This book argues that a unique late marriage pattern, discovered in the 1960s but originating in the Middle Ages, explains the continuing puzzle of why western Europe was the site of changes that, from about 1500, gave rise to the modern world. Contrary...

In The Fantasy of Feminist History, Joan Wallach Scott argues that feminist perspectives on history are enriched by psychoanalytic concepts, particularly fantasy. Tracing the evolution of her thinking about gender over the course of her career, the...

"This is criticism at its best." ―Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles TimesWriting in the tradition of Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry, Maggie Nelson has emerged as one of our foremost cultural critics with this landmark work about representations of cruelty and...

From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women’s liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women.“Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard...

In The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks boldly challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal...

A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the...

Professors and students alike are taking interest in Girls' Studies—the socialization of girls versus boys—and beginning to analyze the impact of media, pop culture, messaging, and more on America's girls. Girls' Studies tackles socialization and gender...

Winner of the 2011 Lawrence W. Levine Award from the Organization of American HistoriansMany Americans hold fast to the notion that gay men and women, more often than not, have been ostracized from disapproving families. Not in This Family challenges...

Catcalls, wolf whistles, verbal slurs, pinches, stalking―virtually every woman has experienced some form of unwanted public attention by men. Off the street, in semi-public places such as restaurants and department stores, women often suffer the insult...

In this collection of lively essays, Cynthia Enloe makes better sense of globalization and international politics by taking a deep and personal look into the daily realities in a range of women's lives. She proposes a distinctively feminist curiosity...

Focusing on the Western philosophical tradition and the work of contemporary feminists, Jean Elshtain explores the general tendency to assert the primacy of the public world—the political sphere dominated by men—and to denigrate the private world—the...

Mark Graber looks at the history of abortion law in action to argue that the only defensible, constitutional approach to the issue is to afford all women equal choice--abortion should remain legal or bans should be strictly enforced. Steering away from...

Thoroughly updated throughout, the fourth edition of The Gendered Society explores current thinking about gender, both inside academia and in our everyday lives. Michael Kimmel challenges the claim that gender is limited to women's experiences--his...

Rich in detail, filled with fascinating characters, and panoramic in its sweep, this magnificent, comprehensive work tells for the first time the complete story of the American woman from the Pilgrims to the 21st-centuryIn this sweeping cultural history,...

The bestselling feminist classic that revolutionized the way we think about rape, as a historical phenomenon and as an urgent crisis—essential reading in the era of #MeToo.   “A major work of history.”—The Village Voice • One of the New York Public...

The first international anthology to explore women's human rights from a literary perspective. More than half a century after the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, women throughout the world still struggle for social and political justice. Many...

The women most crucial to the feminist movement that emerged in the 1960's arrived at their commitment and consciousness in response to the unexpected and often shattering experience of having their work minimized, even disregarded, by the men they...

Jacqueline Rose is a world-renowned critic and one of the most influential and provocative scholars working in the humanities today. She is also among the most wide ranging, with books on Zionism, feminism, Sylvia Plath, children’s fiction, and...

Feminism is not dead. This is not a postfeminist era. Feminism is still vibrant, despite declarations that it is over. Feminism is a success, although many gender inequalities remain. Feminism is taking powerful new forms, which makes it unrecognisable...

The essential masterwork that has provoked and inspired generations of men and women. “From Eve’s apple to Virginia Woolf’s room of her own, Beauvoir’s treatise remains an essential rallying point, urging self-sufficiency and offering the fruit of...