From early examples of queer representation in mainstream media to present-day dissolutions of the human-nature boundary, the Gothic is always concerned with delineating and transgressing the norms that regulate society and speak to our collective fears and anxieties. This volume examines British and American Gothic texts from four centuries and diverse media – including novels, films, podcasts, and games – in case studies which outline the central relationship between the Gothic and transgression, particularly gender(ed) and sexual transgression. This relationship is both crucial and constantly shifting, ever in the process of renegotiation, as transgression defines the Gothic and society redefines transgression. The case studies draw on a combination of well-studied and under-studied texts in order to arrive at a more comprehensive picture of transgression in the Gothic. Pointing the way forward in Gothic Studies, this original and nuanced combination of gendered, Ecogothic, queer, and media critical approaches addresses established and new scholars of the Gothic alike.

Engendering Transnational Transgressions reclaims the transgressive side of feminist history, challenging hegemonic norms and the power of patriarchies. Through the lenses of intersectionality, gender analysis, and transnational feminist theory, it addresses the political in public and intimate spaces. The book begins by highlighting the transgressive nature of feminist historiography. It then divides into two parts—Part I, Intimate Transgressions: Marriage and Sexuality, examines marriage and divorce as viewed through a transnational lens, and Part II, Global Transgressions: Networking for Justice and Peace, considers political and social violence as well as struggles for relief, redemption, and change by transnational networks of women. Chapters are archivally grounded and take a critical approach that underscores the local in the global and the significance of intersectional factors within the intimate. They bring into conversation literatures too often separated: history of feminisms and anti-war, anti-imperial/anti-fascist, and related movements, on the one hand, and studies of gender crossings, marriage reconstitution, and affect and subjectivities, on the other. In so doing, the book encourages the reader to rethink standard interpretations of rights, equality, and recognition. This is the ideal volume for students and scholars of Women’s and Gender History and Women’s and Gender Studies, as well as International, Transnational, and Global History, History of Social Movements, and related specialized topics.

Women’s transgressive behaviors and perspectives are challenging societal norms in the Arab world, giving rise to anxiety and public debate. Simultaneously, however, other Arab women are unwillingly finding themselves labeled “bad” as authority figures attempt to redirect scrutiny from serious social ills such as patriarchy and economic exploitation, or as they impose new restrictions on women’s behavior in response to uncertainty and change in society. Bad Girls of the Arab World elucidates how both intentional and unintentional transgressions make manifest the social and cultural constructs that define proper and improper behavior, as well as the social and political policing of gender, racial, and class divisions. The works collected here address the experiences of women from a range of ages, classes, and educational backgrounds who live in the Arab world and beyond. They include short pieces in which the women themselves reflect on their experiences with transgression; academic articles about performance, representation, activism, history, and social conditions; an artistic intervention; and afterwords by the acclaimed novelists Laila al-Atrash and Miral al-Tahawy. The book demonstrates that women’s transgression is both an agent and a symptom of change, a site of both resistance and repression. Showing how transnational forces such as media discourses, mobility and confinement, globalization, and neoliberalism, as well as the legacy of colonialism, shape women’s badness, Bad Girls of the Arab World offers a rich portrait of women’s varied experiences at the boundaries of propriety in the twenty-first century.

The Illegal City explores the relationship between space, law and gendered subjectivity through a close look at an 'illegal' squatter settlement in Delhi. Since 2000, a series of judicial rulings in India have criminalised squatters as 'illegal' citizens, 'encroachers' and 'pickpockets' of urban land, and have led to a spate of slum demolitions across the country. This book argues that in this context, it has become vital to distinguish between illegality and informality since it is those 'illegal' slums which are at the receiving end of a 'force of law', where law is violently encountered within everyday spaces. This book uses a gendered intersectional lens to explore how a 'violence of law' shapes how 'public' subjectivities of gender, class, religion and caste are encountered and negotiated within the 'private' spaces of home, family and neighbourhood. This book suggests that resettlement is not a condition that squatters desire; rather something that is seen as the only way out of the 'illegal' city. The wait for resettlement is a temporal space of anxiety and uncertainty, where particular kinds of politics around law, space and gender takes shape, which transform squatters' relations with the state, urban development, civil society, and with each other. Through their everyday struggles around water, sanitation, social and political organisation and the transformation of their homes and families, this book shows that the desire for the 'legal city' is also the irony and utopia of home, which will remain an incomplete gendered project - both for the state and for squatters.

Girls, Boys and Junior Sexualities takes an insightful and in-depth look at the hidden worlds of young children's sexualities. Based upon extensive group interviews and observation, the author illustrates how sexuality is embedded in children's school-based cultures and gender identities. From examining children's own views and experiences, the book explores a range of topical and sensitive issues, including how: the primary school is a key social arena for 'doing' sexuality sexuality shapes children's friendships and peer relations being a 'proper' girl or boy involves investing in a heterosexual identity children use gendered or sexual insults to maintain gender and sexual norms. Grounded in children's real-life experiences, this book traces their struggles, anxieties, desires and pleasures as they make sense of their emerging sexualities. It also includes frank and open discussions of the pressures of compulsory heterosexuality, the boyfriend/girlfriend culture, misogyny and sexual harassment. Girls, Boys and Junior Sexualities is a timely and powerful resource for researchers, educationalists and students in childhood studies, sociology and psychology and will be of great interest to professionals and policy makers working with young children.

Nathalie Weidhase conceptualises the female dandy as a figure that simultaneously embodies and disrupts postfeminist notions of femininity, including maintaining a physique conforming to contemporary beauty standards, constant self-surveillance and self-improvement, and the naturalisation of gender difference and heterosexuality. She examines how music videos function as spaces in popular culture where the politics of the feminine can be articulated. These spaces allow female pop stars to be valued as artists with distinct contributions to popular music. Focusing on Amy Winehouse, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Lana Del Rey, Weidhase illuminates different characteristics of the postfeminist dandy in popular music. Amy Winehouse's work makes visible the commodification of the female spectacle in popular culture, highlighting how her image and persona were marketed and consumed. Rihanna performs black femininity as postfeminism's abject Other. Lady Gaga queers monstrous motherhood and celebrates female musical lineage. Lana Del Rey's work demonstrates how whiteness operates as a canvas for postfeminist and post-racial fantasies, offering a platform for their deconstruction and critique. In doing so, Weidhase provides a comprehensive understanding of how these pop stars navigate and challenge the intricate landscape of postfeminism, offering a nuanced perspective on contemporary femininity and its representations in popular culture.

This volume offers a nuanced understanding of female agency in political violence by reviewing and analyzing the political construction of motherhood as a form of social agency against political violence committed by both state and non-state actors in different parts of the world. While the international relations discipline has traditionally viewed the relationship between women and violent actors as an exploitative one, this book demonstrates that taking maternal bodies seriously creates important intellectual space to examine the types and kinds of violence the discipline of IR takes seriously and the types and kinds of resistance practiced by mothers but often overlooked (at least by male/mainstream IR). Focusing on motherhood as an agency of change, this volume will appeal to scholars in the field of gender and international security, think tanks working on political and security affairs, social activists, policymakers, an interested public audience, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking study or research associated with gender and political violence.

Challenging current perspectives of urbanisation, The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience explores how our towns and cities have shaped and been shaped by cultural, spatial and gendered influences. This volume discusses gender in an urban context in European, North American and colonial towns from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, casting new light on the development of medieval and modern settlements across the globe. Organised into six thematic parts covering economy, space, civic identity, material culture, emotions and the colonial world, this book comprises 36 chapters by key scholars in the field. It covers a wide range of topics, from women and citizenship in medieval York to gender and tradition in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South African cities, reframing our understanding of the role of gender in constructing the spaces and places that form our urban environment. Interdisciplinary and transnational in scope, this volume analyses the individual dynamics of each case study while also examining the complex relationships and exchanges between urban cultures. It is a valuable resource for all researchers and students interested in gender, urban history and their intersection and interaction throughout the past five centuries.

Introduction -- "If Sex Is Not a Biologic Phenomenon" -- Sex and Popular Sovereignty -- Sex Classification as a Technology of Governance -- Till Birth Do Us Part: Marriage, ID Documents, and the Nation-State -- Incarceration, Identity Politics, and the Trans-Cis Divide -- Conclusion.

For decades, our cultural discourse around trans and gender-diverse people has been viewed through a medical lens, through diagnoses and symptoms set down in books by cisgender doctors, or through a political lens, through dangerous caricatures invented by politicians clinging to power. But those who claim non-binary gender identity deserve their own discourse, born out of the work of the transsexual movement, absorbed into the idea of transgender, and now, finally, emerging as its own category. In tracing the history and theory of non-binary identity, and telling of their own coming out, non-binary writer Dianna E. Anderson answers questions about what being non-binary might mean, but also where non-binary people fit in the trans and queer communities. They offer a space for people to know, explore, and understand themselves in the context of a centuries-old understanding of gender nonconformity and to see beyond the strict roles our society has for men and women. In Transit looks forward to a world where being who we are, whatever that looks like, isn't met with tension and long-winded explanations, but rather with acceptance and love. Being non-binary is about finding home in the in-between places.