This book examines how rhetorically effective uses of silence and materiality mediate feminist activism and discusses the implications of these dynamics for pedagogy. Specifically, the text establishes a theoretical foundation for what the author terms “psychosocial composing,” or “the metaphorical composing and revising of individual participants and society, and the contribution of written and visual texts as an input and output of the relationships between individuals and social culture.” This idea is examined through primary research on the Clothesline Project, an international event that invites ​people who have experienced gender violence (directly or indirectly) to decorate tee shirts that get hung on clotheslines in public places. Through looking at values and roles of silence in global cultures and the use ​of material arts in activist efforts, the author argues for the unique value of silence and materiality in individual and collective spaces. The manuscript includes discussion questions and sample teaching materials. Overall, making connections among composition and rhetoric, psychology, sociology, politics, women’s studies, art and design, pedagogy, and history, this book further demonstrates the potential interdisciplinary approaches to rhetoric and communication.

Feminism is not dead. This groundbreaking book advances a radical and pioneering feminist manifesto for today's modern audience that exposes the real reasons as to why women are still oppressed and what feminist activism must do to counter it through a vibrant and original account of the global Reclaim the Night March.

This unique book draws on the narratives of women participants in community radio, using intersectionality, feminist, critical psychological and community development frameworks to explore how this highly symbolic, creative dimension of activism can unmute marginalised women and enrich corporate media. Over a period of four years, twelve female radio project volunteers offer their experiences which they analyse, together as part of the RRG (Radio Research Group), alongside a conceptual and contextual framework to produce insights on the gendered nature of silence, voice and empowerment, and the wider potential of radio activism. Employing literature from a variety of fields, from bell hooks to Stuart Hall, the book foregrounds evidence from the majority world to argue the empowerment potential of community radio and the barriers to radio participation. Through this analysis community radio emerges as a site of development, from which diverse identities transpire through laughter, dialogue, raised consciousness and solidarity, but it also exposes the conflicts of empowerment by recognising inherent tensions in womanhood and in communities. Centering on the global, hegemonic challenge of empowering women, and relevant across multiple disciplines and professions, this is fascinating reading for academics, students and professionals in psychology, gender studies, media studies, development and related areas.

Voicing Demands is a collection of analytical narratives of what has happened to feminist voice, a key pathway to women’s empowerment. These narratives depart from the existing debate on women’s political engagement in formal institutions to examine feminist activism for building and sustaining constituencies through raising, negotiating and legitimizing women’s voice under different contexts. Bringing together the reflections and experiences of feminist researchers and activists in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, this unique volume explores how various global trends, such as the development of transnational linkages, the rise of conservative forces, the NGOization of feminist movements, and an increase in the power of donors, have created opportunities and challenges for feminist voice and activism.

From the authors of Manifesta, an activism handbook that illustrates how to truly make the personal political.

In Finding the Movement, Anne Enke reveals that diverse women’s engagement with public spaces gave rise to and profoundly shaped second-wave feminism. Focusing on women’s activism in Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis-St. Paul during the 1960s and 1970s, Enke describes how women across race and class created a massive groundswell of feminist activism by directly intervening in the urban landscape. They secured illicit meeting spaces and gained access to public athletic fields. They fought to open bars to women and abolish gendered dress codes and prohibitions against lesbian congregation. They created alternative spaces, such as coffeehouses, where women could socialize and organize. They opened women-oriented bookstores, restaurants, cafes, and clubs, and they took it upon themselves to establish women’s shelters, health clinics, and credit unions in order to support women’s bodily autonomy. By considering the development of feminism through an analysis of public space, Enke expands and revises the historiography of second-wave feminism. She suggests that the movement was so widespread because it was built by people who did not identify themselves as feminists as well as by those who did. Her focus on claims to public space helps to explain why sexuality, lesbianism, and gender expression were so central to feminist activism. Her spatial analysis also sheds light on hierarchies within the movement. As women turned commercial, civic, and institutional spaces into sites of activism, they produced, as well as resisted, exclusionary dynamics.

Taking Risks offers a creative, interdisciplinary approach to narrating the stories of activist scholarship by women. The essays are based on the textual analysis of interviews, oral histories, ethnography, video storytelling, and theater. The contributors come from many disciplinary backgrounds, including theater, history, literature, sociology, feminist studies, and cultural studies. The topics range from the underground library movement in Cuba, femicide in Juárez, community radio in Venezuela, video archives in Colombia, exiled feminists in Canada, memory activism in Argentina, sex worker activists in Brazil, rural feminists in Nicaragua, to domestic violence organizations for Latina immigrants in Texas. Each essay addresses two themes: telling stories and taking risks. The authors understand women activists across the Americas as storytellers who, along with the authors themselves, work to fill the Latin American and Caribbean studies archives with histories of resistance. In addition to sharing the activists' stories, the contributors weave in discussions of scholarly risk taking to speak to the challenges and importance of elevating the storytellers and their histories.