In the 1890s one phrase above all stood as shorthand for the various controversies over gender that swirled throughout the period: “the New Woman.” In New Women fiction, progressive writers such as Sarah Grand, George Egerton, and Ella D’Arcy gave imaginative life to the plight of modern women—and reactionaries such as Grant Allen attempted to put women back in their place. In all the leading journals of the day these and other writers argued their cases in essays, letters, and reviews as well as in fiction. This anthology brings together for the first time a representative selection of the most important, interesting, and influential of New Woman writings.

Explores what and how women of widely differing cultures have read through the ages, from Cro-Magnon caves to the digital readers of today, drawing distinctions between male and female readers and detailing how female literacy has been suppressed in some parts of the world.

In North America between 1894 and 1930, the rise of the “New Woman” sparked controversy on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world. As she demanded a public voice as well as private fulfillment through work, education, and politics, American journalists debated and defined her. Who was she and where did she come from? Was she to be celebrated as the agent of progress or reviled as a traitor to the traditional family? Over time, the dominant version of the American New Woman became typified as white, educated, and middle class: the suffragist, progressive reformer, and bloomer-wearing bicyclist. By the 1920s, the jazz-dancing flapper epitomized her. Yet she also had many other faces. Bringing together a diverse range of essays from the periodical press of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Martha H. Patterson shows how the New Woman differed according to region, class, politics, race, ethnicity, and historical circumstance. In addition to the New Woman’s prevailing incarnations, she appears here as a gun-wielding heroine, imperialist symbol, assimilationist icon, entrepreneur, socialist, anarchist, thief, vamp, and eugenicist. Together, these readings redefine our understanding of the New Woman and her cultural impact.

This book is an original and fascinating look at the topos of the woman reader and its functioning in cultural debate between the accession of Queen Victoria and the First World War. The issue of women and reading--what they should read; what they should be protected from; how, what, and when they should read--was the focus of lively discussion in the nineteenth century in a wide range of media. Flint uses recent feminist analyses of how women read as a context for her detailed and readable study of these debates, exploring in a variety of texts--from magazines like Woman's World and My Lady's Novelette to works of literature like Jane Eyre and The Portrait of a Lady--the range of stereotypes and directives addressed to women readers, and their influence on the writing of fiction. She also looks at how women readers of all classes understood their own reading experiences.

Winner of the Association of Women in Slavic Studies Heldt Prize Winner of the Central Eurasian Studies Society History and Humanities Book Award Honorable mention for the W. Bruce Lincoln Prize Book Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) This groundbreaking work in women's history explores the lives of Uzbek women, in their own voices and words, before and after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Drawing upon their oral histories and writings, Marianne Kamp reexamines the Soviet Hujum, the 1927 campaign in Soviet Central Asia to encourage mass unveiling as a path to social and intellectual "liberation." This engaging examination of changing Uzbek ideas about women in the early twentieth century reveals the complexities of a volatile time: why some Uzbek women chose to unveil, why many were forcibly unveiled, why a campaign for unveiling triggered massive violence against women, and how the national memory of this pivotal event remains contested today.

Weisser (English, Adelphi U.) writes that her anthology is "for anyone who is interested in understanding the conflicted but powerful female urge to experience the pleasure and endure the pain of romantic love." In particular, she explores the collision of pervasive media images of romance with feminist values of independence and self-assertion. Several dozen historic and contemporary works of criticism, personal essays, and letters, by feminist and anti-feminist thinkers, consider changing images of romantic love and whether romance, fundamentally, weakens or empowers women. Contributors include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charlotte Bronte, Karen Horney, Simone de Beauvoir, Rita Mae Brown, bell hooks, Vivian Gornick, and Carolyn Heilbrun. c. Book News Inc.

Often poorly represented in buyers' guides, women's books are now covered in this articulate and intentionally eclectic reader's guide. Covering a wealth of remarkable novels, narratives, biographies, and more, this resource for general readers offers more than 500 entries--capturing the flavor of each book. Includes seven cross-referenced indexes.

The only anthology available documenting 100 years of women in American sports

The Women, Gender and Development Reader II is the definitive volume of literature dedicated to women in the development process. Now in a fully revised second edition, the editors expertly present the impacts of social, political and economic change by reviewing such topical issues as migration, persistent structural discrimination, the global recession, and climate change. Approached from a multidisciplinary perspective, the theoretical debates are vividly illustrated by an array of global case studies. This now classic book, has been designed as a comprehensive reader, presenting the best of the now vast body of literature. The book is divided into five parts, incorporating readings from the leading experts and authorities in each field. The result is a unique and extensive discussion, a guide to the evolution of the field, and a vital point of reference for those studying or with a keen interest in women in the development process.