Maria Tamboukou links Foucauldian ideas to feminism and education. Its central argument is that the Foucauldian notion of "technologies of the self" needs to be gendered and contextualized. This argument is pursued through a genealogical analysis of autobiographical texts of women educators in the UK at the turn of the nineteenth century. This is a new theoretical approach, since Foucault's work has proved to be of great interest to feminist scholars but as yet, his theories have only intermittently been used in educational feminist work.

This book highlights the catalytic role of workers education in mobilizing political activism and women s involvement in labour struggles and politics. Through a comprehensive study of the gendered aspects of workers education it explores the intellectual lives of women workers. Drawing on the letters and papers of Fannia Mary Cohn, a prominent figure in the US garment industry s trade union movement, it discusses and further theorizes the importance of gender as an analytical category in the forceful interaction of labour, education and migration histories. The significance of the visual...

Paris, along with New York, was one of the main centres of the fashion industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But although New York based garment workers were mobilized early in the twentieth century, Paris was the stage of vibrant revolutions and uprisings throughout the nineteenth century. As a consequence, French women workers were radicalized much earlier, creating a unique and unprecedented moment in both labour and feminist history. Seamstresses were central figures in the socio-political and cultural events of nineteenth and early twentieth century France but their stories...