Feminist Moments

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com.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.

Includes important feminist authors not frequently anthologized such as Rachel Speght (17th century)

ContributorsSeries Editors' PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroduction1. A Feminist-Historical Citadel: Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies by Nadia Margolis2. Anne Bradstreet and the seventeenth-century articulation of 'the female voice' by Susan Bruce3. Mary Astell's Critique of Marriage by Patricia Springborg.4. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Women's Coffee House by Vicki Spencer5. Justice and Gender in Revolution: Olympe de Gouges Speaks for Women by Joseph Zizek6. Radical Spirituality and Reason in Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Kari Lokke7. Giving Voice to Feminist Political Theory: The Radical Discourse of Anna Wheeler and William ThompsonBy Jim Jose 8. 'Supposed to be very calm generally': Anger, Narrative and Unaccountable Sounds in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre by Alexandra Lewis9. 'Something Akin to Freedom': Harriet Jacobs and the Feminist Tradition by Susan Hays Bussey10. On the Enslavement of Women's Minds: John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women by Katherine Smits11. German Maternalist Socialism: Clara Zetkin and the 1896 Social Democratic Party Congress by Catherine Dollard12. 'How Turn of the Century Feminism Finds Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"' by Shirley Samuels13. Ecology and Virtue in Roquia Sakhawat Hussain's Sultana's Dream by Maitrayee Chaudhuri14. Nazira Zeineddine: Pioneer of Islamic Feminismby Miriam Cooke15. Virginia Woolf, genre-bending, and feminist life-writing: A Room of One's Own by Amber Regis16. "Your sister in the 'gator and the 'gator in your sister": Judgment in Zora Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God by Glenda R. Carpio17. '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 Céline Leboeuf18. Betty Friedan's Feminist Critique of Suburban Domesticity by Rebecca Jo Plant19. 'Writing as Re-Vision.' Female Creative Agency in the Poetry of Adrienne Rich: Diving into the Wreck by Claire Hurley20. Complicity and Resistance: Andrea Dworkin's Intercourse by Helen Pringle21. Before Her Eyes: On Luisa Valenzuela's Bedside Manners (Realidad nacional desde la cama) By Valeria WagnerPostscript: Feminist Revisions of Political ThoughtSuggestions for Further ReadingNotesIndex