Introduction

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Contents V
3. About Feminisms IX
4. Acknowledgements XVII
5. Institutions
6. Introduction 1
7. Women and Madness:The Critical Phallacy 6
8. Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Politics of Literary History 20
9. A Mindless Man-driven Theory Machine: Intellectuality, Sexuality, and the Institution of Criticism" 40
10. Not One of the Family: The Repression of the Other Woman in Feminist Theory 58
11. Methodologies
12. Introduction 69
13. Archimedes and The Paradox of Feminist Criticism 75
14. Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism 97
15. What Has Never Been: An Overview of Lesbian Feminist Literary Criticism 117
16. Storming theToolshed 138
17. The Madwoman and Her Languages: Why I Don't Do Feminist Literary Theory 154
18. A Criticismof Our Own: Autonomy and Assimilation in Afro-American and Feminist Literary Theory" (1989) 168
19. Canon
20. Introduction 189
21. Anomalousness 194
22. Treason Our Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon 212
23. Caste, Class, and Canon 227
24. Reflections on Black Women Writers: Revising the Literary Canon 249
25. Tradition
26. Introduction 265
27. The Female Tradition 269
28. Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship 289
29. Zero Degree Deviancy: The Lesbian Novel in English 301
30. Trajectories of Self-Definition: Placing Contemporary Afro-American Women's Fiction 316
31. Body
32. Introduction 329
33. The Laugh of the Medusa 334
34. This Sex Which Is Not One 350
35. Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of l'Écriture féminine 357
36. Creativity and the Childbirth Metaphor: Gender Difference in Literary Discourse 371
37. Desire
38. Introduction 397
39. Another “Cause” – Castration 404
40. The Father's Seduction 413
41. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema 432
42. Women's Time 443
43. Introduction from Between men 463
44. Reading
45. Introduction 487
46. Introduction: On the Politics of Literature 492
47. Reading as a Woman 509
48. Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading 525
49. The Readers and Their Romances 551
50. Discourse
51. Introduction 587
52. Constructing the Subject: Deconstructing the Text 593
53. Toward a Feminist Narratology 610
54. Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion 630
55. Devious Channels of Decorous Ordering: Rosa Coldfield in Absalom, Absalom! 644
56. Gender in Bakhtin's Carnival 671
57. Ethnicity
58. Introduction 685
59. The Truth That Never Hurts: Black Lesbians in Fiction in the 1980s 690
60. Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches to Interpreting a Keres Indian Tale" 713
61. Chicana Literature from a Chicana Feminist Perspective 732
62. I'm Here: An Asian American Woman's Response 738
63. It Jus Be's Dat Way Sometime: The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues 746
64. History
65. Introduction 759
66. Power and the Ideology of “Woman's Sphere” 765
67. The Domestic Fantasy Goes West 781
68. Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism 798
69. Class
70. Introduction 831
71. Working-Class Women's Literature: An Introduction to Study 837
72. Pandora's Box: Subjectivity, Class and Sexuality in Socialist Feminist Criticism 857
73. Romance in the Age of Electronics: Harlequin Enterprises 878
74. The Rise of the Domestic Woman 894
75. Between Women: A Cross-Class Analysis of Status and Anarchic Humor 927
76. Men
77. Introduction 939
78. Reading Woman (Reading) 944
79. Male Independence and the American Quest Genre: Hidden Sexual Politics in the All-Male Worlds of Melville, Twain and London 961
80. "Masculinity as Excess in Vietnam Films: The Father/Son Dynamic of American Culture" 988
81. Vas 1011
82. Autobiography
83. Introduction 1031
84. Writing Autobiography 1036
85. Authorizing the Autobiographical 1040
86. Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior: Filiality and Woman's Autobiographical Storytelling 1058
87. Me and My Shadow 1079
88. About the Authors 1093
89. Alternative Arrangements for Feminisms 1105
90. Author/Title Index 1113
91. Text Permissions 1115