Routledge Everyday Women's and Gender Studies: Introductory Concepts

Everyday Women’s and Gender Studies is a text-reader that offers instructors a new way to approach an introductory course on women’s and gender studies. This book highlights major concepts that organize the diverse work in this field: Knowledges, Identities, Equalities, Bodies, Places, and Representations. Its focus on "the everyday" speaks to the importance this book places on students understanding the taken-for granted circumstances of their daily lives. Precisely because it is not the same for everyone, the everyday becomes the ideal location for cultivating students’ intellectual capacities as well as their political investigations and interventions. In addition to exploring each concept in detail, each chapter includes up to five short recently published readings that illuminate an aspect of that concept. Everyday Women’s and Gender Studies explores the idea that "People are different, and the world isn’t fair," and engages students in the inevitably complicated follow-up question, "Now that we know, how shall we live?" Review Everyday Women's and Gender Studies accomplishes what no one thought possible: it reinvents the introductory textbook form to reflect the field's intersectional commitments. Organized around key concepts -- from knowledges and identities to representation and places -- it provides a flexible format to engage students in the challenges and pleasures of thinking critically about gender, race, and sex today. --Robyn Wiegman, Duke University   Orr and Braithwaite have given us that rare treat: an accessible, down-to-earth, yet still theoretically sophisticated guide to the ever-changing field of women’s and gender studies. By focusing on key concepts and not star theorists, ordinary life and not iconic examples, this book provides a welcome and innovative introduction to the twisted and all-too-everpresent ways in which gender exerts itself on our bodies, our minds, our ideas, our identities. A welcome addition to the literature! --Suzanna Walters, Northeastern University   Everyday Women's and Gender Studies is an extremely welcome addition to the textbook landscape. Organized around key concepts rather than historical moments or cultural trajectories, it introduces students to the shifting, varied, and complicated discipline that is women’s and gender studies. My colleagues and I have been searching for a textbook that offers students an organized and purposeful entrance to the field without relying on constrictive foundational assumptions or falsely unifying narratives; I am pleased to say that, with the publication of Everyday Women's and Gender Studies , we may have finally found our answer. --Tara Pauliny, John Jay College, CUNY In Everyday Women's and Gender Studies, Ann Brathwaite and Catherine Orr take on the impossible―introduce, in very accessible language, first-time students, and quite possibly seasoned and new instructors to the vast and ever-evolving field of gender-based scholarly inquiries. In their organization by "concepts" rather than the conventional theoretical positions, historical periods, or cultural contexts, they succeed not only in providing information, but, importantly, modeling the field’s evolution through interrogating the very idea of how we come to know, and what we do with that knowledge. A must for every student and instructor both in and outside of Women's and Gender Studies! --Sri Craven, Portland State University This innovative textbook speaks directly to students and unpacks the knowledges, identities, bodies, representations, and places that motivate feminist pedagogy in women’s, gender, and sexualities studies (WGSS). Rarely have I seen a text that helps students imagine and then explore how WGSS is put together in theoretical and practical terms. The transparency and clarity of the text is impressive. This accessible resource will assist feminist instructors in reaching a broad audience and communicate the significance of the femini