In this volume, Shannon Bell recovers the courtesan of ancient Greece as both sophistic philosopher and erotic teacher.

Attwood examines Victorian attitudes to prostitution across a number of sources: medical, literary, pornographic.

Through the lens of feminist theory, Kuo examines the milieu of prostitutes and the role of prostitution in contemporary society, and how the interplay of those two works itself out in practice.

'Resurrecting Erotic Transgression' presents a feminist theological methodology based on the work of Julia Kristeva. This methodology provides the means for 'subjecting ambiguity', bringing to theology a recognition of the multiplicity of language and identity. A method of 'poetic reading' is proposed with a three stage process: articulation of the dualities present in and around a focal discourse; subversion of these dualities through a range of strategies; and the re-presentation of the discourse emphasising its ambiguous nature. The hermeneutical method of 'poetic reading' is explored in relation to three biblical texts and an image of the 'otherness' of God as whore.

Explores the connections between Onetti, a foundational figure of the 1960s "Boom" in Latin American literature, and other relevant writers and texts from Latin America and beyond.

The Bible contains many stories of prostitution. Feminist and liberation readings of these biblical narratives have often made sex workers invisible. 'Sex Working and the Bible' examines stories of biblical prostitution through the experiences and understanding of sex workers today. The Bible narratives - ranging across Rahab in the Book of Joshua, the story of Solomon and the two prostitutes, the anointing women traditions, and the apocalyptic vision of the whore of Babylon in Revelation - are set within both a practical and theoretical framework. This radical book offers a new, more inclusive way of approaching issues of gender, sexuality and prostitution in the Bible.

The controversy surrounding Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code has intensified interest in Mary Magdalene and Jane Schaberg provides an authoritative source for a deeper understanding and re-assessment of this popular figure. Within a progressive feminist framework, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene approaches Christian Testament sources through analysis of legend, archaeology, and gnostic/apocryphal traditions. This is the story of the suppression and distortion of a powerful woman leader - Schaberg presents Mary Magdalene as successor to Jesus in a challenging alternative to the Petrine primacy. >

This book delves into this almost unchartered territory, documenting the lived experiences of sex workers in Bangladesh, considering the complex realities of their day-to-day lives and the ways they negotiate their working conditions and relationships. Despite being the most common form of female deviance and criminality globally, we know very little about sex work in Asia and the global south. Drawing on feminist frameworks, it shows that the experiences of sex workers vary widely depending on the ways they enter the sex trade, their modes of operation, and relationships with significant others. Towards a Southern Approach to Sex Work contributes to feminist scholarship on sex work, by offering a much needed southern perspective, drawing on culturally specific data. It argues that the lived experience of sex workers comprises both victimhood and agency, deception and resilience, and that it is the management of these relationships that enable sex works to avoid social marginalization and alienation. An accessible and compelling read, this will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, gender studies, south Asian studies, cultural studies, social theory and policy makers. In addition, it will engage all those interested in learning more about how the sex trade operates in Bangladesh.

Body/State brings together original essays addressing various aspects of the evolving interaction between bodies and states. While each essay has different empirical and/or theoretical focus, authors consider a number of overlapping themes to appreciate the state's engagement with, and concern about, bodies. Divided into five parts, the first part, 'Bodies Modified and Divided' considers how the production, regulation, policing and maintenance of borders (physical, social, sexual, political, religious, etc.) are used to enable or constrain the physical (re)shaping of the body. Part two, 'Capital Bodies', extends the state's concern with the flows of bodies that make up the nation to consider how they are enrolled in the complex structures of capitalist exchange that form the basis for maintaining and contesting a set of relationships between states and markets. Part three, 'Deviance and Resistance', examines both how states seek to discipline ’non-normal’ bodies and appreciates the capacity of changes in the socio-cultural meaning and nature of bodies to resist and/or escape states. Part four, ’Sovereignty and Surveillance’, develops themes of deviancy and resistance by considering the impact of new technologies both on the intimate regulatory reach of states into and across bodies and on the nature of embodiment itself. Finally, Part five, ’The Body Virtual’, examines the impact of new technologies and online spaces both on the intimate regulatory reach of states into and across bodies and on the nature of embodiment itself. A varied collection of essays that address important and complex topics in a readable and creative way.

Readers and Mistresses: Kept Women in Victorian Literature identifies kept mistresses in British Victorian narrative and offers ways to understand their experiences. The author discusses kept women characters in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and Ruth, Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, and examines the methods their authors use to encourage reader empathy. This book also usefully demonstrates how to identify kept women when they are less visible in texts, including in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Dickens' Hard Times and Dombey and Son, and George Gissing's The Odd Women.