Feeling Feminism : Activism, Affect, and Canada?s Second Wave

An analysis of how emotions shape and nourish feminist activism.

From the anger behind beauty pageant protests to the fury that galvanizes the fire bombings of pornographic video stores, emotions are a powerful but often unexamined force underlying feminist activism. They are at play in the experiences of injustice, exclusion, caring, and suffering that have fed women’s commitment to building and sustaining a new world. Feeling Feminism examines how emotions such as anger, rage, joy, and hopefulness influenced second-wave feminist thought and action across Canada. Drawing on affect theory to convey the passion, sense of possibility, and collective political commitment that has characterized feminism, contributors reveal its full impact on contemporary Canada and highlight the contested, sometimes exclusionary nature of the movement itself.  
 

Lara Campbell is professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. She is the author of A Great Revolutionary Wave: Women and the Vote in British Columbia and coauthor of the seventh edition of Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History.

Michael Dawson is professor of history at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada. His publications include Selling Out or Buying In? Debating Consumerism in Vancouver and Victoria, 1945–1985 and Symbols of Canada.

Catherine Gidney is adjunct research professor of history at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada. Her publications include Captive Audience: How Corporations Invaded Our Schools and Tending the Student Body: Youth, Health, and the Modern University.