ABSTRACT

Feminism as a method, a movement, a critique, and an identity has been the subject of debates, contestations and revisions in recent years, yet contemporary global developments and political upheavals have again refocused feminism’s collective force. What is feminism now? How do scholars and activists employ contemporary feminism? What feminist traditions endure? Which are no longer relevant in addressing contemporary global conditions? 

In this interdisciplinary collection, scholars reflect on how contemporary feminism has shaped their thinking and their field as they interrogate its uses, limits, and reinventions. Organized as a set of questions over definition, everyday life, critical intervention, and political activism, the Handbook takes on a broad set of issues and points of view to consider what feminism is today and what current forces shape its future development. It also includes an extended conversation among major feminist thinkers about the future of feminist scholarship and activism.

The scholars gathered here address a wide variety of topics and contexts: activism from post-Soviet collectives to the Arab spring, to the #MeToo movement, sexual harassment, feminist art, film and digital culture, education, technology, policy, sexual practices and gender identity. Indispensable for scholars undergraduate and postgraduate students in women, gender, and sexuality, the collection offers a multidimensional picture of the diversity and utility of feminist thought in an age of multiple uncertainties.

chapter |19 pages

Contemporary feminism

Editors’ introduction

section Section I|89 pages

Ways of being

chapter 1|11 pages

Taking exceptions seriously

Essentialism, constructionism, and the proliferation of particularities

chapter 2|12 pages

“Stories are data with soul” 1

Lessons from black 2 feminist epistemology

chapter 3|15 pages

“Does feminism have a generation gap?”

Blogging, millennials and the hip hop generation

chapter 4|16 pages

Too soon for post-feminism

The ongoing life of patriarchy in neoliberal America

chapter 5|17 pages

Lost in translation

Challenging (white, monolingual feminism’s) <choice> with justicia reproductiva

chapter 6|16 pages

The feminist frontier

On trans and feminism

section Section II|79 pages

Ways of living

chapter 7|14 pages

Everyday life studies and feminism

chapter 9|14 pages

Surveillance is a feminist issue

chapter 11|13 pages

Circling back

Electronic literature and material feminism

section Section III|51 pages

Ways in

chapter 12|13 pages

Gender and schooling

Progress, persistent inequalities, and possible solutions

chapter 13|12 pages

Why we need feminist game studies

chapter 14|10 pages

Acting out

Performing feminisms in the contemporary art museum

section Section IV|90 pages

Ways of contesting

chapter 16|24 pages

Women organized against sexual harassment

Protesting sexual violence on campus, then and now

chapter 17|15 pages

Online feminism

Global phenomenon, local perspective (on ASPEKT organization and online feminism in Czechoslovak context)

chapter 18|18 pages

Arab women’s feminism(s), resistance(s), and activism(s) within and beyond the “Arab Spring”

Potentials, limitations, and future prospects

chapter 19|7 pages

Pussy Riot

A feminist band lost in history and translation

chapter 20|24 pages

None of this is new (media)

Feminisms in the social media age

section Section V|16 pages

Coda conversation