In this new and expanded edition of their controversial 1994 book, the authors update their analysis of what's gone wrong with Women's Studies programs. Their three new chapters provide a devastating and detailed examination of the routine practices found in feminst teaching and research.
But, as Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge charge in this hard-hitting book, the attempt to make Women's Studies serve a political agenda has led to deeply problematic results: dubious scholarship, pedagogical practices that resemble indoctrination more than education, and the alienation of countless potential supporters.
Once confident in the potential of feminism to create a more equitable and just society, Daphne Patai persuasively demonstrates in Heterophobia how the efforts of some feminists - members of what she calls the "sexual harassment industry" - have created an environment that stifles healthy and natural interactions between the sexes. The tremendous growth of sexual harassment legislation represents feminism's greatest contemporary success, but this victory has dubious consequences - a world where kindergarten boys face legal action for kissing female classmates and men are sued by coworkers for offenses such as unwanted hugs, uninvited compliments, or glances that last too long.
Reviewers of this book have praised Christina Hoff Sommer's well-reasoned argument against many feminists' reliance on misleading, politically motivated 'facts' about how women are victimised.
This volume brings together for the first time more than two dozen of Daphne PataiOs incisive and at times satirical essays dealing with the academic and intellectual orthodoxies of our time. Patai draws on her years of experience in an increasingly bizarre academic world, where a stifling politicization threatens genuine teaching and learning. Addressing the rise of feminist dogma, the domination of politics over knowledge, the shoddy thinking and moralizing that hide behind identity politics, and the degradation of scholarship, her essays offer a resounding defense of liberal values. Patai takes aim at the unctuous and also dangerous posturing that has brought us restrictive speech codes, harassment policies, and a vigilante atmosphere, while suppressing plain speaking about crucial issues. But these trenchant essays are not limited to academic life, for the ideas and practices popularized there have spread far beyond campus borders. Included are two new pieces written especially for this volume, one on the bullying tactics of a famous feminist and the other on Islamic fundamentalism.
Political correctness, idealizing the oppressed, and an affinity for authoritarian and charismatic leaders are all parts of what Ellis calls "the dark side of the left."
"The tensions, dilemmas, and exhilarating pleasures of feminist teaching converge in this fascinating book, which documents actual classroom give-and-take. In addition to observing, the authors interviewed the teachers and several students in each class. The result is a Rashomon portrayal of the same moment, differently perceived, as well as fresh insight into interaction between social positioning, experience, and learning." Considearzioni di: Barrie Thorne, author of Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School.
As one of the main players in the second wave of feminism, Sheila Tobias returns to Kate Millets central tenet, sexual politics, and argues that it can still unite progressive men and women around a common set of goals. Providing a map of a complex terrain, Tobias details generations of issues, each more radical and therefore harder to tackle than the ones before. She sets the story in two contexts: feminisms own evolving strategies and Americas political landscape. Even though her passion for feminism remains, she is not unwilling to critique the sisterhood and herself for failing to see, for example, that not every woman would be a feminist nor every man an enemy. In the heady first years, feminists forgot that deeper even than gender is the liberal/conservative divide in American politics. }As one of the main players in the second wave of feminism, Sheila Tobias returns to Kate Millets central tenet, sexual politics, and argues that it can still unite progressive men and women around a common set of goals. Providing a map of a complex terrain, Tobias details generations of issues, each more radical and therefore harder to tackle than the ones before. She sets the story in two contexts: feminisms own evolving strategies and Americas political landscape. Even though her passion for feminism remains, she is not unwilling to critique the sisterhood and herself for failing to see, for example, that not every woman would be a feminist nor every man an enemy. In the heady first years, feminists forgot that deeper even than gender is the liberal/conservative divide in American politics.From the origins of the movement through feminist theory and new scholarship on women, Tobias traces the political history of the second wave and its comeuppance at the hands of Phyllis Schaflys StopERAcoincidental with the nations careering toward the Right. Somehow, feminism survived the 1980s, but by having to fight brush fires throughout the Reagan-Bush presidencies, the movement lost some of its breadth and much of its taste for the mainstream. Because of her activism and her feeling for the period she chronicles, Tobias is at once inside and outside the issues of sexual preference, pornography, the draft, the Mommy Track, comparable worth, affirmative action, reproductive rights, and the challenges of equality versus difference. }
Women's Studies Serials: A Quarter-Century of Development examines the history, growth, and present status of women's studies collections available in the United States and around the world. This text investigates the accessibility to women's studies periodicals, how they are used and by whom, and identifies areas where further research is needed to help collection managers and librarians make the best selection decisions for their serials collections. Women's Studies Serials will help you choose serials that meet the needs of your patrons and that comply with the limitations of your budget. Offering you charts, tables, and statistical data, Women's Studies Serials covers many topics that will help you build a thorough and accessible women's studies collection or renovate an existing collection, including: the problems, influences, and expectations involved in women's studies faculty's daily work with magazines and journals choosing the best CD-Rom products for women's studies research based on cost, coverage, content, and recommendations for acquisition techniques and insights for teaching cataloging in an interdisciplinary, dynamic, and evolving information environment examining academic women's studies serials on the World Wide Web and determining whether they are helpful to students and faculty suggestions that may alleviate the inadequacies of subject description and access to current periodical literature concerning African-American women and Latinas in the United States how women's studies serials published in Ireland are adding support and recognition to the discipline of women's studies examining popular women's periodicals in the Popular Culture Collection at Bowling Green State University and how they help reveal and document the history of women's roles in society the management and collection methods of the International Centre and Archives of the Women's Studies Movement located in the NetherlandsProviding you with information on how other academic libraries choose their collection material, Women's Studies Serials will help you determine what journals in your library are most widely read and if they are meeting the informational and research needs of faculty and students. The information in Women's Studies Serials will help make your women's studies serials current, cost-efficient, and relevant to your patrons’needs.
Not too long ago, literary theorists were writing about the death of the novel and the death of the author; today many are talking about the death of Theory. Theory, as the many theoretical ism's (among them postcolonialism, postmodernism, and New Historicism) are now known, once seemed so exciting but has become ossified and insular. This iconoclastic collection is an excellent companion to current anthologies of literary theory, which have embraced an uncritical stance toward Theory and its practitioners. Written by nearly fifty prominent scholars, the essays in Theory's Empire question the ideas, catchphrases, and excesses that have let Theory congeal into a predictable orthodoxy. More than just a critique, however, this collection provides readers with effective tools to redeem the study of literature, restore reason to our intellectual life, and redefine the role and place of Theory in the academy.