A strong collection of essays in a field hungry for texts Provides theoretical basis for a developing subject International - authors from US, Ghana, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria Deals with important current issues - AIDS in Africa and the US; reproductive rights; the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas controversy Four colour cover

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Theorizing Empowerment: Canadian Perspectives on Black Feminist Thought is a collection of articles by Black Canadian feminists centralizing the ways in which Black femininity and Black women's experiences are integral to understanding political and social frameworks in Canada. What does Black feminist thought mean to Black Canadian feminists in the Diaspora? What does it means to have a feminist practice which speaks to Black women in Canada? In exploring this question, this anthology collects new ideas and thoughts on the place of Black women's politics in Canada, combining the work of new/upcoming and established names in Black Canadian feminist studies.

Providing a survey of approaches to theoretical issues raised by the quest for gender justice, this text is for use in interdisciplinary feminist theory courses. With an aim to provide an overview of feminist responses to, including a critique of these questions, its organising questions are: What is sexist oppression? What must be done about it?

In Black Feminism Reimagined Jennifer C. Nash reframes black feminism's engagement with intersectionality, often celebrated as its primary intellectual and political contribution to feminist theory. Charting the institutional history and contemporary uses of intersectionality in the academy, Nash outlines how women's studies has both elevated intersectionality to the discipline's primary program-building initiative and cast intersectionality as a threat to feminism's coherence. As intersectionality has become a central feminist preoccupation, Nash argues that black feminism has been marked by a single affect—defensiveness—manifested by efforts to police intersectionality's usages and circulations. Nash contends that only by letting go of this deeply alluring protectionist stance, the desire to make property of knowledge, can black feminists reimagine intellectual production in ways that unleash black feminist theory's visionary world-making possibilities.

From the nineteenth century articulations of Sojourner Truth to contemporary thinkers like Patricia J. Williams, Black feminists have always recognized the mutual dependence of race and gender. Detailing these connections, Not Just Race, Not Just Gender explores the myriad ways race and gender shape lives and social practices. Resisting essentialist tendencies, Valerie Smith identifies black feminist theorizing as a strategy of reading rather than located in a particular subjective experience. Her intent is not to deny the validity of black women's lived experience, but rather to resist deploying a uniform model of black women's lives that actually undermines the power of black feminist thought. Whether reading race or gender in the Central Park jogger case or in contemporary media, like Livin' Large, Smith displays critical rigor that promises to change the way we think about race and gender.

Black Feminist Sociology offers new writings by established and emerging scholars working in a Black feminist tradition. The book centers Black feminist sociology (BFS) within the sociology canon and widens is to feature Black feminist sociologists both outside the US and the academy. Inspired by a BFS lens, the essays are critical, personal, political and oriented toward social justice. Key themes include the origins of BFS, expositions of BFS orientations to research that extend disciplinary norms, and contradictions of the pleasures and costs of such an approach both academically and personally. Authors explore their own sociological legacy of intellectual development to raise critical questions of intellectual thought and self-reflexivity. The book highlights the dynamism of BFS so future generations of scholars can expand upon and beyond the book’s key themes.