WST 470: Women's Studies

From Contemporary Youth Culture: An International Encyclopedia
“Third wave feminism” is a term that has been used by a number of women, as well as popular media, to describe contemporary versions of feminism that evolved in the early 1980s and continue to the present. Some have associated this term with young feminists who were influenced by the legacies of feminism's second wave, which began in the mid-1960s. MORE

From From Suffrage to Senate: America's Political Women
Reproductive rights are based upon the premise that human dignity and equality grant each person the right and the responsibility to make reproductive decisions for herself or himself. Information about human sexuality and reproduction is fundamental to making those decisions, as is access to the services necessary to act upon the decisions. MORE

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
Rather than assuming that all women were similarly oppressed, women of color took issue with unitary theories of gender and addressed the differences among women's experiences. MORE

From Encyclopedia of African-American Writing
Following the divorce of Rebecca's parents, African-American author Alice Malsenior Walker and European-Jewish-American attorney Mel Leventhal, she alternated two-year periods with each of her parents. At age 18, Rebecca Leventhal changed her surname to her mother's maiden name, Walker. While earning her B.A. from Yale University (1992), Rebecca Walker was already a contributing editor to Ms. magazine (1989-).

From Culture Wars
Feminist author Naomi Wolf is known for her best-selling first book, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (1991), regarded as one of the central texts of third-wave feminism. MORE

From Gender and Education: An Encyclopedia
Another factor operative in the shaping of the emergence of Black women's studies is the development of creative tension between Black womanists and feminists and White feminists and between Black studies and women's studies. Black studies had always understood the discipline as composed of studies of Black men and women, male and female, family and community. MORE

From Contemporary Youth Culture
The culture forces girls to choose between one of two very different identities—good girl or bad girl. In recent years, two factors have helped make a third identity possible, one less tied to moral conformity and more to empowering young women: jammer girl. The rise of jammer girl is linked to and springs from the Internet and third wave feminism. MORE