Feminism and HistoryJoan Wallach Scott The question of difference - between women and men and among women - is at the heart of feminist theory and the history of feminism. Feminists have long debated the meanings of sexual difference: is it an underlying truth of nature or the result of changing social belief? Are women the same asor different from men? Feminism and History argues that sexual difference, indeed that all forms of social differentation, cannot be understood apart from history. It brings together the best critical articles available to analyze the ways in which differences among women and men have been produced. The articles range across many countries and time periods (from the Middle Ages to the present) and they include analyses of western and non-western experiences. There are discussions of race in the United States and in colonial contexts. A variety of theoretical approaches to the question ofdifference is included; but in all cases, difference is the focus of the historian's analysis. The analytic focus on difference distinguishes this book from other collections of women's history. It will be fascinating and essential reading for students and teachers of history, women's studies, genedr studies, cultural studies, queer theory, and feminist theory. |
Contents
Does A Sex Have A History? | 17 |
The Dialectics of Black Womanhood | 34 |
Funü Guojia Jiating | 48 |
Copyright | |
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American analysis argued Athénaïs Augsburg black women brothel capital century Chinese colonial concept concubinage context cultural cultural feminism daughter Denise Riley Dhanvanthi Rama Rau Diary difference discourse distinctions domestic domination DuPont economic Eleanor Parke Custis equality European women example female feminine feminism feminist femmes France French funü gender girls groups heterosexual historians homosexual human Ibid identity ideology Indian woman Indies kinship labour letters Lévi-Strauss lives London Madeleine DuPont male marriage married Mary Mary Hallock Foote masculine Mayo Mayo's métis Michel Foucault Michelet modern moral Mother India nationalist Negro nineteenth nineteenth-century oppression organization Paris patriarchy phallus political position prostitutes psychoanalysis race racial racism Reformation relations relationships reproduction role Saint Luke Sarah sexual slave social society sterilization structure struggle symbolic theory tion University Press Walker white women womanhood women's history women's movement workers York young