In his follow-up to Men in this Town, photographer, art director and blogger Giuseppe Santamaria brings together a unique photographic collection showcasing the styles of the modern woman on the streets of London, Tokyo, Paris, Madrid, LA, Melbourne and New York. Across the globe, Giuseppe seeks out the everyday woman in each city whose strong, confident dress sense speaks volumes about who they are. Alongside striking images snapped on the streets, Giuseppe has profiled a handful of women with sartorial flair, who reveal the inspirations for their distinct fashion choices and their thoughts on the modern-day fashion landscape.
Debut novelist Jacobs joins an elite group of authors (Jane Austen, Nancy Mitford, Diane Johnson) whose novels celebrate intelligent, modest, witty, and endearingly funny women. The setting is Manhattan, but women everywhere can identify with Iris and Lana as they struggle to keep friendships afloat, the checkbook balanced, the career moving, and the morale up.
Despite the considerable volume of research into various aspects of the social and economic, cultural and political history of eighteenth-century British towns, remarkably little has focused upon, or even reflected upon the distinctive experience of women in the urban context. Much of what research there is has explored the experience of laboring or impoverished women, or women of the social elite; by contrast, the essays in this collection take up the study of the participation of middling women in urban life. This volume brings into sharper focus the relationship between changes consequent upon urban development and shifts in the pattern of gender relations in the 18th century. The contributors address such themes as the extent to which to what extent urban change accelerated a redefinition of gender relations; the connections between urban growth, changing definitions of citizenship, and the emergence of the male gendered political subject; the role of women in a literate, consumer and industrializing society; the place of women's networks in the economic, political and social life of the town and the distinctive role played by women in areas such as philanthropy and business; and how the development of urban society in turn inflected contemporary conceputalizations of gender.
'[This] vivid and sensitive portrayal of Castilian townswomen ... provides an important source for any comparative study of the social changes that urbanism engendered'. -- Diane Owen Hughes, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 'Heath Dillard demonstrates how living on the frontiers of Christian Europe influenced women's position within urban settlements of the Reconquest ... [Her] study is not of an interesting sidelight of political expansion, but of a critical aspect of that expansion ... This is an important book because it does an in-depth analysis of sources and a topic that needed to be brought to the forefront of Hispanic studies.' -- Joyce E. Salisbury, Speculum - A Journal of Mediaeval Studies 'Carefully researched and cogently presented, [this] groundbreaking effort ... is bound to challenge familiar notions and help scholars reformulate them on firmer bases ... The book is packed with interesting information ... Heath Dillard has performed a real service by sifting through piles of historical documents to bring to life for us the many different kinds of women who lived in the towns of Castile during the Middle Ages.' -- Kathleen Kish, Hispania
In the small town of Dogondoutchi, Niger, Malam Awal, a charismatic Sufi preacher, was recruited by local Muslim leaders to denounce the practices of reformist Muslims. Malam Awal's message has been viewed as a mixed blessing by Muslim women who have seen new definitions of Islam and Muslim practice impact their place and role in society. This study follows the career of Malam Awal and documents the engagement of women in the religious debates that are refashioning their everyday lives. Adeline Masquelier reveals how these women have had to define Islam on their own terms, especially as a practice that governs education, participation in prayer, domestic activities, wedding customs, and who wears the veil and how. Masquelier's richly detailed narrative presents new understandings of what it means to be a Muslim woman in Africa today.
From five distinct cities around the world - New York, Tokyo, Milan, London and Sydney - photographer, art director and blogger Giuseppe Santamaria brings together a unique photographic collection showcasing the styles of the modern man. Giuseppe seeks out the everyday man in each city whose dress sense speaks volumes about who they are. Alongside striking images captured from the streets, Giuseppe has chosen a handful of men from each city with a particular, distinct style and photographed them in their various attire, as well as profiled them about their particular approach to fashion and their sense of the menswear scene today.
The autobiographical essays in The Girls in My Town create an unforgettable portrait of a family in Los Angeles. Reaching back to her grandmother’s childhood and navigating through her own girlhood and on to the present, Angela Morales contemplates moments of loss and longing, truth and beauty, motherhood and daughterhood. She writes about her parents’ appliance store and how she escaped from it, the bowling alley that provided refuge, and the strange and beautiful things she sees while riding her bike in the early mornings. She remembers fighting for equal rights for girls as a sixth grader, calling the cops when her parents fought, and listening with her mother to Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman,” the soundtrack of her parents’ divorce. Poignant, serious, and funny, Morales’s book is both a coming-of-age story and an exploration of how a writer discovers her voice.
Based on new fieldwork in 1997, Tracy Bachrach Ehlers has updated her classic study of the effects of economic development on the women weavers of San Pedro Sacatepéquez. Revisiting many of the women she interviewed in the 1970s and 1980s and revising her earlier hopeful assessment of women's entrepreneurial opportunities, Ehlers convincingly demonstrates that development and commercial growth in the region have benefited men at the expense of women.
Healing roles and rituals involving alcohol are a major source of power and identity for women and men in Highland Chiapas, Mexico, where abstention from alcohol can bring a loss of meaningful roles and of a sense of community. Yet, as in other parts of the world, alcohol use sometimes leads to abuse, whose effects must then be combated by individuals and the community. In this pioneering ethnography, Christine Eber looks at women and drinking in the community of San Pedro Chenalhó to address the issues of women’s identities, roles, relationships, and sources of power. She explores various personal and social strategies women use to avoid problem drinking, including conversion to Protestant religions, membership in cooperatives or Catholic Action, and modification of ritual forms with substitute beverages. The book’s women-centered perspective reveals important data on women and drinking not reported in earlier ethnographies of Highland Chiapas communities. Eber’s reflexive approach, blending the women’s stories, analyses, songs, and prayers with her own and other ethnographers’ views, shows how Western, individualistic approaches to the problems of alcohol abuse are inadequate for understanding women’s experiences with problem and ritual drinking in a non-Western culture. In a new epilogue, Christine Eber describes how events of the last decade, including the Zapatista uprising, have strengthened women's resolve to gain greater control over their lives by controlling the effects of alcohol in the community.
