Everyday Women’s and Gender Studies is a text-reader that offers instructors a new way to approach an introductory course on women’s and gender studies. This book highlights major concepts that organize the diverse work in this field: Knowledges, Identities, Equalities, Bodies, Places, and Representations. Its focus on "the everyday" speaks to the importance this book places on students understanding the taken-for granted circumstances of their daily lives. Precisely because it is...

Known as the graveyard of empires, Afghanistan has now been singled out as Obama's "just war," the destination for an additional thirty thousand US troops in an effort to shore up an increasingly desperate occupation. Nick Turse brings together a range of leading commentators, politicians, and military strategists to analyze America's real motives and likely prospects. Through on-the-spot reporting, clear-headed analysis and historical comparisons with Afghanistan's previous occupiers-Brit...

The clothes we wear tell stories about us—and are often imbued with cultural meanings specific to our ethnic heritage. This concise A-to-Z encyclopedia explores 150 different and distinct items of ethnic dress, their history, and their cultural significance within the United States.The clothing artifacts documented here have been or are now regularly worn by Americans as everyday clothing, fashion, ethnic or religious identifiers, or style statements. They embody the cultural histo...

As the American Colonies whisper of liberty and freedom, a young slave boy listens and dreams.When war with Britain finally comes, John seizes his chance to escape and joins the Red Coats. The British Army, in return for his service, promise him freedom. After the English concede defeat in 1783, John once again faces enslavement in the newly independent United States of America. He escapes to England, only to have his new-found freedom give way to a life of poverty and petty crime ...

The second volume of Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies addresses the complexities and inherent paradoxes within the expansive knowledge project known as Women’s and Gender Studies for audiences both inside and adjacent to the field. Each of the volume’s chapters identifies and critically examines a key term that circulates in this field, exploring how the term has come to be understood and mobilized within its everyday narratives and practices.In constructing provocati...

Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies re-examines the field’s foundational assumptions by identifying and critically analyzing eighteen of its key terms. Each essay investigates a single term (e.g., feminism, interdisciplinarity, intersectionality) by asking how it has come to be understood and mobilized in Women’s and Gender Studies and then explicates the roles it plays in both producing and shutting down possible versions of the field. The goal of the book is to trace and expos...