Feeling Feminism

From beauty pageant protests to fire bombings of pornographic video stores, emotions are a powerful but often unexamined force underlying feminist activism. They are at play in the experiences of injustice, exclusion, caring, and suffering that have fed women’s commitment to building and sustaining a new world.

Feeling Feminism examines the ways in which emotions such as anger, rage, joy, and hopefulness influenced second-wave feminis action and theorizing across Canada. Drawing on affect theory to convey the passion, sense of possibility, and collective political commitment that have characterized feminism, the contributors to this volume reveal its full impact on contemporary Canada and highlight the contested, sometimes exclusionary nature of the movement itself.

Insights from gender and women’s studies, cultural and literary theory, social psychology, and sociology infuse Feeling Feminism as the contributors explore how emotions shaped and nourished feminist activism. More generally, they demonstrate the power of emotions, desires, and actions to transform the world.

Lara Campbell is a professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC. She has served on the Canadian Historical Association Council and as co-chair of the Canadian Committee on Women’s and Gender History. Among her many publications are A Great Revolutionary Wave: Women and the Vote in British Columbia and, with Tamara Myers and Adele Perry, the seventh edition of Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History.

Michael Dawson is a professor of history at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, where he has also chaired the department and served as associate vice-president (research). His publications include Selling Out or Buying In? Debating Consumerism in Vancouver and Victoria, 1945–1985 and, with Catherine Gidney and Donald Wright, Symbols of Canada.

Catherine Gidney is an adjunct research professor of history at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. Her publications include Captive Audience: How Corporations Invaded Our Schools and Tending the Student Body: Youth, Health, and the Modern University. She is a former president of the Canadian History of Education Association and a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.

Contributors: Funké Aladejebi, Taylor Antoniazzi, Marin Beck, Josette Brun, Kevin Brushett, Lara Campbell, Michael Dawson, Sophie Doucet, Matthew Fesnak, Patrizia Gentile, Catherine Gidney, Laurie Laplanche, Margaret Little, Lynne Marks, Eryk Martin, Emma McKenna, Liz Millward, Sarah A. Nickel, Emma Paszat, Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, Whitney Wood

...a fascinating collection of essays about second-wave feminist activism in Canada