Crossing disciplinary and chronological boundaries, this volume integrates text and image, essays and object pages to explore the processes inherent in gender representation, rather than resituating women in particular categories or spheres as other scholarly publications and exhibitions have done. Taking its lead from the 'Picturing' Women project on which it reflects and builds, the volume makes a substantial methodological contribution to the analysis of gender discourse and visuality. It offers new and stimulating scholarship that confronts historical patterns of representation that have defined what women were and are seen to be, and presents new contexts for unveiling what art historian Linda Nochlin has called the 'mixed messages' of representations of women.

In Fantasies of Femininity, Jane Ussher focuses on unraveling the contradictory visions of feminine sexuality: the fact that representations of the definition of woman seethe with sexuality yet for centuries women have been condemned for exploring their own sexual desires. In her quest for the sources of feminine representation, Ussher interviewed dozens of women - as well as some men - and combed popular media - from Seventeen to Cosmopolitan and Dallas to Donahue - to identify what shapes women's symbolic images of sex and femininity. Ussher argues that women have effectively resisted and subverted these archetypal fantasies of femininity, and in the process of so doing, reframed the very boundaries of sex. In this way, she exposes as myth much of what we think we know about "woman" and about "sex."

Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this book presents an insightful exploration of the theoretical and practical advances in women's health care. The opening part examines the various shapes that a new framework in women's health might take. Such issues as using the male experience as the norm, reducing women to merely reproductive entities, and promoting the notion of biological primacy are addressed. In the second part, contributors carry the argument for reframing women's health into the sociopolitical arena, looking at women in the Third World and at integrating women's health into health care reform. Part Three examines significant issues dealing with reproduction and sexuality, while Part Four focuses on the impact of violence and

Reframing difference is the first major study of two overlapping strands of contemporary French cinema, cinema beur (films by young directors of Maghrebi immigrant origin) and cinema de banlieue (films set in France's disadvantaged outer-city estates). Carrie Tarr's insightful account draws on a wide range of films, from directors such as Mehdi Charef, Mathieu Kassovitz and Djamel Bensalah. Her analyses compare the work of male and female, majority and minority film-makers, and emphasise the significance of authorship in the representation of gender and ethnicity. Foregrounding such issues as the quest for identity, the negotiation of space and the recourse to memory and history, she argues that these films challenge and reframe the symbolic spaces of French culture, addressing issues of ethnicity and difference which are central to today's debates about what it means to be French. This timely book is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between cinema and citizenship in a multicultural society.

How does one read the story of Sarah and Hagar, or Jezebel and Rahab today, if one is a woman reader situated in a postcolonial society? This is the question undergirding this work, which considers a selection of biblical texts in which women have significant roles. Employing both a gender and a postcolonial lens, it asks sharp questions both of the interests embedded in the texts themselves and of their impact upon contemporary women readers. Whereas most postcolonial studies have been undertaken from the perspective of the colonized this work reads the texts from the position of a settler descendant, and is an attempt to engage with the disquietening and challenging questions that reading from such a location raises. Letters from early settler women in New Zealand, contemporary fiction, and personal reminiscence become tools for the task, complementing those traditionally employed in critical biblical readings.

In an accessible yet complex way, Rebekah Modrak and Bill Anthes explore photographic theory, history, and technique to bring photographic education up to date with contemporary photographic practice. --

In recent years, Italian cinema has experienced a quiet revolution: the proliferation of films by women. But their thought-provoking work has not yet received the attention it deserves. Reframing Italy fills this gap. The book introduces readers to films and documentaries by recognized women directors such as Cristina Comencini, Wilma Labate, Alina Marazzi, Antonietta De Lillo, Marina Spada, and Francesca Comencini, as well as to filmmakers whose work has so far been undeservedly ignored. Through a thematically based analysis supported by case studies, Luciano and Scarparo argue that Italian women filmmakers, while not overtly feminist, are producing work that increasingly foregrounds female subjectivity from a variety of social, political, and cultural positions. This book, with its accompanying video interviews, explores the filmmakers’ challenging relationship with a highly patriarchal cinema industry. The incisive readings of individual films demonstrate how women’s rich cinematic production reframes the aesthetic of their cinematic fathers, re-positions relationships between mothers and daughters, functions as a space for remembering women’s (hi)stories, and highlights pressing social issues such as immigration and workplace discrimination. This original and timely study makes an invaluable contribution to film studies and to the study of gender and culture in the early twenty-first century.

The aim of this book is to reflect on ''vernacularity'' and culture. It concentrates on two major domains: first it attempts to reframe our understanding of vernacularity by addressing the subject in the context of globalisation, cross-disciplinarity, and development, and second, it discusses the phenomenon of how vernacularity has been treated, used, employed, manipulated, practiced, maintained, learned, reconstructed, preserved and conserved, at the level of individual and community experience. Scholars from a wide variety of knowledge fields have participated in enriching and engaging discussions, as to how both domains can be addressed. To expedite these aims, this book adopts the theme "Reframing the Vernacular: Politics, Semiotics, and Representation",organised around the following major sub-themes: • Transformation in the vernacular built environment • Vernacular architecture and representation • The meaning of home • Symbolic intervention and interpretation of vernacularity • The semiotics of place • The politics of ethnicity and settlement • Global tourism and its impacts on vernacular settlement • Vernacular built form and aesthetics • Technology and construction in vernacular built forms • Vernacular language - writing and oral traditions

Reframing remembrance examines films about the Nazi Occupation of France, charting how this period has been commemorated and how it has affected the articulation of French national identity. The book proposes that 1995 marked the beginning of a new approach to commemoration, reflected by socio-political acts, such as Jacques Chirac’s July 1995 Vél’ d’Hiv speech, and artistic acts, most notably films set during the Occupation. This is an approach that embraces critical engagement with history and its retelling. With relevance to countries beyond France and events far removed from the Second World War, Reframing remembrance highlights the need for ongoing, honest remembrance and self-reflection as cultural representations of history continue to shape contemporary views about nations’ identities and their global responsibilities.

Given the increasingly diverse terrain of 21st century organizational life, research-ers and students are exploring theoretical frameworks and analytic tools that attempt to understand organizing proc-esses in all of their richness and complexity. As such, there is widespread recognition of the need to ex-amine organizations as constructed through, and repositories of, difference; that is, as complex intersec-tions of discourses of gender, race, class, sexuality, and other markers of difference. In this sense, organi-zations are one of the principal sites where differences that make a difference (Bateson) are produced and reproduced. Communication is not something that simply occurs in organizations; rather, organizing processes are constituted and made meaningful by the mundane communication practices of its members. This book examines difference as a communicative phenomenon: The differences that make a difference are social and material constructions that can be productively understood by examining them as communica-tively accomplished. All of the scholars in this volume explore difference from a variety of per-spectives, each of which examines systematically the relationships among communication, organizing, and difference. KEY FEATURES & BENEFITS: The book explores the relationships among communication, organizing, and difference through three foci: (1) Research, (2) Pedagogy, and (3) Practice. In Section I-Researching Difference, organizational communication scholars explore a number of ways in which differ-ence can be critically examined as a communicative phenomenon, with the goal being to demonstrate the importance of difference as a construct a sensitizing device through which the complexities of organiza-tional communication processes can be examined and better understood. In Section II-Teaching Difference, chapters move beyond teaching diversity in the workplace and instead explore how students can learn to appreciate