Doyle shows us that sex in art is as diverse as sex in everyday life: exciting, ordinary, emotional, traumatic, embarrassing, funny, even profoundly boring. Sex Objects examines the reception and frequent misunderstanding of highly sexualized images, words, and performances. In chapters on the “boring parts” of Moby-Dick, the scandals that dogged the painter Thomas Eakins, the role of women in Andy Warhol's Factory films, “bad sex” and Tracey Emin's crudely evocative line drawings, and L.A. artist Vaginal Davis's pornographic parodies of Vanessa Beecroft's performances, Sex Objects challenges simplistic readings of sexualized art and instead investigates what such works can tell us about the nature of desire. In Sex Objects, Doyle offers a creative and original exploration of how and where art and sex connect, arguing that to proclaim a piece of art “about sex” reveals surprisingly little about the work, the artist, or the spectator. Deftly interweaving anecdotal and personal writing with critical, feminist, and queer theory, she reimagines the relationship between sex and art in order to better understand how the two meet-and why it matters. Jennifer Doyle is associate professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. She is coeditor, with Jonathan Flatley and Jos Esteban Muoz, of Pop Out: Queer Warhol.

From Sex Objects to Sexual Subjects traces some of the ruptures and continuities between the eighteenth-century masculinist formulations of subjectivity elaborated by Rousseau, Diderot and Kant and the contemporary postmodern and feminist critiques of the universal subject--meaning the self viewed as an abstract individual who exercises an impartial and rational (political) judgment that is idential to other similarly defined individuals--developed by Luce Irigaray, Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Jurgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, Judith Butler and Michel Foucault. In her work, Moscovici brings together the wide-ranging discussion of subjectivity with debates about public discourse. In so doing she attempts a synthesis between the two discussions that have recently engaged feminist theorists and others.

Monographic study of the working conditions and trade unionisation of woman worker airline flight attendants in the USA - covers job satisfaction, management attitudes, occupational safety, occupational health, passenger safety, etc.

W.E.B. Du Bois said that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line." It has been one hundred years since Du Bois made that prescient statement, which naturally leads to the question: "What is the problem of the twenty-first century?" In this anthology, the authors address a wide range of topics: race, gender, class, sexual orientation, globalism, migration, health, politics, culture, and urban issues--from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives. Paul Attewell, David Lavin, Thurston Domina, and Tania Levey examine the black middle class at the turn of the millennium. Todd C. Shaw considers how race shapes patriotism in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Robert A. Brown focuses on the growing chasm between blacks and whites with regard to views of government's obligation to address citizens' basic needs. H. Alexander Welcome details instances where white scholars have improperly analyzed black experiences. Antonio Pastrana revisits Du Bois's theories about the problems facing blacks. Joy James shows that the United States possesses the means and wealth to record and preserve (or censor) its slave/penal discourse as part of its vast warehouse of (neo)slave narratives. Ajuan Maria Mance hypothesizes that African-American literature will become less consumed with exploration and documentation of interracial differences, and more concerned with the relationships within ethnic groups. Rosamond S. King explores literary embodiments of the increasing prevalence of interracial relationships. Anthony J. Lemelle and BarBara Scott present a comparative historical policy analysis of the HIV/AIDS experience among African Americans. Sandra Barnes examines sociological promises and problems of the contemporary black church. Juan Battle and Natalie Bennett scrutinize the experiences of African American gays and lesbians in the context of the larger community. Verna Keith and Diane Brown assess the state of African American health in the context of social group structures. Michael Bennett looks at the problems and opportunities facing black Americans from the perspective of urban studies. Juan Battle is professor of sociology at Hunter College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. Michael Bennett is professor of English at Long Island University, Brooklyn. Anthony Lemelle is professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and the editor of the Journal of African American Studies, published by Transaction.

"Everything you might want to know about the history and practice of feminist criticism in North America". -Feminist Bookstore News