A Handbook of Literary Feminisms brings together for the first time two distinct threads of literary feminism: literary history and feminist criticism and theory. The first section of the book offers a history of women's contributions to Anglo-American literature over the past 500 years. It charts the social, cultural, and historical conditions that both shaped women's writing and prevented it from being recognized or valued by literary history. The second section provides an explanation and analysis of trends in feminist criticism and theory, focusing on how feminist approaches to...

From the bestselling "Bridget Jones's Diary "that started the trend to the television sensation "Sex and the City "that captured it on screen, "chick lit" has become a major pop culture phenomenon. Banking on female audiences' identification with single, urban characters who struggle with the same life challenges, publishers have earned millions and even created separate imprints dedicated to the genre. Not surprisingly, some highbrow critics have dismissed chick lit as trashy fiction, but fans have argued that it is as empowering as it is entertaining.
This is the first volume of its...

From the bestselling Bridget Jones's Diary that started the trend to the television sensation Sex and the City that captured it on screen, "chick lit" has become a major pop culture phenomenon. Banking on female audiences' identification with single, urban characters who struggle with the same life challenges, publishers have earned millions and even created separate imprints dedicated to the genre. Not surprisingly, some highbrow critics have dismissed chick lit as trashy fiction, but fans have argued that it is as empowering as it is entertaining.
This is the...

Until recently, fashion was considered the "F-word" in intellectual circles, dismissed as unworthy of serious attention. Yet no area of life, no individual moment, stands outside fashion's discourses. Intuitively, we all know that clothing is a language, incessesantly communicating messages about its wearer. But who speaks this language, to whom it is addressed, what does it mean, and how are its meanings established and tranformed? On Fashion explores the ways our material, political, psychological, sexual, even intellectual lives are woven into fashion's fabric. This stimulating collection...

An Alternative History of Bicycles and Motorcycles: Two-Wheeled Transportation and Material Culture accounts for the nineteenth-century creation and development of two-wheeled vehicles, both human-powered and motorized. Specifically, the book focuses on the period from 1885 (which saw the appearance, simultaneously, of the Safety bicycle and the Einspur, the first motorcycle) to 1920, while exploring implications for later bicycling and motorcycling. We argue that invention of these vehicles, rather than the product of gifted individuals, should be seen as the consequence of a number of...