Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

[Introduction To] Counternarratives From Women Of Color Academics: Bravery, Vulnerablility And Resistance, Manya C. Whitaker, Eric Anthony Grollman

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This book documents the lived experiences of women of color academics who have leveraged their professional positions to challenge the status quo in their scholarship, teaching, service, activism, and leadership. By presenting reflexive work from various vantage points within and outside of the academy, contributors document the cultivation of mentoring relationships, the use of administrative roles to challenge institutional leadership, and more. Through an emphasis on the various ways in which women of color have succeeded in the academy—albeit with setbacks along the way—this volume aims to change the discourse surrounding women of color academics: from a focus on trauma …

[Introduction To] Audacious Voices: Profiles In Intersectional Feminism, Holly J. Blake, Melissa D. Ooten

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Inspiring and hopeful, Audacious Voices is a collection of twelve stories from alumnae/alumni of WILL*, a feminist model for education. Each author featured in this book is working, in their own distinct way, to make their communities more equitable―and their stories illustrate how different elements of the WILL* program influence and inspire them to act with such intentionality.

Author-activist Courtney Martin writes in The New Better Off that the times we live in may break our hearts, but they don't have to break our spirit; it's that spirit that these stories capture, alongside the power of a feminist educational program …

[Introduction To] When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits Of Women Combat Veterans, Laura Browder, Sascha Pflaeging

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While women are officially barred from combat in the American armed services, in the current war, where there are no front lines, the ban on combat is virtually meaningless. More than in any previous conflict in our history, American women are engaging with the enemy, suffering injuries, and even sacrificing their lives in the line of duty.

When Janey Comes Marching Home juxtaposes forty-eight photographs by Sascha Pflaeging with oral histories collected by Laura Browder to provide a dramatic portrait of women at war. Women from all five branches of the military share their stories here--stories that are by turns …

[Introduction To] With The Weathermen: The Personal Journal Of A Revolutionary Woman, Susan Stern, Laura Browder

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Drugs. Sex. Revolutionary violence. From its first pages, Susan Stern's memoir With the Weathermen provides a candid, first-hand look at the radical politics and the social and cultural environment of the New Left during the late 1960s.

The Weathermen--a U.S.-based, revolutionary splinter group of Students for a Democratic Society--advocated the overthrow of the government and capitalism, and toward that end, carried out a campaign of bombings, jailbreaks, and riots throughout the United States. In With the Weathermen Stern traces her involvement with this group, and her transformation from a shy, married graduate student into a go-go dancing, street-fighting "macho mama." …

[Introduction To] Conceiving Spirits: Birth Rituals And Contested Identities Among Lauje Of Indonesia, Jennifer W. Nourse

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For most of the Lauje' of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, birth spirits are of primary importance. The spirits inhabit a mother's birth fluids and placenta, nurturing fetuses in the womb and children after birth---or bringing sickness and death if rituals are neglected.

Jennifer Nourse describes how Lauje' from both modernized coastal and isolated highland villages attribute to birth spirits competing meanings that hinge on an individual's gender, social class, and religion. At the beginning of her fieldwork, Nourse collaborated with two Lauje' men whose concepts of birth spirits as divided into good and bad, male and female, or local and foreign …