This ambitious volume brings together original essays on the U.S. women's movement with analyses of women's movements in other countries around the world. A comparative perspective and a common theme--feminism in social movement action--unite these voices in a way that will excite students and inspire further research. From the grassroots to the global, the significance of the U.S women's movement in the international arena cannot be denied. At the same time, the way in which international feminism has developed--in Asia, in Latin America, in Europe--has altered and expanded the landscape of the U.S. women's movement forever. These distinguished authors show us how. Visit our website for sample chapters!

In this unprecedented, fascinating book which covers women in theatre from the 1910s to the 2010s, author Lynne Greeley notes that, for the purposes of this study, "feminism" is defined as the political impulse toward economic and social empowerment for females or the female-identified, a position perceived by many feminists as oppositional to ideas of femininity that they see as personally and politically constraining and that "femininity" comprises social behaviors and practices that mean as "many different things as there are women," some of which are empowering and others of which are not. This book illuminates how throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, playwrights and artists in American theatre both embodied and disrupted the feminine of their times. Through approaches as wide ranging as performing their own recipes, energizing silences, raging against war and rape, and inviting the public to inscribe their naked bodies, theatre artists have used performance as a site to insert themselves between the physicality of their female presence and the liminality of their disrupting the role of the feminine. Capturing that place of liminality, a neither-here-nor-there place that is often unsafe, where the established order is overturned by acts as banal as raising a plant, women have written and performed and disrupted their way through one hundred years of theatre history, even within the constraints of a variably rigid and usually unsympathetic social order. Creating a feminist femininity, they have reinscribed their place in the culture and provided models for their audiences to do the same. This comprehensive tome, part of the Cambria Contemporary Global Performing Arts headed by John Clum (Duke University) is an essential addition for theater studies and women's studies.

Over the course of thirty-seven chapters, including an editorial introduction, this handbook provides a comprehensive examination of scholarly research and knowledge on a variety of aspects of women's collective activism in the United States, tracing both continuities and critical changes over time. Women have played pivotal and far-reaching roles in bringing about significant societal change, and women activists come from an array of different demographics, backgrounds and perspectives, including those that are radical, liberal, and conservative. The chapters in the handbook consider women's activism in the interest of women themselves as well as actions done on behalf of other social groups. The volume is organized into five sections. The first looks at U.S. Women's Social Activism over time, from the women's suffrage movement to the ERA, radical feminism, third-wave feminism, intersectional feminism and global feminism. Part two looks at issues that mobilize women, including workplace discrimination, reproductive rights, health, gender identity and sexuality, violence against women, welfare and employment, globalization, immigration and anti-feminist and pro-life causes. Part three looks at strategies, including movement emergence and resource mobilization, consciousness raising, and traditional and social media. Part four explores targets and tactics, including legislative forums, electoral politics, legal activism, the marketplace, the military, and religious and educational institutions. Finally, part five looks at women's participation within other movements, including the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, labor unions, LGBTQ movement, Latino activism, conservative groups, and the white supremacist movement.

Using her observations of the United Nation's Fourth World Women's Conference held in China in 1995 as a foundation, the author examines the history and current situation of Latinas and attempts to place them in a global context. After examining the goals, objectives, and atmosphere of the Conference, she analyzes the Chicana feminist movement and its legacy and how Chicanas have struggled to relate to the Conference and its human rights platform. She then profiles U.S. Latinas and presents data on their reality in today's world. The response to U.S. expansionist policies and the Americanization process is examined and related to the Chicana feminist movement and its legacy. An important synthesis for students and researchers in Ethnic and Race Relations and Women's Studies.

The authors introduce students to the various ways that nations other than the United States resolve contemporary constitutional questions. Covering both structural issues and individual rights, each chapter presents foreign case materials on a particular topic, comparing U.S and other nations' laws.