This anthology collects key texts on women in culture and offers an ideal introduction, for students in women’s studies and feminism, to the cultural dimensions of women’s experience today. The materials are drawn from a wide range of sources, including popular newspapers, women’s and fashion magazines, academic journals, and textbooks. Together they reveal how the mass media, music, and pornography industries portray women, how advertising promotes unattainable standards of beauty for women, and how, for example, cultural expectations can promote date rape and sexual harassment. Women’s contributions to culture are also explored.
Divided into three parts – The Cultural Construction of Gender, Cultural Institutions Defining Women; Opportunities for Women in Culture – the anthology offers ten chapters and a total of thirty-one readings, supported by detailed introductions, questions, suggested activities and bibliographies of key works (including films and videos) for further study.
The readings selected are by: Maya Angelou, Ellen Bass, John Berger, Carl Bohmer, Kim Chernin, Farai Chideya, Johnnetta B. Cole, Patricia Hill Collins, Terry Kay Diggs, Marilyn Friedman, Marilyn Frye, Gay and Lesbian Speakers’ Bureau, Miranda Van Gelder, Shirley Glubka, bell hooks, Indiana University Empowerment Workshop, Douglas Kellner, Jean Kilbourne, Ynestra King, Audre Lorde, Martha Mahoney, Papusa Molina, Sherry B. Ortner, Andrea Parrot, Elayne Rapping, Linda M. Scott, Susan Sherwin, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Starhawk, Shari L. Thurer, Sojourner Truth, and Naomi Wolf.
