What Nudism Exposes situates the nudist movement within the social and cultural context of postwar Canada by considering how nudist practices and attitudes both departed from and reinforced mainstream values in changing times. In this perceptive, eminently readable book, Mary-Ann Shantz describes how nudists sought social approval as they participated in contemporary debates about childrearing, pornography, and public nudity. Shantz explains the perspectives of the nudist movement while question...
How do liberal democracies produce citizens who are capable of governing themselves? In considering this question, Barbara Cruikshank rethinks central topics in political theory, including the relationship between welfare and citizenship, democracy and despotism, and subjectivity and subjection. Drawing on theories of power and the creation of subjects, Cruikshank argues that individuals in a democracy are made into self-governing citizens through the small-scale and everyday practices of volunt...
Bicycle Citizens (Asia: Local Studies / Global Themes, #1)
by Robin M. Le Blanc
While the typical Japanese male politician glides through his district in air-conditioned taxis, the typical female voter trundles along the side streets on a simple bicycle. In this ethnographic study of the politics of the average female citizen in Japan, Robin LeBlanc argues that this taxi-bicycle contrast reaches deeply into Japanese society. To study the relationship between gender and liberal democratic gender and liberal democratic citizenship, LeBlanc conducted extensive ethnographic fie...
Acts of Angry Writing (Series in Citizenship Studies)
by Alessandra Marino
From Aristotle to Seneca, ancient philosophers considered anger to be aggressive and incompatible with rational conduct, and later thinkers associated this "illogical" emotion with femininity and its flaws. In Acts of Angry Writing: On Citizenship and Orientalism in Postcolonial India, author Alessandra Marino looks at anger differently, as an essential condition for writing in contexts of struggle. Analyzing the activist literature and autobiographical writings of Indian writers Mahasweta Devi,...
Is queer theory dead? Through its increasing entanglement with capitalism, James Penney, controversially argues that queer theory has run its course. However, the 'end of queer' should not signal the death of liberatory sexual politics; rather, it presents the occasion to rethink the relation between sexuality and politics. The book makes a critical return to Marxism and psychoanalysis, via Freud and Lacan, and conducts a critical examination of queer theory's most famous proponents, includin...
This is a book about women in survival communities and the ways that survival and theology are used to shut down women's voices. Mariam Youssef examines the ways in which the condition of survival puts religious women in a bind by embedding paradigms into theology that, more often than not, reinforce women's subordination as a condition of survival. Women in survival communities are not only grappling with the existential threat that comes with their survival identities but also struggling to ma...
In this provocative analysis of Whitman's exemplary quest for happiness, Vivian Pollak skillfully explores the intimate relationships that contributed to his portrayal of masculinity in crisis. She maintains that in representing himself as a characteristic nineteenth-century American and in proposing to heal national ills, Whitman was trying to temper his own inner conflicts as well. The poet's expansive vision of natural eroticism and of unfettered comradeship between democratic equals was, how...
The Critical Surf Studies Reader
The evolution of surfing-from the first forms of wave-riding in Oceania, Africa, and the Americas to the inauguration of surfing as a competitive sport at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics-traverses the age of empire, the rise of globalization, and the onset of the digital age, taking on new meanings at each juncture. As corporations have sought to promote surfing as a lifestyle and leisure enterprise, the sport has also narrated its own epic myths that place North America at the center of surf culture an...
Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity
For nearly two millenia, despite repeated prohibitions, Christian women have preached. Some have preached in official settings; others have found alternative routes for expression. Prophecy, teaching, writing and song have all filled a broad definition of preaching. This anthology, with essays by an international group of scholars from several disciplines, investigates the diverse voices of Christian women who claimed the authority to preach and prophesy. The contributors examine the centuries o...
Challenging current theories about gender and achievement, this book assesses the issues at stake and analyses the policy drives and changing perceptions of gender on which the 'gender and achievement' debates are based. This new topical book guides the reader through the different theories and approaches, drawing together and reviewing work on gender and educational performance. The authors also highlight the continuing problems experienced by girls in terms of achievement and classroom interac...
Kudiyattam Theatre and the Actor's Consciousness (Consciousness, Literature and the Arts)
THE #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER What's love got to do with it in the meantime? You know where you want to be, but you have no clue how to get there. You know exactly what you want in life, but what you want is nowhere in sight. Perhaps your vision is unclear, your purpose still undefined. On top of it all, your relationships, particularly your romantic relationships, are failing. If these scenarios feel familiar way down in the deepest part of your gut -- then you, my dear, are smack dab in the mid...
Combining concepts and methodologies from anthropology, history, linguistics, literature, music, cultural studies, and film studies, this collection of ten original essays addresses issues crucial to gender and national identity in Russia from the October Revolution of 1917 to the present. Prefaced by an introduction on Russian cultural myths grounded in gender difference, the essays shed new light on such topics as national, cultural, and gender identity in the Russian language; typecasting of...
Cross-dressing, sexual identity, and the performance of gender are among the most hotly discussed topics in contemporary cultural studies. A vital addition to the growing body of literature, this book is the most in-depth and historically contextual study to date of Shakespeare's uses of the heroine in male disguise--man-playing-woman-playing-man--in all its theatrical and social complexity. Shapiro's study centers on the five plays in which Shakespeare employed the figure of the female page: Th...
In Foucault's Futures, Penelope Deutscher reconsiders the role of procreation in Foucault's thought, especially its proximity to risk, mortality, and death. She brings together his work on sexuality and biopolitics to challenge our understanding of the politicization of reproduction. By analyzing Foucault's contribution to the politics of maternity and its influence on the work of thinkers such as Roberto Esposito, Giorgio Agamben, and Judith Butler, Deutscher provides new insights into the conf...
