From the brilliant cultural historian M. G. Lord, a fascinating examination of the unexpected feminist content in Elizabeth Taylor's iconic roles.
Countless books have chronicled the sensational life of Elizabeth Taylor, but rarely has her career been examined from the point of view of her on-screen persona. And that persona, argues M. G. Lord, in its most memorable outings has repeatedly introduced a broad audience to feminist ideas.In her breakout film, National Velvet (1944), Taylor's character challenges gender discrimination: Forbidden to ride her beloved horse in an important race because she is a girl, she poses as a male jockey. Her next milestone, A Place in the Sun (1951), is essentially an abortion-rights movie—a cautionary tale from a world before women had ready access to birth control. In Butterfield 8 (1960), for which she won an Oscar, Taylor's character isn't censured because she's a prostitute, but because she chooses the men with whom she sleeps—she controls her sexuality. Even the classic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) depicts the anguish that befalls a woman when the only way she can express herself is through her husband's career and children. Other of Taylor's films and Broadway performances explore similar themes.
The legendary actress lived her life defiantly in public—undermining postwar reactionary sex roles; helping directors thwart the Hollywood Production Code, which restricted film content from 1934 to 1967; and as a member of the vanguard of fund-raising for AIDS research in the 1980s, which was entirely consistent with her championing the right of people to love whomever they love, regardless of gender. Yet her powerful feminist impact was hidden in plain sight. Daring in conception, and drawing upon unpublished letters and scripts as well as interviews with Kate Burton, Gore Vidal, Robert Forster, Austin Pendleton, Kevin McCarthy, Liz Smith, and others, The Accidental Feminist will surprise Taylor and film fans alike with its originality—and add a startling dimension to the star's enduring mystique.
One of the most respected voices in Canadian feminism, two-time National Newspaper Award-winning journalist Michele Landsberg has engaged with the second wave of the women’s movement more than any other writer in the country. Her opinions, always careful and sometimes controversial, have mattered to women’s lives.
In his novels Dickens presents a series of unrivalled portraits of women, young and old. From Little Nell to Miss Havisham, these girls and women speak to us today, making us laugh and sometimes cry. The popular British actress Miriam Margolyes will be touring the world in 2012, the bicentenary of Dickens birth, with a one-woman show about Dickens’ women, and this book accompanies the show by building on the script and expanding to include many more of the female characters Dickens described and analysed so astutely in his novels. The countries to be visited are Australia, New Zealand, the USA and India.
"A timely, well-balanced, and important collection with contributions by many well-known and distinguished scholars. The essays consistently focus on how rights, gender, and culture interact, come into conflict, and discursively construct each other."—Mary H. Moran, Colgate University
Election 2008 made American history, but it was also the product of American history. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin smashed through some of the most enduring barriers to high political office, but their exceptional candidacies did not come out of nowhere. In these timely and accessible essays, a distinguished group of historians explores how the candidates both challenged and reinforced historic stereotypes of race and sex while echoing familiar themes in American politics and exploiting new digital technologies.
Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book analyzes Black women’s involvement in American political life, focusing on what they did to gain political power between 1961 and the present, and why, in many cases, they did not succeed. Duchess Harris demonstrates that Black women have tried to gain centrality through their participation in Presidential Commissions, Black feminist organizations, theatrical productions, film adaptations of literature, beauty pageants, electoral politics, and Presidential appointments. She contends that “success” in this area means that the feminist-identified Black women in the Congressional Black Caucus who voted against Clarence Thomas’s appointment would have spoken on behalf of Anita Hill; Senator Carol Moseley Braun would have won re-election; and Shirley Sherrod wouldn’t have been forced to resign from her USDA position. Harris contends that if this is truly a post-racial America, there should be no apprehension to discuss issues concerning racism at a national level.
Thousands of women are murdered every year by close relatives for allegedly violating an unwritten social code or rebelling against the patriarchal order. Other harmful practices such as forced marriage, child marriage, or bride exchange have been recorded for centuries and adapted to modern times. The book examines honor-based violence, its roots and its evolution, as well as the ongoing struggle to eradicate it in Turkey, Pakistan and other countries, including Western European nations.
Merle Hoffman's life story is riveting. A former classical pianist, a self-made millionaire, and a feminist who found her life's work providing abortions, she has been a fearless crusader for women's right to choose.
From Jennifer Baumgardner, one of the leading voices of Third Wave feminism, comes this provocative, thoughtful, often funny collection of essays and interviews that offers a state of the union on contemporary feminist issues.
Undoubtedly the most influential advocate for birth control even before the term existed, Margaret Sanger ignited a movement that has shaped our society to this day. Her views on reproductive rights have made her a frequent target of conservatives and so-called family values activists. Yet lately even progressives have shied away from her, citing socialist leanings and a purported belief in eugenics as a blight on her accomplishments. In this captivating new biography, the renowned feminist historian Jean H. Baker rescues Sanger from such critiques and restores her to the vaunted place in history she once held.
