Category: Women’s Studies

July 3, 2018

Trivia Tuesday: This Landmark Critique of Women’s History and Gender Inequality Examines the Use of Gender as a Tool for Historical and Cultural Analysis

Joan Wallach Scott’s Gender and the Politics of History played a significant role in the movement of women from the margins of historical focus to the center in the 1980s. This collection of essays was inspired by Scott’s tenure as Director of...

April 9, 2018

Sexual Violence from the Hunger Games to Campus Rape: A Presentation at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Global Summit

Last Friday, author of  Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape, Kelly Oliver gave a compelling presentation about the implications of women and sexual violence at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Global Summit. Her presentation begins on...

April 3, 2018

Q&A: Sonja Arntzen on the The Sarashina Diary: A Woman’s Life in Eleventh-Century Japan

Gazing at this, I might think that the snow had fallen out of season, if it were not for the fragrance of this orange blossoms tree. The inclusion of poetry in all the classical Japanese diaries is perhaps what sets...

March 30, 2018

Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Search for an Adequate Witness: An Excerpt

Although their humble beginnings inspired comparison, Thomas’s upbringing was defined by paternal abandonment, and Hill’s, by a large and supportive family. Whereas Thomas is recalled as a boisterous consumer of porn and something of the “class clown” in his needling of straitlaced colleagues in...

March 29, 2018

Gender, Race, and Credibility in the Age of Trump

This narrative of individual healing, effort, and ultimate success is available primarily to white women, who have historically been constructed as precious and thus worthy of protection from hard manual labor, economic discomfort, and sexual violation (however ineffective that narrative...

March 29, 2018

Joan Wallach Scott Responds to “The Nightmare Begins”

Trump’s appeal to both men and women rested on his promise to impose a lost or threatened order of racial and gender hierarchies. The appeal was made not rationally or programmatically, but libidinally—it was the erotic call and response that...

March 28, 2018

Gender and the Politics of History: An Excerpt

It’s been 30 years since this book was first published; its endurance is a testimony to the continuing importance of gender in our political and cultural vocabulary. –Joan Wallach In celebration of Women’s History Month, we’re closing out March with one of...

March 27, 2018

Joan Wallach Scott on the Enduring Culture of Masculinity

It’s no accident that conservative forces have mounted an anti-gender campaign, determined to protect their vision of the immutable meanings of the male/female, masculine/feminine relationship. It’s not only heterosexual norms that are at stake, but a whole vision of the...

March 22, 2018

Consent and Sexual Violence on College Campuses and Social Media

This week, one of our featured titles is Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape. Today’s post consists of excerpts on the topics of consent and sexual violence, authored by Kelly Oliver in The Philosophical Salon. Remember to...

March 21, 2018

Party Rape: An Excerpt from Hunting Girls

As long as college men continue to see women as sexual prey or trophies, rape will continue to plague college campuses. –Kelly Oliver As part of Women’s History Month, we have dedicated this month to highlighting titles about women’s issue. Today we...

March 20, 2018

Hollywood, Step Up!

There was a strong price to pay for being a tough independent teenage girl. Arguably, within the narratives of the films, their independence became the justification for beating the crap out of them. —Kelly Oliver At Columbia University Press, we...

March 15, 2018

Q&A: Susan Fraiman on the Meaning of “Extreme Domesticity”

“I use the term “extreme” to jar us out of the common assumption that domestic spaces are always stable, banal, and conventional—invested in traditional family values and complacently bourgeois. The goal of my book is to trouble our stereotype of...