Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies

Drawing on religion, mythology, folklore, anthropology, history and the arts, this encyclopoedia is a collection of queer spirit. It contains articles on the world's spiritual traditions; entries on deities, symbols, spiritual teachers, spiritually focused artists; and related subjects.

"... introducing readers to the field of feminist economics, from Affirmative Action to Women's Budgets ... includes timely entries addressing key concepts in feminist economics as well as feminist economic critiques and reconstructions of major economic theories and policy debates."

A three-volume survey of more than 400 years of lesbian and gay history and culture in the United States, presented through over 500 alphabetically arranged entries. Coverage includes people, public policy, economics, social issues, identities, and culture, among many others. For students, researchers, and general readers.

The central aim of this encyclopedia is to give the reader a comparative perspective on issues involving conceptions of gender, gender differences, gender roles, relationships between the genders, and sexuality.

"...practical information, historical aspects, and future directions, all meticulously researched and conveniently presented."

"... discussing psychological differences in personality, cognition, and behavior, as well as biologically based differences and how those differences impact behavior. Coverage, from A (Abortion and Its Health Effects) to W (Working Environments), includes studies of these differences in applied settings such as education, business, the home, in politics, sports competition, etc." (from Elsevier)

"A concise alphabetical guide to the key terms, issues, theoretical approaches, projects and thinkers in feminist philosophy from Abject to Naomi Zack ... Entries are pithy, detailed, informative and are cross-referenced to guide the reader through the lively debates in feminism."

In Gender and Education, educators explore the intersection of gender and education. Their entries deal with educational theories, research, curricula, practices, personnel, and policies, but also with variations in the gendering of education across historical and cultural contexts. The various contributors discuss gender as a social construction. The latest research on boys and masculinities, as well as girls and feminism, is included.

"...a comprehensive guide to the history and development of feminist literary criticism and a lively reassessment of the main issues and authors in the field."

"...explores the core concepts in feminist theory ... addresses the implications of postmodernism and post-structuralism for feminist theorizing ...invaluable tool for students taking courses in feminist theory and research methods, and students across the social sciences who are taking courses concerned with issues of gender."

"Entries cover people and topics ranging from the third to the fifteenth centuries, and treat well-known figures, more recently discovered or re-evaluated figures, and much more. Medieval women in the principal stages of life, both mortal and spiritual, are also covered in entries on childhood, virginity, marriage, widowhood, penitentials, hagiography, and relics."

The dimensions of gender bias. Sustenance from the commons. Cash crops vs. food security. Who manages the forests. Female poverty and the population trap. A new framework for development.

This book presents and deconstructs the existing explanations for the differential career development of qualified men and women.

An updated report on the role of sexual discrimination in education challenges beliefs about how behaviors are determined by brain differences and contends that cultural attitudes are compromising students of both genders.

"Recognizing Transsexuals is the first sociological examination of how the bodies of transpeople are figured and reconfigured in socio, politico and medico-legal contexts while considering the impact of these shifts"--Back cover.

"This book teaches researchers how to think in terms of the feminist perspective and how to translate their research into feminist practice and analysis. This "tricks of the trade" guide gives researchers the principles for doing qualitative work, examples of solid feminist studies, and analytic questions to help identify feminist issues while in the field or at the desk. This is an excellent supplementary text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in qualitative methods, such as Feminist Research Methods, Qualitative Research Methods, Social Research Methods, and Fieldwork in a variety of disciplines, including sociology, women's studies, anthropology, American studies, communication studies, cultural studies, and ethnic studies."--Jacket.

The author takes a critical look at sexism in language and argues that even in feminist circles it has become a problematic concept. Drawing on conversational and textual data collected over the last ten years, Mills suggests that there are two forms of sexism - overt and indirect.

Online access available
"The news in 2008 was that women had taken huge strides forward. Feminists' decades-long struggle finally seemed to be paying off, not only in boardrooms, classrooms, and kitchens but also at the very top-in presidential politics. But what is the truth behind the headlines? In Sexism in America: Alive, Well, and Ruining Our Future, renowned feminist author Barbara J. Berg debunks the many myths about how far women have come and the pervasive belief that ours is a post-feminist society. Combining authoritative research and compelling storytelling, Berg traces the assault on women's status from the 1950s-when Newsweek declared "for the American girl, books and babies don't mix"-to the present, exploring the deception about women's progress and contextualizing our current situation. All women are hurt by a society lauding their attributes in speeches while scorning them in public policy and popular culture, and the legacy of the women's movement is being short-circuited in every aspect of their lives. Passionate, extensively documented, humorous, and persuasive, Sexism in America is simultaneously enlightening, frightening, and revitalizing. Berg, an ardent optimist, helps women understand where they are and why and how they can move beyond the marginalizing strategies. It is exactly the right book at exactly the right time"--Provided by publisher.

From the first game of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs on April 22, 1876, tens of thousands of men have played professional sports in the Big Four--baseball, basketball, football, and hockey--major professional sports leagues in the United States. Until April 29, 2013, however, when National Basketball Association center Jason Collins came out publicly as gay, not one of those tens of thousands of men had ever come out to the public as gay while an active player on a major league roster. Is it because gay men can't jump (or throw, or catch, or skate)? Or is it more likely that the costs of coming out are too high? In Antigay Bias in Role-Model Occupations, E. Gary Spitko argues that in the case of athletes, and others in role-model occupations, a record of widespread and frequently systematic employment discrimination has been excluding gay people from the public social spaces that identify and teach whom society respects and whom members of society should seek to emulate. Creating a typology of role models--lawyers/judges, soldiers, teachers, politicians, athletes, and clergy--and the positive values and character traits associated with them, Spitko demonstrates how employment discrimination has been used for the purpose of perpetuating the generally accepted notion that gay people are inferior because they do not possess the requisite qualities--integrity, masculinity, morality, representativeness, all-American-ness, and blessedness--associated with employment in these occupations. Combining the inspirational stories of LGBT trailblazers with analysis of historical data, anecdotal evidence, research, and literature, Antigay Bias in Role-Model Occupations is the first book to explore in a comprehensive fashion the broad effects of sexual orientation discrimination in role-model occupations well beyond its individual victims.

Available at Hicks Undergraduate Library - Reference
Online access available.

While homophobia is commonly characterized as individual and personal prejudice, this collection of essays instead explores homophobia as a transnational political phenomenon. Contributors theorize homophobia as a distinct configuration of repressive state-sponsored policies and practices with their own causes, explanations, and effects on how sexualities are understood and experienced in a range of national contexts.

Great strides have been made in securing rights for the LGBT community in recent years. Although statistics prove that acceptance of LGBT individuals has grown substantially in the past decade, there are still many people who ignore the laws in favor of their own beliefs. This anthology brings together writings from diverse sources to construct a well-balanced examination of LGBT rights in the United States and around the world. Readers will be exposed to both sides of the same-sex marriage debate, the controversy over restroom access for transgender individuals, and the reasons why the LGBT community continues to fight for its rights.

Online resource.
Ester Palerm and Frances Thomson Salo gather a wide range of psychoanalytic writing about femininity and masculinity from British, European, and North and South American perspectives, to integrate theoretical and clinical points sometimes quite controversially in contributions that are cutting edge. The authors address what is currently understood by 'masculine' and 'feminine' in psychoanalytic terms, and how these issues manifest in the body, gender, sex, sexuality and the life-cycle, and cover aspects both productive and generative, constricted and defended.

Author and professor Maythee Rojas offers a look at the intricate crossroads of being a woman of color. Women of Color and Feminism tackles the question of how women of color experience feminism, and how race and culture can alter this experience.

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2012 Unlikely Allies in the Academy brings the voices of women of Color and White women together for much-overdue conversations about race. These well-known contributors use narrative to expose their stories, which are at times messy and always candid. However, the contributors work through the discomfort, confusion, and frustration in order to have honest conversations about race and racism. The narratives from Chicanas, Indigenous, Asian American, African American, and White women academicians explore our past, present, and future, what separates us, and how to communicate honestly in an effort to become allies.

Updated and expanded edition of the foundational text of women of color feminism.
"Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, this collection explores, as coeditor Cherrie Moraga writes, 'the complex confluence of identities--race, class, gender, sexuality--systemic to women of color oppression and liberation'"--Back cover.

In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought,originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. Here Collins provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Drawing from fiction, poetry, music and oral history, the result is a superbly crafted and revolutionary book that provided the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought and its canon.

Beginning from the premise that psychology needs to be questioned, dismantled and new perspectives brought to the table in order to produce alternative solutions, this book takes an unusual transdisciplinary step into the activism of Black feminist theory. The author, Suryia Nayak, presents a close reading of Audre Lorde and other related scholars to demonstrate how the activism of Black feminist theory is concerned with issues central to radical critical thinking and practice, such as identity, alienation, trauma, loss, the position and constitution of individuals within relationships, the family, community and society.

Despite recent advances in the study of black thought, black women intellectuals remain often neglected. This collection of essays by fifteen scholars of history and literature establishes black women's places in intellectual history by engaging the work of writers, educators, activists, religious leaders, and social reformers in the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean. Dedicated to recovering the contributions of thinkers marginalized by both their race and their gender, these essays uncover the work of unconventional intellectuals, both formally educated and self-taught, and explore the broad community of ideas in which their work participated. The end result is a field-defining and innovative volume that addresses topics ranging from religion and slavery to the politicized and gendered reappraisal of the black female body in contemporary culture.