Interpreting and expanding on Tillie Olsen's Silences, a group of distinguished feminist critics explore the subject of silence and silencing in literature, criticism, and the academy, to provide, for the first time, a context for an important American critical tradition that continues to influence contemporary debates about feminism, multiculturalism, and the literary canon.

Vertaling door Harrie Lemmens.

The Semi-Transparent Envelope three acclaimed literary critics examine issues not only as theoretical aspects of the feminist agenda but within the evolution of their own works of fiction.

The discussion in this study of the relations between men and women is launcher from a crucial premise: that the struggle for equal rights for women reached a point where collaboration rather than confrontation between the sexes is necessary for continued progress.

The second book by the author of "The Lenses of Gender" offers an autobiographical account of Sandra and Daryl Bern's nearly 30-year marriage--a personal history of the Berns' past as well as a social history of a key period in the feminist movement. How the Berns' experiences--both positive and negative--comment on the viability and necessity of nontraditional gender arrangements in society today makes for fascinating reading.

Jorgensen-Earp provides a new understanding of the recurrent rhetorical need to employ conservative rhetoric in support of a radical cause. The Women's Social and Political Union, the militant branch of the English women's suffrage movement, turned to arson, bombing, and widespread property destruction as a strategy to achieve suffrage for women. Because of its comparative rarity, terrorist violence by reform (as opposed to revolutionary) movements is underexplored, as is the discursive rhetoric that accompanies this violence. Largely because of the moral stance that drives such movements, the need to justify violence is greater for the reformist than for the revolutionary terrorist. The burden of rhetorical justification falls even more heavily on women utilizing violence, an option generally perceived as open only to men. The militant suffragettes justifed their turn to limited terrorism by arguing that their violence was part of a "just war." Appropriating the rhetoric of a just war in defense of reformist violence allowed the suffragettes to exercise a traditional rhetorical vision for the sake of radical action. The concept of a just war allowed a spinning out of a fantasy of heroes, of a gallant band fighting against the odds. It challenged the imagination of the public to extend to women a heroic vision usually reserved for men and to accept the new expectations inherent in that vision. By incorporating the concept of a just war into their rhetoric, the WSPU leaders took the most conventional justification that Western tradition provides for the use of violence and adapted it to meet their unique circumstance as women using violence for political reform. This study challenges the common view that the suffragettes' use of military metaphors, their vilification of the government, and their violent attacks on property were signs of hysteria and self-destruction. Instead, what emerges is a picture of a deliberate, if controversial, strategy of violence supported by a rhetorical defense of unusual power and consistency.

In a ground-breaking study of Zora Neale Hurston, Deborah Plant takes issue with current notions of Hurston as a feminist and earlier impressions of her as an intellectual lightweight who disregarded serious issues of race in American culture. Instead, Plant calls Hurston a writer of resistance who challenged the politics of domination both in her life and in her work. One of the great geniuses of the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston stands out as a strong voice for African American women. Her anthropological inquiries as well as her evocative prose provide today's readers with a rich history of African American folk culture - a folk culture through which Hurston expressed her personal and political strategy of resistance and self-empowerment. Through readings of Hurston's fiction and autobiographical writings, Plant offers one of the first book-length discussions of Hurston's personal philosophy of individualism and self-reliance. From a discussion of Hurston's preacher father and influential mother, whose guiding philosophy is reflected in the title of this book, to the influence of Spinoza and Nietzsche, Plant puts into perspective the driving forces behind Hurston's powerful prose.

Beschrijving van de gezondheid en psychische gesteldheid van vrouwen in het licht van hun cyclische natuur.