Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2021 -

Rao (methodology, London School of Economics, UK) interrogates one of the most pressing matters facing couples in the early 21st century: persistent unemployment and underemployment. Based on extensive interviews with both partners of several couples, many of whom the author interviewed multiple times, Rao's research reveals the gendered ways in which couples manage unemployment and underemployment. Though the study was completed before the COVID-19 global pandemic, its findings can be extrapolated to the stresses that are currently afflicting millions of couples in the US navigating unemployment and underemployment as a result of the pandemic. This is a must read for students and scholars interested in the gendered negotiations and gendered patterns of work for pay and housework. The book is well researched and situated in the relevant literature, but it is also accessible and could be used in any undergraduate course on gender, work, and the family.Summing Up: Essential. All levels.

In Feminist Trouble, Lepinard (Univ. of Lausanne, Switzerland) asks how recurring crises over veiling and postcolonial issues (e.g., nationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment, and Islamophobia) shape specific forms of feminist political "subjectivations" in Europe and North America. Based on interviews with members and volunteers from 50 feminist organizations in France and Quebec, as well as archival materials, Lepinard offers a renewed feminist imagination that goes beyond liberal-secular assumptions and visions of female religious agency and autonomy. Instead, she argues for a more intentional analysis and understanding of the ways in which "feminists themselves grapple with the recurrent crises and conflicts over racial and religious differences" (p. 9). In doing so, a reinvigorated, more inclusive feminist political and moral project is born that informs resistance strategies to hierarchies of power. Lepinard duly notes, however, the plurality of feminism and the dilemma facing scholars of acknowledging heterogeneity while yearning for solidarity. She presents a powerful theoretical lens (i.e., "political subjectivations") that demonstrates how feminist discourses produce and politicize feminist identities that lead to inclusionary and exclusionary practices. This is a must-have text for graduate and advanced undergraduate students majoring in women, gender, and sexuality studies.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Black (Case Western Reserve Univ.) and Keyes (Homeless Prenatal Program) present a well-researched, qualitative study examining the experiences of fatherhood among 138 marginalized men in Connecticut. They place the accounts historically within the economic, political, and social contexts of 2000-10, both at the national and local level, which shaped these fathers' lived experiences, forcing the reader to ask: What does it mean to be a good father? The study is organized in three sections starting with the political and economic contexts of the new millennium, followed by descriptions of the social and economic marginalization of the fathers, and ending with an in-depth exploration of their intimate relationships and perspectives on fatherhood. By examining fatherhood, Black and Keyes help to fill a void in the field of US poverty studies, which have mostly focused on motherhood, due in large part to the ways in which anti-poverty programs were created to aid mothers with dependent children. The authors thus disrupt the hegemonic discourse surrounding fathers as "sole provider[s]," which has permeated public policies and perceptions of fatherhood. They present a fuller picture of the socioeconomic factors shaping fatherhood, which demands a reconceptualization of the idea today.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

The 16 essays in this collection are uniformly well researched, intellectually rigorous, and grounded in theory. The word literary in the title is interpreted broadly to embrace not only fiction, poetry, and memoir but also images such as magazine covers and graphic narratives, song lyrics, the "texts" of celebrities, protest movements such as #MeToo, and the concept of the Anthropocene. Cooke's goal in commissioning the essays was to address 21st-century issues in an innovative and influential manner. She asserts in the introduction that "the feminist commitments that emerge from these pages are trans-affirmative and intersectional, attentive to how classism, racism, ableism, geographical location and other forms of discrimination and privilege differentially shape women's lives" (p. 4). The contributors, most of whom are independent scholars and academics in the UK, discuss such topics as disability studies, queer theory, Black motherhood, feminist manifestos, sex work, migration and refugees, dystopias, domesticity, and YA fiction. The prose is elegant, sophisticated, and accessible (with one exception), and the text as a whole will be useful for both teaching and research.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

In 2000, pioneering anti-violence educator and cultural theorist Jackson Katz produced the now-classic educational film Tough Guise, in which he asserted that violence in the US was rooted in sociocultural and historical ideals of masculinity. Twenty years later, author Sumerau (Univ. of Tampa) presents to readers what Katz provided his viewers: a concise, accessible, and well-researched offering that focuses on the ways in which contemporary masculinity is integrally entwined with the performance of violence. Through the use of autoethnography and in-depth interviews with 50 people who identify as white, cisgender, heterosexual, middle- or upper-class men, the author demonstrates how males are systematically taught to be violent as they socially construct their identities as men in American society; how males routinely oppose efforts to reduce violence; and how male violence is often in reaction to attempts by others to challenge gender, racial, and sexual inequalities. Accordingly, if violence in the US has any chance whatsoever of being significantly ameliorated, a wholesale redefinition of masculinity must be a major part of the equation. Though slender in length, this book is a substantial addition to the expanding library of men and masculinity studies.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals.