Feminist moments: reading feminist texts

"The challenges presented by feminism to traditional understandings of representation, normative values, power relations and the political are not simply the product of late-20th century thinking. Feminist Moments, in examining some of the pivotal texts in the history of feminist thought, demonstrates that these challenges emerge from a long and varied history of feminist writing. The volume brings together texts from literary and analytical works written by women and men, and from inside and outside the Western tradition, including Mary Wortley Montagu, Anna Wheeler and William Thompson, Nazira Zeineddine, Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin and Luisa Valenzuela. The volume is unique in offering close readings of key passages from the selected texts, making it ideal for classroom use; its original essays, all authored by specialists, will also be of interest to more advanced scholars. In juxtaposing and analysing a wide range of texts which despite their significance are rarely discussed together, Feminist Moments provides a fascinating historical narrative of feminist thought which will be highly valuable to students and scholars of the history of political thought, political philosophy and gender and literary studies."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Contributors -- Series Editors' Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. A Feminist-Historical Citadel: Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies / by Nadia Margolis -- 2. Anne Bradstreet and the seventeenth-century articulation of 'the female voice' / by Susan Bruce -- 3. Mary Astell's Critique of Marriage / by Patricia Springborg -- 4. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Women's Coffee House / by Vicki Spencer -- 5. Justice and Gender in Revolution: Olympe de Gouges Speaks for Women / by Joseph Zizek -- 6. Radical Spirituality and Reason in Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman / by Kari Lokke -- 7. Giving Voice to Feminist Political Theory: The Radical Discourse of Anna Wheeler and William Thompson / by Jim Jose -- 8. 'Supposed to be very calm generally': Anger, Narrative and Unaccountable Sounds in Charlotte Bront 's Jane Eyre / by Alexandra Lewis -- 9. 'Something Akin to Freedom': Harriet Jacobs and the Feminist Tradition / by Susan Hays Bussey -- 10. On the Enslavement of Women's Minds: John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women / by Katherine Smits -- 11. German Maternalist Socialism: Clara Zetkin and the 1896 Social Democratic Party Congress / by Catherine Dollard -- 12. 'How Turn of the Century Feminism Finds Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"' / by Shirley Samuels -- 13. Ecology and Virtue in Roquia Sakhawat Hussain's Sultana's Dream / by Maitrayee Chaudhuri -- 14. Nazira Zeineddine: Pioneer of Islamic Feminism / by Miriam Cooke -- 15. Virginia Woolf, genre-bending, and feminist life-writing: A Room of One's Own / by Amber Regis -- 16. "Your sister in the 'gator and the 'gator in your sister": Judgment in Zora Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God / by Glenda R. Carpio -- 17. 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'. The Sex-Gender Distinction and Simone de Beauvoir's Account of Woman: The Second Sex / by C line Leboeuf -- 18. Betty Friedan's Feminist Critique of Suburban Domesticity / by Rebecca Jo Plant -- 19. 'Writing as Re-Vision.' Female Creative Agency in the Poetry of Adrienne Rich: Diving into the Wreck / by Claire Hurley -- 20. Complicity and Resistance: Andrea Dworkin's Intercourse / by Helen Pringle -- 21. Before Her Eyes: On Luisa Valenzuela's Bedside Manners (Realidad nacional desde la cama) / by Valeria Wagner Postscript: Feminist Revisions of Political Thought -- Suggestions for Further Reading -- Notes -- Index.