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Image one: Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns, 1206 to 1335 (2017) - synopsis: Explores the political, economic and religious role of women in the Mongol empire This book shows the development of women’s status in the Mongol Empire from its original homeland in Mongolia up to the end of the Ilkhanate of Iran in 1335. Taking a thematic approach, the chapters show a coherent progression of this development and contextualise the evolution of the role of women in medieval Mongol society.
Image two: E-book titled Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine (2014) - synopsis: This close look at Wonder Woman’s history portrays a complicated heroine who is more than just a female Superman with a golden lasso and bullet-deflecting bracelets. The original Wonder Woman was ahead of her time, advocating female superiority and the benefits of matriarchy in the 1940s. At the same time, her creator filled the comics with titillating bondage imagery, and Wonder Woman was tied up as often as she saved the world. In the 1950s, Wonder Woman begrudgingly continued her superheroic mission, wishing she could settle down with her boyfriend instead, all while continually hinting at hidden lesbian leanings. Exploring this lost history adds new dimensions to the world’s most beloved female character, and Wonder Woman Unbound delves into her comic book and its spin-offs as well as the myriad motivations of her creators to showcase the peculiar journey that led to Wonder Woman’s iconic status.
Image one: E-book titled Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan (2018) - synopsis: The overwhelming majority of tea practitioners in contemporary Japan are women, but there has been little discussion on their historical role in tea culture (chanoyu). In Cultivating Femininity, Rebecca Corbett writes women back into this history and shows how tea practice for women was understood, articulated, and promoted in the Edo (1603–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods. Viewing chanoyu from the lens of feminist and gender theory, she sheds new light on tea’s undeniable influence on the formation of modern understandings of femininity in Japan.
Image two: E-book titled The Suspicion of Virtue: Women Philosophers in Neoclassical France (2018) - synopsis: The salon was of particular importance in mid- to late-seventeenth-century France, enabling aristocratic women to develop a philosophical culture that simultaneously reflected and opposed the dominant male philosophy. In The Suspicion of Virtue, John J. Conley, S. J., explores the moral philosophies developed by five women authors of that milieu: Madame de Sablé, Madame Deshoulières, Madame de la Sabliére, Mlle de la Vallière, and Madame de Maintenon. Through biography, extensive translation, commentary, and critical analysis, The Suspicion of Virtue presents the work of women who participated in the philosophical debates of the early modern period but who have been largely erased from the standard history of philosophy.
Image one: E-book titled Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America (2019) - synopsis: Futbolera is the first monograph on women’s sports in Latin America. Because sports evoke such passion, they are fertile ground for understanding the formation of social classes, national and racial identities, sexuality, and gender roles. Futbolera tells the stories of women athletes and fans as they navigated the pressures and possibilities within organized sports. This vibrant history also examines women’s sports through comparative case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, and others. Special attention is given to women’s sports during military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s as well as the feminist and democratic movements that followed.
Image two: E-book titled Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam (2018) - synopsis: An exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Muslim womanhood that centers the lived experience of women of color For author Sylvia Chan-Malik, Muslim womanhood is constructed through everyday and embodied acts of resistance, what she calls affective insurgency. In negotiating the histories of anti-Blackness, U.S. imperialism, and women’s rights of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Being Muslim explores how U.S. Muslim women's identities are expressions of Islam as both Black protest religion and universal faith tradition. Through archival images, cultural texts, popular media, and interviews, the author maps how communities of American Islam became sites of safety, support, spirituality, and social activism, and how women of color were central to their formation.
Image one: E-book titled Hair, Headwear, and Orthodox Jewish Women: Kallah's Choice (2014) - synopsis: Hair, Headwear, and Orthodox Jewish Women comments on hair covering based on an ethnographic study of the lives of Orthodox Jewish women in a small non-metropolitan synagogue. It brings the often overlooked stories of these women to the forefront and probes questions as to how their location in a small community affects their behavioral choices, particularly regarding the folk practice of hair covering. A kallah, or bride, makes the decision as to whether or not she will cover her hair after marriage. In doing so, she externally announces her religious affiliation, in particular her commitment to maintaining an Orthodox Jewish home.
Image two: E-book titled Front-Page Girls: Women Journalists in American Culture and Fiction, 1880 to 1930 (2018) - synopsis: The first study of the role of the newspaperwoman in American literary culture at the turn of the twentieth century, this book recaptures the imaginative exchange between real-life reporters like Nellie Bly and Ida B. Wells and fictional characters like Henrietta Stackpole, the lady-correspondent in Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady. It chronicles the exploits of a neglected group of American women writers and uncovers an alternative reporter-novelist tradition that runs counter to the more familiar story of gritty realism generated in male-dominated newsrooms.
Image one: E-book titled The First Fifteen: How Asian American Women Became Federal Judges (2021) - synopsis: In 1998, an Asian woman first joined the ranks of federal judges with lifetime appointments. It took ten years for the second Asian woman to be appointed. Since then, however, over a dozen more Asian women have received lifetime federal judicial appointments. This book tells the stories of the first fifteen. In the process, it recounts remarkable tales of Asian women overcoming adversity and achieving the American dream, despite being the daughters of a Chinese garment worker, Japanese Americans held in internment camps during World War II, Vietnamese refugees, and penniless Indian immigrants. In a candid series of interviews, these judges reflect upon the personal and professional experiences that led them to this distinguished position, as well as the nerve-wracking political process of being nominated and confirmed for an Article III judgeship.
Image two: Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (2014) - synopsis: Love and Liberation reads the autobiographical and biographical writings of one of the few Tibetan Buddhist women to record the story of her life. Sera Khandro Künzang Dekyong Chönyi Wangmo (also called Dewé Dorjé, 1892–1940) was extraordinary not only for achieving religious mastery as a Tibetan Buddhist visionary and guru to many lamas, monastics, and laity in the Golok region of eastern Tibet, but also for her candor. This book listens to Sera Khandro’s conversations with land deities, dakinis, bodhisattvas, lamas, and fellow religious community members whose voices interweave with her own to narrate what is a story of both love between Sera Khandro and her guru, Drimé Özer, and spiritual liberation.
Image one: E-book titled Disabled Bodies in Early Modern Spanish Literature: Prostitutes, Aging Women, and Saints (2018) - synopsis: This study explores a wide range of Spanish medical, regulatory, and moral discourses, illustrating how such texts inherit, reproduce, and propagate an amalgam of Western traditional concepts of female embodiment. It goes on to examine concrete representations of deviant female characters, focusing on the figures of syphilitic prostitutes and physically decayed aged women in literary texts such as Celestina, Lozana andaluza, and selected works by Cervantes and Quevedo. Finally, an analysis of the personal testimony of Teresa de Avila, a nun suffering neurological disorders, complements the discussion of early modern women’s disability.
Image two: E-book titled Nuclear Summer: The Clash of Communities at the Seneca Women's Peace Encampment (1992) - synopsis: When thousands of women gathered in 1983 to protest the stockpiling of nuclear weapons at a rural upstate New York military depot, the area was shaken by their actions. What so disturbed residents that they organized counterdemonstrations, wrote hundreds of letters to local newspapers, verbally and physically harassed the protestors, and nearly rioted to stop one of the protest marches? Louise Krasniewicz reconstructs the drama surrounding the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in Seneca County, New York, analyzing it as a clash both between and within communities. She shows how debates about gender and authority―including questions of morality, patriotism, women’s roles, and sexuality―came to overshadow arguments about the risks of living in a nuclear world.
Image one: E-book titled Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology (2017) - synopsis: Medical Bondage moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how nineteenth-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals. It also retells the story of black enslaved women and of Irish immigrant women from the perspective of these exploited groups and thus restores for us a picture of their lives.
Image two: E-book titled Nurse Writers of the Great War (2016) - synopsis: The First World War was the first “total war.” Its industrial weaponry damaged millions of men, and drove whole armies underground into dangerously unhealthy trenches. Tens of thousands of women volunteered to serve as nurses to alleviate their suffering. Some were fully-trained professionals; others had minimal preparation, and served as volunteer-nurses. Nurse Writers of the Great War examines these nurses’ memoirs and explores the insights they offer into the nature of nursing and the impact of warfare. The book combines close biographical research with textual analysis, in order to offer an understanding of both nurses’ wartime experiences and the ways in which their lives and backgrounds contributed to the style and content of their writing.
Image one: E-book titled Farzana: The Woman Who Saved an Empire (2014) - synopsis: Amongst the riches of 19th century India, as the British fought their way across Mughal territory, an orphaned street-girl is brought to court to perform for the Emperor. That girl was Farzana, and she would become a courtesan, a leader of armies, a treasured defender of the last Mughal emperor and the head of one of the most legendary courts in history. In this book, Julia Keay weaves a story which spans the Indian continent and the end of a golden era in Indian history, the story of a nobody who became a teenage seductress and died one of the richest and most prominent woman of her age. Farzana rode into battle atop a stallion, though only 4.5 feet tall, and led an army which defended a sickly Mughal empire. She dabbled in witchcraft while gaining favour with the Pope, and died a favourite of the British Raj.
Image two: E-book titled SheMurenga: The Zimbabwe Women's Movement, 1995 to 2000 (2013) - synopsis: This book demonstrates the place of women’s movements during a defining period of contemporary Zimbabwe. The government of Robert Mugabe may have been as firmly in power in 2000 as it was in 1995, but the intervening years saw severe economic crisis, mass strikes and protests, the start of land occupations, intervention in the war in the DRC, and the rise of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Author Shereen Essof shows how Zimbabwean women crafted responses to these and other events, and aimed for a feminist agenda that would prioritize the interests of the rural and urban poor.
