Volume I - Gender and Representation in New German CinemaVolume II - German Film History / German History on FilmInternational film has received some of its most original impulses from German film makers however the works by women directors in German speaking countries have been largely ignored in spite of the important social, political and historical issues they have raised. This is the first work to consider the broad spectrum of German cinema through the category of gender. These volumes will be standard handbooks in film studies for many years to come.
So begins Sue Bender's story, the captivating and inspiring true story of a harried urban Californian moved by the beauty of a display of quilts to seek out and live with the Amish. Discovering lives shaped by unfamiliar yet comforting ideas about time, work, and community, Bender is gently coaxed to consider, Is there another way to lead a good life?
Her journey begins in a New York men's clothing store. There she is spellbound by the vibrant colors and stunning geometric simplicity of the Amish quilts spoke directly to me, writes Bender. Somehow, they went straight to my heart.
Heeding a persistent inner voice, Bender searches for Amish families willing to allow her to visit and share in there daily lives. Plain and Simple vividly recounts sojourns with two Amish families, visits during which Bender enters a world without television, telephone, electric light, or refrigerators; a world where clutter and hurry are replaced with inner quiet and calm ritual; a world where a sunny kitchen glows and no distinction was made between the sacred and the everyday.
In nine interrelated chapters--as simple and elegant as a classic nine-patch Amish quilt--Bender shares the quiet power she found reflected in lives of joyful simplicity, humanity, and clarity. The fast-paced, opinionated, often frazzled Bender returns home and reworks her crazy-quilt life, integrating the soul-soothing qualities she has observed in the Amish, and celebrating the patterns in the Amish, and celebrating the patterns formed by the distinctive patches of her own life.
Charmingly illustrated and refreshingly spare, Plain and Simple speaks to the seeker in each of us.
'Certainly one of the most promising theological statements of our time.' --The Christian Century
'Not for the timid, this brilliant book calls for nothing short of the overthrow of patriarchy itself.' --The Village Voice
The acclaimed author of Refuge here weaves together a resonant and often rhapsodic manifesto on behalf of the landscapes she loves, combining the power of her observations in the field with her personal experience--as a woman, a Mormon, and a Westerner. Through the grace of her stories we come to see how a lack of intimacy with the natural world has initiated a lack of intimacy with each other.
Williams shadows lions on the Serengeti and spots night herons in the Bronx. She pays homage to the rogue spirits of Edward Abbey and Georgia O'Keeffe, contemplates the unfathomable wildness of bears, and directs us to a politics of place. The result is an utterly persuasive book--one that has the power to change the way we live upon the earth.
"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman."
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister--a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. If only she had found the means to create, argues Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, Woolf takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give voice to those who are without. Her message is a simple one: women must have a steady income and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create. With a Foreword by Mary Gordon
"A classic, for a reason" - Celeste Ng via Twitter
In her award-winning book The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston created an entirely new form--an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities--immigrant, female, Chinese, American. As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother's "talk stories." The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother's tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston's sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family's past and her own present.
Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.
Interviews with a Guatemalan national leader discuss her country's political situation and the resulting violence, which has claimed the lives of her brother, mother, and father.
Seeking to reveal the movement's humanity and diversity, activists Bonnie Watkins and Nina Rothchild recorded the accounts of homemakers and business owners, explorers and artists, factory workers and spiritual seekers, scientists and secretaries, prostitutes and policewomen. Encountering this company of women will change the way readers understand the movement that has transformed American life from the 1960s to the present.
"Like all good art, these stories start from a particular place and become universal. Women in all parts of the country--and in many other countries--will find themselves here. In the Company of Women affirms the importance of every woman's story. It affirms the power of hearing our own and each other's words unfiltered by interpretation. . . . We need this book and more like it." -- from the Foreword by Gloria Steinem
In this anthology, prominent contemporary theorists assess the benefits and dangers of postmodernism for feminist theory. The contributors examine the meaning of postmodernism both as a methodological position and a diagnosis of the times. They consider such issues as the nature of personal and social identity today, the political implications of recent aesthetic trends, and the consequences of changing work and family relations on women's lives. Contributors: Seyla Benhabib, Susan Bordo, Judith Butler, Christine Di Stefano, Jane Flax, Nancy Fraser, Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, Nancy Hartsock, Andreas Huyssen, Linda J. Nicholson, Elspeth Probyn, Anna Yeatman, Iris Young.
