Intersectionality is one of the most popular theoretical paradigms in gender studies and feminist theory today. Initially developed to explore how gender and race interact in the experiences of US women of colour, it has since been taken up in different disciplines and national contexts, where it is used to investigate a wide range of intersecting social identities and experiences of exclusion and subordination. This volume explores intersectionality studies as a burgeoning international field with a growing body of research, which is increasingly drawn upon in policy, political interventions, and social activism. Bringing together contributors from different disciplines and locations, The Routledge International Handbook of Intersectionality Studies maps the history and travels of intersectionality between continents and countries and takes up debates surrounding the privileged role of race in intersectional analysis, the ways in which intersectional analysis should or should not be carried out, and the political implications of thinking intersectional analysis and thought. Opening up new avenues of enquiry for a future generation of scholars and practitioners, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, gender studies, politics, and cultural studies with interests in feminist thought, social identity, social exclusion, and social inequality.
Kathy Davis is Senior Research Fellow in the Sociology Department at the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is the author of Power Under the Microscope, Reshaping the Female Body, Dubious Equalities and Embodied Differences, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders, and Dancing Tango: Passionate Encounters in a Globalizing World. She is the editor of Embodied Practices: Feminist Perspectives on the Body and the co-editor of Contested Belonging: Spaces, Practices, Biographies, Transatlantic Conversations: Feminism as Travelling Theory, The Sage Handbook of Gender and Women’s Studies, The Gender of Power, and Embodied Practices: Feminist Perspectives on the Body.
Helma Lutz is Professor Emeritus of Women’s and Gender Studies and acting director of the Cornelia Goethe Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. She is the co-author of Gender and Migration: Transnational and Intersectional Prospects; the author of The New Maids: Transnational Women and the Care Economy; the editor of Migration and Domestic Work: A European Perspective on a Global Theme; and co-editor of Framing Intersectionality: Debates on a Multi-Faceted Concept in Gender Studies, The New Migration in Europe: Social Constructions and Social Realities, and Crossfires: Nationalism, Racism and Gender in Europe.
