Women's & Gender Studies

Covers the lives of exceptional women throughout three and a half centuries of American history, including artists, lawyers, reformers, educators, entrepreneurs, physicists, writers, pioneers, presidents' ladies, film stars.

The life stories of American women who have in some way affected contemporary American life are explored in this lauded companion to Notable American Women, 1607-1950.

The publication of the first volumes of Notable American Women in 1971 was a watershed event in women's history. By uncovering and documenting the enormous contributions that women had made - previously overlooked or underappreciated - this important reference work changed the way historians thought and wrote about American history.

Biographical information about women: historical, current, and worldwide.

Clear and concise biographies, on figures such as Marie Curie, Yingchao Deng, Diana, Princess of Wales, Nell Gwyn, Pope Joan, Sappho, Mary Shelley, and Mai Zetterling.

Includes specially commissioned articles on the lives and writings of women who made significant contributions to economics.

Examine women’s contributions to film - in front of the camera and behind it!

An A-Z reference with entries on writers, on individual texts, and on general terms, genres and movements. The earliest written documents in medieval English (the visionary writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe) are covered in an historical - and geographical - sweep that takes us up to the present day

Overviews women autobiographers and autobiography from the Middle Ages to the present. Entries discuss individual writers, major works, national and ethnic autobiographical traditions, particular autobiographical genres, and special terms, issues, and themes related to women's autobiography from around the world.

Gathers together articles to offer a diverse, rich, and often neglected panorama of the nation’s past.

Covers people and topics ranging from the third to the fifteenth centuries, and treats well-known figures, more recently discovered or re-evaluated figures, and much more. Medieval women in the principal stages of life, both mortal and spiritual, are covered in entries on childhood, virginity, marriage, widowhood, penitentials, hagiography, and relics.

A comprehensive and valuable compendium of biographies of leading women in U.S. politics, past and present, and an examination of the wide range of women's movements.

The first comprehensive guide to women activists from every part of the world, illuminating the broad range of women's struggles to reform society from the 18th century to the present.

Informed by current health issues and health-care realities, offers readers practical information, historical aspects, and future directions, all meticulously researched and conveniently presented

This A to Z reference is a definitive resource, praised especially for its coverage of topics not previously considered under the umbrella of women's health.

A comprehensive historical review of the debates surrounding women's contributions and roles in science, with emphasis on women's access to education, training, and professional careers.

The Encyclopedia of Gender covers gender differences, the "Psychology of Women" and the "Psychology of Men", discussing psychological differences in personality, cognition, and behavior, as well as biologically based differences and how those differences impact behavior.

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, and brilliantly introduced by Judith Thurman, Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpiece weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology, and a host of other disciplines to analyze the Western notion of “woman” and to explore the power of sexuality. Sixty years after its initial publication, The Second Sex is still as eye-opening and pertinent as ever. This triumphant and genuinely revolutionary book began as an exceptional woman’s attempt to find out who and what she was. Drawing on extensive interviews with women of every age and station of life, masterfully synthesizing research about women’s bodies and psyches as well as their historic and economic roles, The Second Sex is an encyclopedic and cogently argued document about inequality and enforced “otherness.” This long-awaited new translation pays particular attention to the existentialist terms and French nuances that may have been misconstrued in the first English edition; restores Beauvoir’s phrasing, rhythms, and tone; and reinstates significant portions of the “Myths” and “History” chapters that were originally cut due to length, including accounts of more than seventy female figures. A vital and life-changing work that has dramatically revised the way women talk and think about themselves, Beauvoir’s magisterial treatise continues to provoke and inspire.

The bestselling classic that redefined our view od the relationship between beauty and female identity. In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."

"'No name woman' originally appeared, in slightly different form, in the January 1975 issue of Viva"--T.p. verso.

In her comic, scathing essay "Men Explain Things to Me," Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don't, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters.She ends on a serious note- because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, "He's trying to kill me!"This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf 's embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women.

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote Vindication of the Rights of Woman in response to public debate and discussion about the education of women. She argues that women should be educated according to their station, and that they could be more than mere wives to their husbands and educators to their children. The text is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy.