Gender and Political Theory: Feminist Reckonings by Western political theory typically incorporates certain assumptions about sex and gender as natural, unvarying and "pre-political." This book critically examines these assumptions and shows how recent scholarship undermines the illusion that bodies exist outside politics and beyond the reach of the state. Leading political theorist Mary Hawkesworth's cutting-edge intersectional account demonstrates how popular conceptions of human nature, public and private, citizenship, liberty, the state, and injustice relegate women, people of color, sexual minorities, and gender-variant people to inferior status despite constitutional guarantees of equality before the law. Hawkesworth argues that traditional political theory has contributed to the perpetuation of pernicious forms of injustice by masking the state's role in the creation of subordinated and stigmatized subjects. The book draws insights from critical race, feminist, postcolonial, queer, and trans* theory to give a compelling, original, and highly readable introduction to historical and contemporary debates on gender and political theory for students.
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by So what if it's true that Black women are mad as hell? They have the right to be. In the Black feminist tradition of Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper reminds us that anger is a powerful source of energy that can give us the strength to keep on fighting.Far too often, Black women's anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that. Black women's eloquent rage is what makes Serena Williams such a powerful tennis player. It's what makes Beyoncé's girl power anthems resonate so hard. It's what makes Michelle Obama an icon. Eloquent rage keeps us all honest and accountable. It reminds women that they don't have to settle for less. When Cooper learned of her grandmother's eloquent rage about love, sex, and marriage in an epic and hilarious front-porch confrontation, her life was changed. And it took another intervention, this time staged by one of her homegirls, to turn Brittney into the fierce feminist she is today. In Brittney Cooper's world, neither mean girls nor fuckboys ever win. But homegirls emerge as heroes. This book argues that ultimately feminism, friendship, and faith in one's own superpowers are all we really need to turn things right side up again.
The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century by In The Biopolitics of Feeling Kyla Schuller unearths the forgotten, multiethnic sciences of impressibility--the capacity to be transformed by one's environment and experiences--to uncover how biopower developed in the United States. Schuller challenges prevalent interpretations of biopower and literary cultures to reveal how biopower emerged within the discourses and practices of sentimentalism. Through analyses of evolutionary theories, gynecological sciences, abolitionist poetry and other literary texts, feminist tracts, child welfare reforms, and black uplift movements, Schuller excavates a vast apparatus that regulated the capacity of sensory and emotional feeling in an attempt to shape the evolution of the national population. Her historical and theoretical work exposes the overlooked role of sex difference in population management and the optimization of life, illuminating how models of binary sex function as one of the key mechanisms of racializing power. Schuller thereby overturns long-accepted frameworks of the nature of race and sex difference, offers key corrective insights to modern debates surrounding the equation of racism with determinism and the liberatory potential of ideas about the plasticity of the body, and reframes contemporary notions of sentiment, affect, sexuality, evolution, and heredity.
The Global Gag Rule and Women's Reproductive Health: Rhetoric versus Reality by Foreign assistance by the United States is tangled with domestic politics, and perhaps this is most clear in relation to funding for health and family planning. The long arm of U.S. domestic politics has reached the intimate lives of women all over the world because it has threatened majorcuts in funding to healthcare organizations in developing countries if they perform or promote abortions. This "global gag rule," so-called because to even mention abortion endangers funding, has been a hallmark of Republican administrations since it was first enacted by President Ronald Reagan.When Donald Trump reinstated and expanded the policy, there was popular uproar and a firestorm of debate. Proponents of the policy emphasize the importance of reducing the number of abortions globally and claim that the gag rule will be effective in achieving this goal.In this innovative book, Yana van der Meulen Rodgers argues that the gag rule has failed to achieve its goal of reducing abortions. Rather, the restrictive legislation is associated with higher abortion rates, and because the reduction in funding is indiscriminate there are negative repercussionsacross a range of health outcomes for women, children, and men. While the rhetoric in media discourse has been extreme, Rodgers provides systematic analysis of how the global gag rule affects women's reproductive health across developing regions, grounded in a conceptual framework that models thecomplex factors that influence women's decision making about fertility. She also traces the background to American policy, the evolution of international family planning programs, the links between contraceptive access and fertility rates, and the relationship between restrictive abortion laws andabortion rates. And because Rodgers provides a rounded perspective on factors influencing women's decisions on reproduction and abortion, she offers a constructive and cost-effective approach for U.S. family planning assistance that targets integrated reproductive health services.
The Douglass Century: Transformation of the Women's College at Rutgers University by Rutgers University's Douglass Residential College is the only college for women that is nested within a major public research university in the United States. Although the number of women's colleges has plummeted from a high of 268 in 1960 to 38 in 2016, Douglass is flourishing as it approaches its centennial in 2018. To explore its rich history, Kayo Denda, Mary Hawkesworth, Fernanda H. Perrone examine the strategic transformation of Douglass over the past century in relation to continuing debates about women's higher education. The Douglass Century celebrates the college's longevity and diversity as distinctive accomplishments, and analyzes the contributions of Douglass administrators, alumnae, and students to its survival, while also investigating multiple challenges that threatened its existence. This book demonstrates how changing historical circumstances altered the possibilities for women and the content of higher education, comparing the Jazz Age, American the Great Depression, the Second World War, the post-war Civil Rights era, and the resurgence of feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. Concluding in the present day, the authors highlight the college's ongoing commitment to Mabel Smith Douglass' founding vision, "to bring about an intellectual quickening, a cultural broadening in connection with specific training so that women may go out into the world fitted...for leadership...in the economic, political, and intellectual life of this nation." In addition to providing a comprehensive history of the college, the book brings its subjects to life with eighty full-color images from the Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries. 
Keywords for Latina/o Studies by A vocabulary of Latina/o studies. Keywords for Latina/o Studies is a generative text that enhances the ongoing dialogue within a rapidly growing and changing field. The keywords included in this collection represent established and emergent terms, categories, and concepts that undergird Latina/o studies; they delineate the shifting contours of a field best thought of as an intellectual imaginary and experiential project of social and cultural identities within the U.S. academy. Bringing together sixty-three essays, from humanists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, among others, each focused on a single term, the volume reveals the broad range of the field while also illuminating the tensions and contestations surrounding issues of language, politics, and histories of colonization, specific to this area of study. From "borderlands" to "migration," from "citizenship" to "mestizaje," this accessible volume will be informative for those who are new to Latina/o studies, providing them with a mapping of the current debates and a trajectory of the development of the field, as well as being a valuable resource for scholars to expand their knowledge and critical engagement with the dynamic transformations in the field. 
The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability by In The Right to Maim Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks, Puar uses the concept of "debility"--bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors--to disrupt the category of disability. She shows how debility, disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Puar's analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel's policies toward Palestine, in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury. Supplementing its right to kill with what Puar calls the right to maim, the Israeli state relies on liberal frameworks of disability to obscure and enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies. Tracing disability's interaction with debility and capacity, Puar offers a brilliant rethinking of Foucauldian biopolitics while showing how disability functions at the intersection of imperialism and racialized capital.This guide for women's and gender studies students provides information about relevant research resources. The Mabel Smith Douglass Library, Douglass Campus, houses the main print collection on women and gender with focus on sexuality and feminist theory in its interdisciplinary manifestations. The Alexander Library, on College Avenue Campus, houses resources in the area of history and literature of women, government documents, including the materials for the United Nations and foreign countries.
Department of Women's and Gender Studies
Institute for Women's Leadership
Institute for Research on Women
Office for the Promotion of Women in Science, Engineering and Mathematics
Center for American Women and Politics
Center for Women's Global Leadership
Center on Violence against Women and Children
Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities
Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series (Click here for the series archives).
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