Critical Terms for the Study of Gender - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226774813 ISBN 13: 9780226774817

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2014

Synopsis

“Gender systems pervade and regulate human lives—in law courts and operating rooms, ballparks and poker clubs, hair-dressing salons and kitchens, classrooms and playgroups. . . . Exactly how gender works varies from culture to culture, and from historical period to historical period, but gender is very rarely not at work. Nor does gender operate in isolation. It is linked to other social structures and sources of identity.”

So write women’s studies pioneer Catharine R. Stimpson and anthropologist Gilbert Herdt in their introduction to Critical Terms for the Study of Gender, laying out the wide-ranging nature of this interdisciplinary and rapidly changing field. The sixth in the series of “Critical Terms” books, this volume provides an indispensable introduction to the study of gender through an exploration of key terms that are a part of everyday discourse in this vital subject.

Following Stimpson and Herdt’s careful account of the evolution of gender studies and its relation to women’s and sexuality studies, the twenty-one essays here cast an appropriately broad net, spanning the study of gender and sexuality across the humanities and social sciences. Written by a distinguished group of scholars, each essay presents students with a history of a given term—from bodies to utopia—and explains the conceptual baggage it carries and the kinds of critical work it can be made to do. The contributors offer incisive discussions of topics ranging from desire, identity, justice, and kinship to love, race, and religion that suggest new directions for the understanding of gender studies. The result is an essential reference addressed to students studying gender in very different disciplinary contexts.

About this title

About the Author

Catharine R. Stimpson is University Professor and dean emerita of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University. She is the founding editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and the author or editor of many books. Gilbert Herdt is professor and director of the Graduate Program in Human Sexuality at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and director emeritus of the National Sexuality Resource Center at San Francisco State University. His books include Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays from the Field, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Review

“This collection is nothing short of an intellectual feast for scholars in the social sciences and humanities. . . . Taken as a whole, the essays convey an impressive reflection of progress and intellectual courage from which readers already familiar with feminist inquiry will take inspiration. . . . Essential.”
(Choice)

“This modest title belies an extraordinary collection.  Featuring not only leading but founding scholars in the interdisciplinary field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, Critical Terms for the Study of Gender provides sophisticated genealogies of concepts that have transformed scholarship in the humanities and social sciences over the past four decades.  Illuminating conceptual limitations of traditional approaches to these topics, this volume demonstrates the importance of feminist and queer scholarship to an adequate understanding of the complexities of contemporary life.” (Mary Hawkesworth, Rutgers University)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0226774813
• ISBN 13: 9780226774817
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 536
• Editor: Stimpson Catharine R., Herdt Gilbert