Free standard shipping on all orders

Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader book cover

1st Edition

Feminist Studies An Introductory Reader

Edited By Hemangini Gupta, Kelly Sharron, Carly Thomsen, Abraham Weil Copyright 2025
    682 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    682 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader introduces readers to key feminist theories and texts through a unique approach that combines both well-known classic feminist texts and original contemporary research by Feminist Studies scholars.

    This textbook has been crafted with the movement and translation of ideas in mind, and is broken into four sections: Feminist Epistemologies, Feminist Ontologies, Feminist Approaches to Unlikely Objects, and Feminist Publics and World-Making. Each chapter includes two foundational texts that commonly appear in Feminist Studies classes as well as two new texts written by scholars who engage, critique, and extend those ideas in their work. In addition, the text includes discussion questions and additional materials useful for instruction. The title is also accompanied by a companion website geared toward students, where they can engage with student-created projects and other media.

    Feminist Studies: An Introductory Reader is an ideal resource for students in introductory Feminist Studies courses, as well as those studying Women and Gender studies, sociology, and other social science.

    List of contributors

    Introduction

    Section I: Feminist Epistemologies and Frameworks

    Introduction

     

    Part I: Feminist Historiography

    1. Telling Feminist Stories

    Claire Hemmings

    2. Transgender History

    Susan Stryker

    3. Feminist Historiography: Historicizing in the Present and for the Future

    Agatha Beins

    4. Calling All Chicana Feminist Theorists, Trans Historians, and Queer Femme Scholars: Abject Epistemologies in Feminist Theory Historiography

    Stacy Macias

     

    Part II: Power

    5. The History of Sexuality Volume I

    Michel Foucault

    6. Can the Subaltern Speak?

    Gayatri Spivak

    7. “People with Uteruses”: Uterine Transplantation, In/fertility, and Trans Pregnancy

    Tate Serletti

    8. Feminists Disrupt Power: Rape & the Heterogeneity of Subjugated Resistance

    Melinda Chen

     

    PART III: Materiality

    9. Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse

    Rosemary Hennessy

    10. Animacies

    Mel Chen

    11. Materiality, Compulsory Sexuality, and Sexual Desire

    Kristina Gupta

    12. Disruptive Diffusion: Materiality and the Politics of AI-generated art

    Allison (AP) Pierce

     

    PART IV: Affect

    13. Cruel Optimism

    Lauren Berlant

    14. Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology

    Sara Ahmed

    15. A Body-Grounded View of China’s Neoliberal Transition

    Charlie Yi Zhang

    16. “I remember the time that I fell out of line”

    Abraham Weil

     

    PART V: State Institutions

    17. Walled States, Waning Sovereignty

    Wendy Brown

    18. Terrorist Assemblages

    Jasbir Puar

    19. A State of Contradictions

    Kelly Sharron

    20. Mak Nyahs and the Subject of Rights: Perversity, Piety, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Malaysia

    Azza Basarudin

     

    PART VI: Political Economy

    21. Wages Against Housework

    Syvlia Federici

    22. Life Within and Against Work

    Kathi Weeks

    23. What’s Love Got to Do with It?

    Elizabeth Verklan

    24. When the Office is Family: Queering Social Reproduction under Startup Capitalism

    Hemangini Gupta

     

    Section II: Feminist Ontologies

    Introduction

     

    PART VII: Experience

    25. The Evidence of Experience

    Joan W. Scott

    26. Multiple Mediations: Feminist Scholarship in the Age of Multinational Reception

    Lata Mani

    27. press, release, return: Edging Towards the Subject, or Filipinx Feminist Form in Three Parts

    Anna M. Moncada Storti

    28. Experience-as-Expertise: Cis Women Athletes and Anti-Trans Sentiment

    CJ Jones

     

    PART VIII: Identity

    29. Gender Trouble

    Judith Butler

    30. Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics

    Cathy Cohen

    31. Performative Disruption: The Lesbian Avengers Civil Rights Organizing Project and the Threat of Rural Homophobia

    Jae Basiliere

    32. Identity Politics and Queer Theory’s Welfare Genealogies

    Ultra Omni

    PART IX: Intersectionality

    33. Mapping the Margins

    Kimberle Crensha 

    34. Rethinking Intersectionality

    Jennifer Nash

    35. Sleeping Babies, Technology, and the Construction of Risk

    Laura Harrison

    36. Reading at the Nexus of Neglect and Fetishization: The ‘Occult’ of Intersectionality

    Vivian May

     

    PART X: Reproductive Justice

    37. Reproductive Justice: An Introduction

    Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger

    38.The Cancer Journals

    Audre Lorde

    39. Intersectional Feminism & the Health Humanities

    Rachel Dudley

    40. ‘To Claim My Own Body’: Vaginismus as a Reproductive, Feminist, and Disability Justice Issue

    Jennifer Musial

     

    Section III: Feminist Orientations

    Section III Introduction

     

    PART XI: Critical Geographies of Place and Space

    41. Towards a Decolonial Feminism

    Maria Lugones

    42. Global Divas

    Martin Manalansan

    43. Traveling the Topographies of Mexico City’s Lesbian Spaces

    Anahi Russo Garrido

    44. Mobility, Marginality, and Decoloniality in Feminist Theories of Place

    Christina Holmes

     

    PART XII: Figures of Film and Media

    45. Witch’s Flight 

    Kara Keeling

    46. The Biopower of Beauty

    Mimi Nguyen

    47. Beautiful Activists: A Feminist Analysis of Gender and Race in Essence Magazine, 1970

    Ayana K. Weekley

    48. Boss: Beyoncé’s Rhetorical Performance of Black Womanhood

    Zakiya R. Adair

     

    PART XIII: Feminist Science and Technology Studies

    49. Cyborg Manifesto

    Donna Haraway

    50. Egg and Sperm: A Scientific Fairytale

    Emily Martin

    51. Feminist and Queer STS

    David A. Rubin

    52. More than Cyborgs: Metaphors for Thinking, Surviving, and Gathering

    Clare Jen

     

    PART XIV: More-than-human Attunements

    53. Mohawk Mothers’ Milk

    Winona LaDuke

    54. Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals

    Alexis Pauline Gumbs

    55. Transing Difference

    Dylan McCarthy Blackston

    56. A Feminist Study of Breathing

    Stina Soderling

     

    Section IV: Feminist Resistance

    Introduction

     

    PART XV: Institutionalization

    57. The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference

    Roderick A. Ferguson

    58. In the Shadow of the Shadow State

    Ruth Wilson Gilmore

    59. Holly Near on Tour with the National Women’s Studies Association

    Rachel Corbman

    60. In the University, But Not Of It: The Diversity Industry vs. Queer Epistemologies

    Carly Thomsen

     

    PART XVI: Meaning-Making

    61. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

    Gloria Anzaldúa

    62. Against the Romance of Community

    Miranda Joseph

    63. Lesbian Feminism and The Challenge of Community

    Mairead Sullivan

    64. Self-Craft and Coalition: Towards a New Class Consciousness

    Leigh Dodson

     

    PART XVII: Revolution

    65. Feminism and Abolition: Theories and Practices for the Twenty First Century

    Angela Y. Davis

    66. Statement on Gender Violence And the Prison-Industrial Complex

    Critical Resistance & INCITE

    67. Mutuality in Mutual Aid: Radical Care, Mask Making, and the Auntie Sewing Squad

    Preeti Sharma

    68. From Demands to Action: Using Transformative Justice for Sexual Violence

    Abigail Barefoot

     

    PART XVIII: Speculative Futures

    69. Afrosurreal Manifesto: Black Is the New Black—A 21st Century Manifesto

    D. Scot Miller

    70. The Future-Past is Disable

    Erin L. Durban

    71. Speculations Beyond Real Estate

    Erin McElroy

     

    Index

    Biography

    Hemangini Gupta is Lecturer in Gender and Global Politics and Associate Director of GENDER.ED at the University of Edinburgh. Her work is published in Feminist Review, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, and Feminist Studies journals amongst others. Gupta completed her Ph.D. in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.

    Kelly Sharron is Assistant Teaching Professor in Sociology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at University of Kansas. Sharron’s work has been published in Somatechnics, TSQ: Trans Studies Quarterly, and Abolition Journal. Sharron completed her Ph.D. in Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona.

    Carly Thomsen is Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Middlebury College. She is the author of Visibility Interrupted: Rural Queer Life and the Politics of Unbecoming. Her work appears in various academic journals and media outlets, including Signs, Political Geography, New York Times, Ms. and others.  Her Feminist Studies Ph.D. is from University of California Santa Barbara.

    Abraham Weil is a scholar of women, gender, and sexuality studies with a focus on radical political formations, anti-black racism, trans theorizing, and philosophy. Weil completed their Ph.D. in Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. Their work appears in Social Text, Critical Inquiry, The Black Scholar, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities.

    Add to Cart