The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism (21st Century Studies) - Hardcover

""This richly stimulating book will be widely welcomed. It demonstrates in kaleidoscopic detail how feminist thought has come of age. Joan W. Scott's questioning stance over the last quarter of a century provides the thread running though the varied essays that engage with political and ethical as well as more traditionally scholarly issues. For anyone grappling with the concepts of gender and sexual difference this volume gives convincing evidence that they are formed in relation to other modes of social organisation and therefore can only be posed as historical questions."" --Lenore Davidoff, University of Essex--Lenore Davidoff, University of Essex

A generation after the publication of Joan W. Scott's influential essay, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," this volume explores the current uses of the term -- and the ongoing influence of Scott's agenda-setting work in history and other disciplines. How has the study of gender, independently or in conjunction with other axes of difference -- such as race, class, and sexuality -- inflected existing fields of study and created new ones? To what extent has this concept modified or been modified by related paradigms such as women's and queer studies? With what discursive politics does the term engage, and with what effects? In what settings, and through what kinds of operations and transformations, can gender remain a useful category in the 21st century? Leading scholars from history, philosophy, literature, art history, and other fields examine how gender has translated into their own disciplinary perspectives.