Women's and Gender Studies
Your librarian
Foundational Concepts
- Gender Studies: Foundations and Key Concepts
Gender studies developed alongside and emerged out of Women’s Studies. This non-exhaustive list introduces readers to scholarship in the field.
introductory resources
Gender and Women's Studies: Critical Terrain
A critical introduction to key theories and concerns, Gender and Women's Studies celebrates a range of influential feminist thought on topics of race, class, ability, age, rights, and sexuality. Broad in scope, this collection features multiple genres of work and covers an array of disciplinary focuses with Indigenous, racialized, disabled, and queer voices prominent among the variety of perspectives included. This thoroughly updated second edition contains more photos, infographics, and artworks as well as updated reflections on developments in the media and activist movements. In addition, new chapters have been added on issues surrounding sex work as labour, the politics of veiling in Canada, trans and gender queer-identities, and Indigenous sovereignty. Concerned with the past, present, and future of gender identity and gendered representation, this remarkable anthology is perfect for use in introductory courses in gender studies and women's studies at universities across Canada.
Feminism's Fight
Feminism's Fight explores and assesses feminist strategies to advance gender justice for women through Canadian federal policy over the past fifty years, from the 1970 Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women to the present. The authors evaluate changing government orientations through the 1990s and 2000s, revealing the negative impact on most women's lives and the challenges for feminists. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated misogyny and related systemic inequalities. Yet it has also revived feminist mobilization and animated calls for a new and comprehensive equality agenda for Canada. Feminism's Fight tells the crucial story of a transformation in how feminism has been treated by governments and asks how new ways of organizing and new alliances can advance a feminist agenda of social and economic equality.
Making space for Indigenous feminism
The first edition of Making Space for Indigenous Feminism proposed that Indigenous feminism was a valid and indeed essential theoretical and activist position, and introduced a roster of important Indigenous feminist contributors. This new edition builds on the success and research of the first and provides updated and new chapters that cover a wide range of some of the most important issues facing Indigenous peoples today: violence against women, recovery of Indigenous self-determination, racism, misogyny and decolonization. Specifically, new chapters deal with Indigenous resurgence, feminism amongst the Sami and in Aboriginal Australia, neoliberal restructuring in Oaxaca, Canada's settler racism and sexism, and missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. Written by Indigenous feminists and allies, this book provides a powerful and original intellectual and political contribution demonstrating that feminism has much to offer Indigenous women, and all Indigenous peoples, in their struggles against oppression.
Final Girls, Feminism and Popular Culture
This volume examines contemporary reformulations of the 'Final Girl' in film, TV, literature and comic, expanding the discussion of the trope beyond the slasher subgenre. Focusing specifically on popular texts that emerged in the 21st century, the volume asks: What is the sociocultural context that facilitated the remarkable proliferation of the Final Girls? What kinds of stories are told in these narratives and can they help us make sense of feminism? What are the roles of literature and media in the reconsiderations of Carol J. Clover's term of thirty years ago and how does this term continue to inform our understanding of popular culture? The contributors to this collection take up these concerns from diverse perspectives and with different answers, notably spanning theories of genre, posthumanism, gender, sexuality and race, as well as audience reception and spectatorship.
Abolition. Feminism. Now.
Feminist organizing by marginalized populations such as queer, anticapitalist, and non-white women, has pushed for abolition as a response to forms of state and interpersonal gender and sexual violence, but have largely been erased from this political moment. Leading scholar-activists trace historical genealogies, internationalist learnings, and everyday practices to grow our collective present and future that don't include police or new jails.
Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
Plastered over t-shirts and tote bags, the word 'feminist' has entered the mainstream and is fast becoming a popular slogan for our generation. But feminism isn't a commodity up for purchase; it's a weapon for fighting against injustice. This revolutionary book reclaims feminism from consumerism through exploring state violence against women, reproductive justice, transmisogyny, sex work, gendered Islamophobia and much more, showing that the struggle for gendered liberation is a struggle for justice, one that can transform the world for everyone.
Feminism Is for Everybody
Acclaimed cultural critic bell hooks presents a sharp analysis and open-hearted vision of feminism in this accessible and inspiring volume.
Asian American feminisms and Women of Color politics
Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics brings together groundbreaking essays that speak to the relationship between Asian American feminisms, feminist of color work, and transnational feminist scholarship. This collection, featuring work by both senior and rising scholars, considers topics including the politics of visibility, histories of Asian American participation in women of color political formations, accountability for Asian American "settler complicities" and cross-racial solidarities, and Asian American community-based strategies against state violence as shaped by and tied to women of color feminisms. Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics provides a deep conceptual intervention into the theoretical underpinnings of Asian American studies; ethnic studies; women's, gender, and sexual studies; as well as cultural studies in general.