Women's Studies: The Basics
Bonnie G. Smith
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 0415609445
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Women’s Studies: The Basics is an accessible introduction into the ever expanding and increasingly relevant field of studies focused on women. Tracing the history of the discipline from its origins, this text sets out the main agendas of women’s studies and feminism, exploring the global development of the subject over time, and highlighting its relevance in the contemporary world. Reflecting the diversity of the field, core themes include:
- the interdisciplinary nature of women’s studies
- core feminist theories and the feminist agenda
- issues of intersectionality: women, race, class and gender
- women, sexuality and the body
- global perspectives on the study of women
- the relationship between women’s studies and gender studies.
Providing a firm foundation for all those new to the subject, this book is valuable reading for undergraduates and postgraduates majoring in women’s studies and gender studies, and all those in related disciplines seeking a helpful overview for women-centred, subject specific courses.
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States, even the insertion of writers who created the extraordinary Latin “boom” in literature was seen as dragging the culture down. Attention paid to women’s issues in newly emerging countries was said to drain energy from the overall well-being of the new nation. Women’s Studies, it was said, was another version of Western imperialism. Wherever it sprouted, there was a justification for squashing Women’s Studies. It was no accident that the “culture wars” against women’s and minority
York: Columbia University Press. 6 FEMINIST THEORIES AND METHODS There are many “theories” that now inform Women’s Studies and methods that are called “feminist” or distinct to Women’s Studies. The theories are sets of ideas clustered together as part of unified, systematic thought such as “critical race theory” or “post-colonial theory,” both of which we have alluded to in earlier chapters. Theories may be said to be in contrast to early feminist ideas, which, some theorists suggest, were
sprang up overnight and existing universities expanded both in numbers of students and in the variety of their offerings. One accomplishment of the “second wave” was the mounting of a clear and surprisingly successful assault on the male domination of higher education, even as it engaged in this expansion. “Women’s Studies grew out of the recognition of the gross inequities in women’s lived realities,” one South Korean researcher explained, “and through an accumulation of academic knowledge from
from their own debasement. Colonial theorists might argue that while welcoming the voices of subalterns would not necessarily yield the “whole truth,” it might have undermined the claims of military, capitalist, and other agents of colonial and post-colonial power to be philanthropic in their goals. Subalterns might not see themselves as utter victims but they also might see themselves in this way. Searching for the multiple voices of subaltern women can involve the new and diverse readings of
and discriminated against in a variety of ways. Thus, sexuality and the body pose issues central to political interests and scholarly ones. Although students are still concerned with reproductive rights, with which much of the work on sexuality began, we now have a wide range of new terms and new subject matter to cover—all of them encompassed under the rubric of sexuality and embodiment. EMBODIMENT AND SEXUALITY GENDER AND BODY POLITICS The body has long been the subject of political control,
