To commemorate Women's History Month throughout March, the Florham Library constructed displays to recognize contributions made by exceptional women in a number of different fields, including areas where women have long been underrepresented or underrecognized. Notable women highlighted in the exhibit include photographers like Carrie Mae Weems, Consuelo Kanaga, and Inge Morath, novelists like Rebecca West, and women who've made significant contributions in the film, television, and political worlds.
Athena's Daughters: Television's New Women Warriors by
This book is unique in its critical inquiry into the new woman warrior's appropriation of violence and the Western war narrative. Informed by feminist theoretical debates regarding women's new roles, the authors delve into the meaning of that appropriation for alternative storytelling. To date, television's "ferocious few" have received little scholarly attention. By inviting a variety of perspectives, editors Frances Early and Kathleen Kennedy provide a cutting-edge forum to recognize women's increasing role in popular culture as they are cast as action heroes. As a timely and accessible work, this book will appeal to scholars, feminists, cultural critics, and the general reader.
Badass Feminist Politics: Exploring Radical Edges of Feminist Theory, Communication, and Activism by
In the late 2010s, the United States experienced a period of widespread silencing. Protests of unsafe drinking water have been met with tear gas; national park employees, environmentalists, and scientists have been ordered to stop communicating publicly. Advocates for gun control are silenced even as mass shootings continue. Expressed dissent to political power is labeled as "fake news." DREAMers, Muslims, Trans military members, women, black bodies, the LGBTQI+ community, Latina/o/x communities, rape survivors, sex workers, and immigrants have all been systematically silenced. During this difficult time and despite such restrictions, advocates and allies persist and resist, forming dialogues that call to repel inequality in its many forms. Addressing the oppression of women of color, white women, women with (dis)abilities, and LBTQI+ individuals across cultures and contexts remains a central posit of feminist struggle and requires "a distinctly feminist politics of recognition." However, as second wave debates about feminism have revealed, there is no single way to express a feminist politic. Rather, living feminist politics requires individual interpretation and struggle, collective discussion and disagreement, and recognizing difference among women as well as points of convergence in feminist struggle. Badass Feminist Politics includes a diverse range of engaging feminist political projects to not only analyze the work being done on the ground but provide an overview for action that can be taken on by those seeking to engage in feminist activism in their own communities. Contributors included here are working for equality and equity and resisting violent, racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, and sexist language and action during this tension-filled political moment. Collectively, the book explores what it means to live and communicate feminist politics in everyday choices and actions, and how we can facilitate learning by analyzing these examples. Taking up current issues and new theoretical perspectives, the authors offer novel perspectives into what it means to live feminist politics. This book is a testament to resilience, resistance, communication, and forward thinking about what these themes all mean for new feminist agendas. Learning how to resist oppressive structures through words and actions is particularly important for students. Badass Feminist Politics features scholars from non-dominant groups taking up issues of marginalization and oppression, which can help people accomplish their social justice goals of inclusivity on the ground and in the classroom.
Consuelo Kanaga: An American Photographer by
When those meant to uphold the law become a law unto themselves, where are we to turn? Are the gung-ho guys in uniform bending the rules to lock up those who pose a genuine risk, or are they bent on sadiwm, like the notorious Volpe and Schwartz? Jack Sargeant looks at notorious cases of good cops gone bad - and those who started out that way. Read about lone cops who couldn't take the pressure anymore and went on killing sprees, through to the corruption that spread through the Met in the 1970s. Bad Cop, Bad Cop also digs out the truth from the controversy surrounding the beating of Rodney King and looks at the current state of play in the LAPD. Ultimately, the book poses the question: would you be any better when faced with a job dealing with an increasingly lawless society.
Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by
Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist - or increase - even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward all or most women. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women who challenge male dominance. And it's compatible with rewarding "the good ones," and singling out other women to serve as warnings to those who are out of order. It's also common for women to serve as scapegoats, be burned as witches, and treated as pariahs. Manne examines recent and current events such as the Isla Vista killings by Elliot Rodger, the case of the convicted serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, who preyed on African-American women as a police officer in Oklahoma City, Rush Limbaugh's diatribe against Sandra Fluke, and the "misogyny speech" of Julia Gillard, then Prime Minister of Australia, which went viral on YouTube. The book shows how these events, among others, set the stage for the 2016 US presidential election. Not only was the misogyny leveled against Hillary Clinton predictable in both quantity and quality, Manne argues it was predictable that many people would be prepared to forgive and forget regarding Donald Trump's history of sexual assault and harassment. For this, Manne argues, is misogyny's oft-overlooked and equally pernicious underbelly: exonerating or showing "himpathy" for the comparatively privileged men who dominate, threaten, and silence women.
Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture by
An important work on an essential subject,Fierce Angelsexplores and explodes the idea of the “strong black woman” as never before. Authoritative yet deeply personal and daringly confessional, Sheri Parks’s bold new study of the black female’s role as communal savior and martyr will challenge and change anyone who reads it. Fierce Angelsexposes the overwhelming emotional costs-as well as the benefits-attached to this role. Parks, an esteemed scholar and popular media personality, provides exclusive interviews and astute analysis, as well as accounts of her own searing and inspiring experiences, to highlight the myths and the realities of black women’s lives. Beginning with the oldest ongoing archetype, the Dark Feminine, Parks reveals the layered significance of the fertility of darkness-the abyss out of which the world was spoken into existence, the primordial creator in ancient Greek, Sumerian, and West African cultures, and the essence of Mother Earth herself. As these myths matured, they played critical parts in the assignment of maternal roles to women of African descent, the Dark Feminine acquiring a particularly acrid scent once she crossed the Atlantic Ocean in shackles, bound for a life of slavery. Parks traces the development of the “strong black woman” throughout her life on Southern plantations and New York streets and in countless kitchens in between. From the Black Madonna celebrated by Italian Americans to the nurturing and selfless “Mammy” forced to nurse her master’s child before her own, these abiding symbols of fortitude and dependability only solidified the mold into which the powerful dark woman was cast and paved a path that her descendants would have no choice but to follow. Fierce Angelsfollows the inheritors of this legacy of power, compassion, and familial devotion into today’s world, seeing her in Coretta Scott King, who relinquished her dreams for those of her husband, and in Angela Dawson, a mother in East Baltimore whose home was fire-bombed when she tried to save her community from drug dealers. Parks also shares important examples from entertainment, cogently reexamined and in some cases surprisingly reclaimed, from Hattie McDaniel inGone with the Windto the no-nonsense Lieutenant Anita Van Buren played by S. Epatha Merkerson onLaw & Order. Bringing it all home, Parks recalls the personal costs she’s paid for her own identity and fascinatingly captures those moments when she is expected to be all and know all, whether for her students at work or for strangers in the produce aisle in the supermarket. She investigates the support systems holding these stereotypes in place-latched onto by those both within and outside the traditional black community-and challenges readers, mothers, and daughters alike to examine how damaging and rewarding the assignment of this role can be and to take control of it within their lives. Credible and cathartic, piercing and provocative,Fierce Angelsis a book born of pain and introspection, a work sure to stir debate and become the primary source on this vital topic.
Inge Morath: An Illustrated Biography by
An illustrated biography of one of the 20th century's greatest photographers, this book looks at the life and work of Inge Morath. The late playwright Arthur Miller, speaking of his wife Inge Morath, said "She made poetry out of people and their places over half a century." Morath's curiosity, compassion, and bravery show vividly in this biography featuring stunning images from every stage of her career. Biographer Linda Gordon presents Morath traveling across the globe, often as a woman alone, quietly but firmly defying the conventions for what was appropriate for women at the time. Her photographs show her cosmopolitanism, which arose from her love of literature, her fluency in many languages, and her revulsion against Hitler's Germany, where she spent her teenage years. Her respect for all the world's cultures, from Spain to Iran to China, made her a kind of visual ethnographer. One of the first women to join the Magnum collective, Morath was a superb portraitist, particularly drawn to artists, such as painter Saul Steinberg, sculptor Louise Bourgeois, and writer Boris Pasternak. She worked mainly in black-and-white but also used color film exquisitely, even early in her career. Through Magnum assignments to document film sets she met Arthur Miller and their subsequent marriage lasted for forty years. Despite a variety of subject matter, Morath's work is unified by an intimacy and comfort with the world's many cultures. Truly a citizen of the world, her images are simultaneously universal and personal.
It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run For Office by
It Takes a Candidate serves as the first systematic, nationwide empirical account of the manner in which gender affects political ambition. Based on data from the Citizen Political Ambition Study, a national survey conducted on almost 3,800 'potential candidates', we find that women, even in the highest tiers of professional accomplishment, are substantially less likely than men to demonstrate ambition to seek elected office. Women are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. They are less likely than men to think they are 'qualified' to run for office. And they are less likely than men to express a willingness to run for office in the future. This gender gap in political ambition persists across generations. Despite cultural evolution and society's changing attitudes toward women in politics, running for public office remains a much less attractive and feasible endeavor for women than men.
Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema by
Winner of the 2018 Richard Wall Memorial Award​ from the Theater Library Association Liberating Hollywood examines the professional experiences and creative output of women filmmakers during a unique moment in history when the social justice movements that defined the 1960s and 1970s challenged the enduring culture of sexism and racism in the U.S. film industry. Throughout the 1970s feminist reform efforts resulted in a noticeable rise in the number of women directors, yet at the same time the institutionalized sexism of Hollywood continued to create obstacles to closing the gender gap. Maya Montañez Smukler reveals that during this era there were an estimated sixteen women making independent and studio films: Penny Allen, Karen Arthur, Anne Bancroft, Joan Darling, Lee Grant, Barbara Loden, Elaine May, Barbara Peeters, Joan Rivers, Stephanie Rothman, Beverly Sebastian, Joan Micklin Silver, Joan Tewkesbury, Jane Wagner, Nancy Walker, and Claudia Weill. Drawing on interviews conducted by the author, Liberating Hollywood is the first study of women directors within the intersection of second wave feminism, civil rights legislation, and Hollywood to investigate the remarkable careers of these filmmakers during one of the most mythologized periods in American film history.
Magna Brava: Magnum's Women Photographers , Eve Arnold, Martine Franck, Susan Meiselas, Inge Morath, Marilyn Silverstone by
Magna Brava celebrates the work of five women photographers who have brought us moving, daring, and breathtaking images from all around the globe. All five work for the Magnum photo agency and are highly acclaimed and respected photojournalists.
Minority Women and Western Media: Challenging Representations and Articulating New Voices by
Minority Women and Western Media: Challenging Representations and Articulating New Voices presents research examining media portrayals of women from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. It provides qualitative and quantitative findings of how women are stereotyped and misrepresented not only because of their gender but also their race, religion, ability, physical attributes, and political status. Whilst their voices are frequently excluded, marginalized and misrepresented, the chapters in this volume show how minority women are creating and articulating new discourses and challenging assumptions and expectations about themselves. This book provides insights into how women are represented in different media, including newspapers, television shows, films, and online platforms. Scholars of media studies, women's studies, and communication will find this book particularly useful.
Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well by
This Will Not End Well is the first book to present a comprehensive overview of Nan Goldin's work as a filmmaker. Accompanying the retrospective show and tour of the same name, organized by Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the book draws from the nearly dozen slideshows and films Goldin has made from thousands of photographs, film sequences, audio tapes and music tracks. The stories told range from the trauma of her family history to the portrayal of her bohemian friends, to a journey into the darkness of addiction. By focusing exclusively on slideshows and video installations, This Will Not End Well aims to fully embrace Goldin's vision of how her work should be experienced. The book retains the presentation of the slide shows by showing all images in the same format on a black background and sequenced as they are in the sources. The 20 texts, of which the major part are newly commissioned by Goldin, complement and deepen the intention of her work. I'm finally being shown as I always dreamt to be, as a filmmaker. - Nan Goldin, This Will Not End Well Co-published with Moderna Museet, Stockholm
On Female Body Experience: "Throwing Like A Girl" and Other Essays by
Written over a span of more than two decades, the essays by Iris Marion Young collected in this volume describe diverse aspects of women's lived body experience in modern Western societies. Drawing on the ideas of several twentieth century continental philosophers--including Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Heidegger, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty--Young constructs rigorous analytic categories for interpreting embodied subjectivity. The essays combine theoretical description of experience with normative evaluation of the unjust constraints on their freedom and opportunity that continue to burden many women. The lead essay rethinks the purpose of the category of "gender" for feminist theory, after important debates have questioned its usefulness. Other essays include reflection on the meaning of being at home and the need for privacy in old age residences as well as essays that analyze aspects of the experience of women and girls that have received little attention even in feminist theory--such as the sexuality of breasts, or menstruation as punctuation in a woman's life story. Young describes the phenomenology of moving in a pregnant body and the tactile pleasures of clothing. While academically rigorous, the essays are also written with engaging style, incorporating vivid imagery and autobiographical narrative. On Female Body Experience raises issues and takes positions that speak to scholars and students in philosophy, sociology, geography, medicine, nursing, and education.
Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World by
With a masterful ability to connect their social contexts to well-chosen and telling details of their personal lives, Claudia Roth Pierpont gives us portraits of twelve amazingly diverse and influential literary women of the twentieth century, women who remade themselves and the world through their art. Gertrude Stein, Mae West, Margaret Mitchell, Eudora Welty, Ayn Rand, Doris Lessing, Anais Nin, Zora Neale Hurston, Marina Tsvetaeva, Hannah Arendt and Mary Mccarthy, and Olive Schreiner: Pierpont is clear-eyed in her examination of each member of this varied group, connectng her subjects firmly to the issues of sexual freedom, race, and politics that bound them to their times, even as she exposes the roots of their uniqueness. "Pierpont['s] graceful essays are at once erudite and personal in their focus." ?"The Boston Globe ""One of the most ceaselessly interesting books I've read in some time." ?Lorrie Moore, "The New York Review of Books"
Raising the Race: Black Career Women Redefine Marriage, Motherhood, and Community by
Winner of the 2017 Race, Gender, and Class Section Book Award from the American Sociological Association Popular discussions of professional women often dwell on the conflicts faced by the woman who attempts to "have it all," raising children while climbing up the corporate ladder. Yet for all the articles and books written on this subject, there has been little work that focuses on the experience of African American professional women or asks how their perspectives on work-family balance might be unique. Raising the Race is the first scholarly book to examine how black, married career women juggle their relationships with their extended and nuclear families, the expectations of the black community, and their desires to raise healthy, independent children. Drawing from extensive interviews with twenty-three Atlanta-based professional women who left or modified careers as attorneys, physicians, executives, and administrators, anthropologist Riché J. Daniel Barnes found that their decisions were deeply rooted in an awareness of black women's historical struggles. Departing from the possessive individualistic discourse of "having it all," the women profiled here think beyond their own situation--considering ways their decisions might help the entire black community. Giving a voice to women whose perspectives have been underrepresented in debates about work-family balance, Barnes's profiles enable us to perceive these women as fully fledged individuals, each with her own concerns and priorities. Yet Barnes is also able to locate many common themes from these black women's experiences, and uses them to propose policy initiatives that would improve the work and family lives of all Americans.
The Road to Reno by
Inge Morath's first trip across the United States followed a red grease-pencil line drawn by her traveling companion, Henri Cartier-Bresson. In 1960 the two drove from New York through Gettysburg, Memphis, and Albuquerque to Reno. They were among 18 photojournalists commissioned by Magnum to document the Nevada set of Arthur Miller's The Misfits. The destination was momentous for Morath--she took remarkable photographs, and later married Miller after his divorce from Marilyn Monroe--but it is the trip, the 18 days she spent traveling, as documented in both photographs and journal entries, ("written each night at the table in a motel room that was always in a different place but always looked the same"), that in its casualness can unfold for readers her carefully observed, insightful, and compassionate approach to reportage. Traveling westward, Morath combines a foreigner's awe of alien terrain with the curiosity of small-town life, offering glimpses into rather than encapsulations of her experience at each stop. This is the first publication of her work to include her writing alongside her photographs, and it includes an afterword by Arthur Miller.
The Selected Letters of Rebecca West by
From the time that George Bernard Shaw remarked that "Rebecca West could handle a pen as brilliantly as ever I could and much more savagely," West's writings and her politics have elicited strong reactions. This collection of her letters--the first ever published--has been culled from the estimated ten thousand she wrote during her long life. The more than two hundred selected letters follow this spirited author, critic, and journalist from her first feminist campaign for women's suffrage when she was a teenager through her reassessments of the twentieth century written in 1982, in her ninetieth year. The letters, which are presented in full, include correspondence with West's famous lover H. G. Wells and with Shaw, Virginia Woolf, Emma Goldman, Noel Coward, and many others; offer pronouncements on such contemporary authors as Norman Mailer, Nadine Gordimer, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; and provide new insights into her battles against misogyny, fascism, and communism. West deliberately fashions her own biography through this intensely personal correspondence, challenging rival accounts of her groundbreaking professional career, her frustrating love life, and her tormented family relations. Engrossing to read, the collection sheds new light on this important figure and her social and literary milieu.
Speaking While Female: 75 Extraordinary Speeches by American Women by
This monumental collection of speeches charts the story of America as it unfolded through the decades, showing that at every critical juncture, women were speaking. It's a long-needed corrective to the story we have always told ourselves about whose ideas and voices shaped the nation--a search for long-buried truths, a celebration, and an inspiration.
That's What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together by
#1 Washington Post Bestseller First things first: There will be no man shaming in That's What She Said. A recent Harvard study found that corporate "diversity training" has actually made the gender gap worse--in part because it makes men feel demonized. Women, meanwhile, have been told closing the gender gap is up to them: they need to speak up, to be more confident, to demand to be paid what they're worth. They discuss these issues amongst themselves all the time. What they don't do is talk to men about it. It's time to end that disconnect. More people in leadership roles are genuinely trying to transform the way we work together, because there's abundant evidence that companies with more women in senior leadership perform better by virtually every measure. Yet despite good intentions, men often lack the tools they need, leading to fumbles, missteps, frustration and misunderstanding that continue to inflict real and lasting damage on women's careers. That's What She Said solves for that dilemma. Filled with illuminating anecdotes, data from the most recent studies, and stories from Joanne Lipman's own journey to the top of a male-dominated industry, it shows how we can win by reaching across the gender divide. What can the Enron scandal teach us about the way men and women communicate professionally? How does brain chemistry help explain men's fear of women's emotions at work? Why did Kimberly Clark have an all-male team of executives in charge of their Kotex tampon line? What can we learn from Iceland's campaign to "feminize" an entire nation? That's What She Said shows why empowering women as true equals is an essential goal for women and men--and offers a roadmap for getting there. That's What She Said solves for: · The respect gap · Unconscious bias · Interruptions · The pay and promotion gap · Being heard · The motherhood penalty · "Bropropriation" and "mansplaining" · And more....
Vivian Maier: The Color Work by
The first definitive monograph of color photographs by American street photographer Vivian Maier. Photographer Vivian Maier's allure endures even though many details of her life continue to remain a mystery. Her story--the secretive nanny-photographer who became a pioneer photographer--has only been pieced together from the thousands of images she made and the handful of facts that have surfaced about her life. Vivian Maier: The Color Work is the largest and most highly curated published collection of Maier's full-color photographs to date. With a foreword by world-renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz and text by curator Colin Westerbeck, this definitive volume sheds light on the nature of Maier's color images, examining them within the context of her black-and-white work as well as the images of street photographers with whom she clearly had kinship, like Eugene Atget and Lee Friedlander. With more than 150 color photographs, most of which have never been published in book form, this collection of images deepens our understanding of Maier, as its immediacy demonstrates how keen she was to record and present her interpretation of the world around her.
Women Photographers: From Julia Margaret Cameron to Cindy Sherman by
Since the inception of photography as an art form nearly 200 years ago, women have played an important role in the development of the genre, often pushing boundaries and defying social convention. This comprehensive volume features sixty of the most important women photographers. Each artist is profiled in spreads featuring splendid reproductions of their key works and an in-depth overview of their careers and contributions to the art of photography. Biographical information for each subject and a contextual essay focusing on the impact of women in the history of the medium makes this an excellent illustrated reference.
