Recommended Readings
We polled some of our WGS Core Faculty to find out what readings they would like beginning Women's and Gender Studies MA students to know about. We've linked to the articles below.
To purchase the books below check out Book Woman, Texas' only remaining feminist book store; Monkey Wrench Books, an all volunteer, collectively-run radical bookstore; or Resistencia, a local bookstore rooted in the Chicano movement and supporting racial justice.
Top Six Authors:
Author: Patricia Hill Collins
Article: "Reflections on the Outsider Within." Journal of Career Development. Vol. 26(1), Fall, 1999.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology
Book: Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. Published by Routledge, 2000.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology; Christine Williams, Sociology; Sharmila Rudrappa, Sociology; and Kamala Visweswaran, Anthropology
Author: Chandra Mohanty
Article: "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses." Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Edited by Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres. Published by Indiana University Press, 1991. Also in Feminist Review, No 30 (Autumn, 1988), 61-88.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology; Christine Williams, Sociology; and Sharmila Rudrappa, Sociology
Book: Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Published by Duke University Press, 2003.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology
Chapter: "Introduction" to Geneologies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures. M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty. Published by Routledge, 1996.
Recommended by: Christine Williams, Sociology
Author: Gloria Anzaldúa
Chapter: "Now Let Us Shift." This Bridge We Call Home, Radical Visions for Transformation, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keeting. Published by Routledge, 1981.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology
Book: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga. Published by Persephone Press, 1981. Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 2002.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology; Sharmila Rudrappa, Sociology
Author: Judith Stacey
Article: "Can There be a Feminist Ethnography?" Women's Studies International Forum. 11 (1988): 21-27.
Recommended by: Christine Williams, Sociology
Article: "The Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology." Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne. Social Problems, 32:301-16, 1985.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology; and Christine Williams, Sociology
Author: Susan Bordo
Book: Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Published by University of California Press, 1995.
Recommended by: Sharmila Rudrappa, Sociology; Christine Williams, Sociology
Author: Dorothy E. Smith
Book: The Everyday World As Problematic. Published by Northeastern University Press, 1987.
Recommended by: Sharmila Rudrappa, Sociology; and Christine Williams, Sociology
Additional Suggested Reading:
Author: Joan Acker
Article: "Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations." Gender & Society 4:139-58, 1990.
Recommended by: Christine Williams, Sociology
Author: Norma Alarcon
Chapter: "The Theoretical Subjects of This Bridge Called My Back." Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa, published by Aunt Lute Books, 1995.
Recommended by: Kamala Visweswaran, Anthropology
Author: Linda Alcoff
Article: "The Problem of Speaking for Others." Cultural Critique No. 20 (Winter, 1991-1992), pp. 5-3.
Article: "Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory." Signs, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Spring, 1988), pp. 405-436.
Recommended by: Dana Cloud, Communications
Authors: Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke (editors)
Book: Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. Published by Indiana University Press, 1990.
Recommended by: Kamala Visweswaran, Anthropology
Author: Lauren Berlant
Book: The Queen of America Goes to Washington: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Published by Duke University Press, 1997.
Recommended by: Dana Cloud, Communications
Authors: Charlotte Brundson, Julie D'Acci, and Lynn Spigel (editors)
Book: Feminist Television Criticism: A Reader. Published by Clarendon Press, 1997.
Recommended by: Janet Staiger, Radio, Television & Film
Author: Judith Butler
Book: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Published by Routledge. 1990
Recommended by: Christine Williams, Sociology
Author: Vicki Callahan (editor)
Book: Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film History. Published by Wayne State University Press, 2010.
Recommended by: Janet Staiger, Radio, Television & Film
Author: Kathleen Canning
Article: "Feminist History after the Linguistic Turn: Historicizing Discourse and Experience." Signs 19.2 (Winter 1994): 368-404.
Recommended by: Pascale Bos, Germanic Studies
Author: R.W. Connell
Book: Masculinites: Knowledge, Power, and Social Change. Published by University of California Press, 1995.
Recommended by: Christine Williams, Sociology
Authors: David Eng and Alice Hom (editors)
Book: Q and A: Queer in Asian America. Published by Temple University Press, 1998.
Recommended by: Kamala Visweswaran, Anthropology
Author: Evelyn Nakano Glenn
Article: "From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor." Signs 18(Autumn):1-43, 1992.
Recommended by: Christine Williams, Sociology
Author: Erving Goffman
Article: "The Arrangement Between the Sexes." Theory and Society 4:301-31, 1977.
Recommended by: Christine Williams, Sociology
Author: Donna Haraway
Article: "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Published by Routledge, 1991.
Recommended by: Sharmila Rudrappa, Sociology
Author: Sandra Harding
Book: Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives. Published by Cornell University Press, 1991.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology
Author: Elizabeth Heineman
Article: "The Hour of the Woman: Memories of Gemany's 'Crisis Years' and West German National Identity." American Historical Review 101.2 (April 1996): 354-395.
Recommended by: Pascale Bos, Germanic Studies
Author: Alison Jagger
Book: Feminist Politics and Human Nature. Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1988.
Recommended by: Dana Cloud, Communications
Author: Judith Lorber
Article: "Believing is seeing: Biology as Ideology." Gender and Society Vol. 7, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 568-581.
Recommended by: Christine Williams, Sociology
Author: Marge Piercy
Book: Woman on the Edge of Time. Published by Fawcett, 1985.
Recommended by: Dana Cloud, Communications
Author: Adrienne Rich
Essay: "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." Signs, Vol. 5, No. 4, Women: Sex and Sexuality. (Summer, 1980), pp. 631-660.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology
Author: Gayle Rubin
Essay: "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex" Feminist Anthropology: A Reader. Published by Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology
Author: Chela Sandoval
Book: Methodology of the Oppressed. University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Recommended by: Gloria González-López, Sociology
Author: Joan W. Scott
Article: "The Evidence of Experience." Critical Inquiry 17.4 (Summer 1991): 773-797.
Recommended by: Pascale Bos, Germanic Studies
Author: Gayatri Spivak
Essay: "The Political Economy of Women as Seen by a Literary Critic." Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics. Edited by Elizabeth Weed. Published by Routledge, 1989.
Recommended by: Kamala Visweswaran, Anthropology
Author: Jackie Stacey
Book: Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. Published by Routledge, 1994.
Recommended by: Janet Staiger, Radio, Television & Film
Author: Sue Thornham (editor)
Book: Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Published by New York University Press, 1999.
Recommended by: Janet Staiger, Radio, Television and Film
Author: Candace West and D.H. Zimmerman
Article: "Doing Gender." Gender & Society 1:125-51, 1987.
Recommended by: Christine Williams, Sociology
Author: Linda Williams
Book: Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible". Published by University of California Press, 1991.
Recommended by: Janet Staiger, Radio, Television and Film