Available From UC Press

The first collection of its kind, Provocations: A Transnational Reader in the History of Feminist Thought is historically organized and transnational in scope, highlighting key ideas, transformative moments, and feminist conversations across national and cultural borders. Emphasizing feminist cross-talk, transnational collaborations and influences, and cultural differences in context, this anthology heralds a new approach to studying feminist history.

Provocations includes engaging, historically significant primary sources by writers of many nationalities in numerous genres—from political manifestos to theoretical and cultural analysis to poetry and fiction. These texts range from those of classical antiquity to others composed during the Arab Spring and represent Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Western Europe, and the United States. Each section begins with an introductory essay that presents central ideas and explores connections among readings, placing them in historical, national, and intellectual contexts and concluding with questions for discussion and reflection.

 

Susan Bordo is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and holds the Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities at the University of Kentucky. Her publications include Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body; The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private; and The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen.

M. Cristina Alcalde is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is author of The Woman in the Violence: Gender, Poverty, and Resistance in Peru and numerous articles on migration, gender violence, race, and masculinities.

Ellen Rosenman is Provost’s Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Kentucky . She is author of The Invisible Presence: Virginia Woolf and the Mother-Daughter Relationship and Unauthorized Pleasures: Accounts of Victorian Erotic Experience, as well as coeditor of Other Mothers: Beyond the Maternal Ideal.

“Provocations is an ambitious, pioneering, interdisciplinary anthology that promises to disrupt hegemonic narratives of the complex histories of feminisms that permeate women’s studies classrooms in the U.S. academy. From the ancient world to the recent Arab Spring, Provocations engages some of the most compelling and contentious debates in the centuries old ‘woman question.’”—Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies and Founding Director of the Women’s Research and Resource Center at Spelman College

“Ever-mindful of historical and cultural context, the authors present essays that cross borders of time and space to reveal women’s emerging consciousness of self, sexuality, and intellect through the centuries. The result is a collection of proto-feminist and feminist thought stunning in its breadth and depth.”—Victoria Bynum, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History, Texas State University, San Marcos

“A wide-ranging collection of essays by recognized critics in the field, which begins with antiquity and closes with the twenty-first century—a reader that proves yet again, if proof were still needed, that feminism is a transnational (transhistorical and transcultural) movement.”—Domna C. Stanton, Distinguished Professor of French, Graduate Center CUNY

“Coupling contextualizing analytical essays with the voices of women from all regions of the world, from antiquity to the present, Provocations affords new insights into women’s self-understandings, aspirations, and resistance, as well as the expansive precursors, origins, and scope of feminist activism.”—Mary Hawkesworth, author of Political Worlds of Women: Activism, Advocacy and Governance in the 21st Century

“Feminist thought is a rich terrain and has a rich history. That it also has a transnational reach is evident in this carefully curated and comprehensive collection of writings. Bordo, Alcalde, and Rosenman and their collaborators offer engaging introductions to the selected works. Seasoned feminists will be gratified to see this collection, and younger ones will have the pleasure of discovering brilliant writings that continue to inspire us.”—Florence E. Babb, Harrington Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill