Feminism and the Body

Feminism and the Body PDF Author: Londa Schiebinger
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191547603
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

Book Description
This collection of classic essays in feminist body studies investigates the history of the image of the female body; from the medical 'discovery' of the clitoris, to the 'body politic' of Queen Elizabeth I, to women deprecated as 'Hottentot Venuses' in the nineteenth century. The text look at the way in which coverings bear cultural meaning: clothing reform during the French Revolution, Islamic veiling, and the invention of the top hat; as well as the embodiment of cherished cultural values in social icons such as the Statue of Liberty or the Barbie doll. By considering culture as it defines not only women but also men, this volume offers both the student and the general reader an insight into the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural study involved in feminist body studies.

Writing on the Body

Writing on the Body PDF Author: Katie Conboy
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231105453
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Book Description
This work comprises a collection of influential readings in feminist theory. It is divided into four sections: "Reading the Body"; "Bodies in Production"; "The Body Speaks"; and "Body on Stage".

Feminist Theory and the Body

Feminist Theory and the Body PDF Author: Janet Price
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351567098
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 755

Book Description
This Reader provides students with a comprehensive overview of differing feminist approaches to the body. Its wide range of contributions locate the important historical developments, interdisciplinary perspectives, and key discourses that have shaped this dynamic area of feminist theory.

Unbearable Weight

Unbearable Weight PDF Author: Susan Bordo
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520930711
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
"Unbearable Weight is brilliant. From an immensely knowledgeable feminist perspective, in engaging, jargonless (!) prose, Bordo analyzes a whole range of issues connected to the body—weight and weight loss, exercise, media images, movies, advertising, anorexia and bulimia, and much more—in a way that makes sense of our current social landscape—finally! This is a great book for anyone who wonders why women's magazines are always describing delicious food as 'sinful' and why there is a cake called Death by Chocolate. Loved it!"—Katha Pollitt, Nation columnist and author of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (2001)

Feminist Theory and the Body

Feminist Theory and the Body PDF Author: Janet Price
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415925662
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 502

Book Description
First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Feminism and the Body

Feminism and the Body PDF Author: Londa L. Schiebinger
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198731914
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Book Description
This collection of classic essays in feminist body studies investigates the history of the image of the female body; from the medical 'discovery' of the clitoris, to the 'body politic' of Queen Elizabeth I, to women deprecated as 'Hottentot Venuses' in the nineteenth century. The text look atthe way in which coverings bear cultural meaning: clothing reform during the French Revolution, Islamic veiling, and the invention of the top hat; as well as the embodiment of cherished cultural values in social icons such as the Statue of Liberty or the Barbie doll. By considering culture as itdefines not only women but also men, this volume offers both the student and the general reader an insight into the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural study involved in feminist body studies.

Feminism and the Biological Body

Feminism and the Biological Body PDF Author: Birke Lynda Birke
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474464432
Category : Feminist theory
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Bodies may be currently fashionable in social and feminist theory, but their insides are not. Biological bodies always seem to drop out of debates about the body and its importance in Western culture. They are assumed to be fixed, their workings uninteresting or irrelevant to theory. Birke argues that these static views of biology do not serve feminist politics well. As a trained biologist, she uses ideas in anatomy and physiology to develop the feminist view that the biological body is socially and culturally constructed. She rejects the assumption that the body's functioning is somehow fixed and unchanging, claiming that biological science offers more than just a deterministic narrative of 'how nature works'. Feminism and the Biological Body puts biological science and feminist theory together and suggests that we need a politics which includes, rather than denies, our bodily flesh.

Feminist Perspectives on the Body

Feminist Perspectives on the Body PDF Author: Barbara Brook
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317880218
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Feminist Perspectives on the Body provides an accessible introduction to this extremely popular new area and is aimed at students from a variety of disciplines who are interested in gaining an understanding of the key issues involved. The author explores many important topics including: the Western world's construction of the body as a theoretical, philosophical and political concept; the body and reproduction; medicalisation; cosmetic surgery and eating disorders; the body in performance; the private and the public body; working bodies and new ways of thinking about the body.

The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves

The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves PDF Author: Kathy Davis
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822390256
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Book Description
The book Our Bodies, Ourselves is a feminist success story. Selling more than four million copies since its debut in 1970, it has challenged medical dogmas about women’s bodies and sexuality, shaped health care policies, energized the reproductive rights movement, and stimulated medical research on women’s health. The book has influenced how generations of U.S. women feel about their bodies and health. Our Bodies, Ourselves has also had a whole life outside the United States. It has been taken up, translated, and adapted by women across the globe, inspiring more than thirty foreign language editions. Kathy Davis tells the story of this remarkable book’s global circulation. Based on interviews with members of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, the group of women who created Our Bodies, Ourselves, as well as responses to the book from readers, and discussions with translators from Latin America, Egypt, Thailand, China, Eastern Europe, Francophone Africa, and many other countries and regions, Davis shows why Our Bodies, Ourselves could never have been so influential if it had been just a popular manual on women’s health. It was precisely the book’s distinctive epistemology, inviting women to use their own experiences as resources for producing situated, critical knowledge about their bodies and health, that allowed the book to speak to so many women within and outside the United States. Davis provides a grounded analysis of how feminist knowledge and political practice actually travel, and she shows how the process of transforming Our Bodies, Ourselves offers a glimpse of a truly transnational feminism, one that joins the acknowledgment of difference and diversity among women in different locations with critical reflexivity and political empowerment.

Volatile Bodies

Volatile Bodies PDF Author: Elizabeth Grosz
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253208620
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
"Volatile Bodies demonstrates that the sexually specific body is socially constructed: biology or nature is inherently social and has no pure or natural 'origin' outside culture. Being the raw material of social and cultural organization, it is subject to the endless rewriting and inscription that constitute all sign systems. Grosz demonstrates that the theories of, among others, Freud and Lacan theorize a male body. She then turns to corporeal experiences unique to women--menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, menopause--to lay the groundwork for new theories of sexed corporeality."--Back cover.