Synopses & Reviews
The revolutionary movements that emerged frequently in Latin America over the past century promoted goals that included overturning dictatorships, confronting economic inequalities, and creating what Cuban revolutionary hero Che Guevara called the "new man." But in fact, many of the "new men" who participated in these movements were not men. Thousands of them were women. This book aims to show why a full understanding of revolutions needs to take account of gender.
Drawing on more than two hundred interviews, Kampwirth examines the political, structural, ideological, and personal factors that allowed many women to escape from the constraints of their traditional roles and led some to participate in guerrilla activities. Her emphasis on the experiences of revolutionaries adds a new dimension to the study of revolution, which has focused mainly on explaining how states are overthrown.
Review
“This book is most illuminating when it delves into the details of particular women’s lives.”
—Janise Hurtig and Rosario Montoya, Latin American Research Review
Review
“Overall, this is an important and engaging book.”
—E-Extreme
Review
“Karen Kampwirth has here made a fundamental contribution to the literature on revolutions, weaving together structural political economy and personal stories in a provocative, soundly argued way. The stories are fascinating and gripping, the ideas striking and powerful, the writing highly engaging. The theoretical framework, based on a combination of structural and personal factors, is wise, inventive, and sound, and is tested with some very original and hard-to-get empirical data from four cases—Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cuba, and Chiapas. It will be widely seen as the essential work on the increasingly studied topic of women and revolution.”
—John Foran, University of California, Santa Barbara
Review
“Why, then, yet another book on guerrilla movements? Karen Kamwirth shows us why in Women and Guerrilla Movements.
Kampwirth’s analysis thus, implicitly, leaves us with a frame to better understand how movements in the post-Cold War are likely to be different in form and content than earlier movements.”
—Susan Eckstein, Perspectives on Politics
Review
“This is an intelligent and well-researched book—essential reading for helping academics and practitioners think through the complexities of women’s lives during and after revolutions. Kampwirth’s book will chart a new course for us to study women as individuals, not just as a group, with regard to political and social revolutions. A book that superbly captures the real lives of women revolutionaries—without over-romanticizing the revolutions or the roles of women.”
—Tracy Fitzsimmons, Shenandoah University
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 277-282) and index.
About the Author
Karen Kampwirth is Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Latin American Studies Program at Knox College. She is co-editor of Radical Women in Latin America (Penn State, 2001).
Table of Contents
Old and new, high and low : straw horsemen of Russian Orthodoxy / Laura Engelstein -- Two cultures, one throne room : secular courtiers and Orthodox culture in the golden hall of the Moscow Kremlin / Daniel Rowland -- Letting the people into Church : reflections on Orthodoxy and community in late Imperial Russia / Vera Shevzov -- From corpse to cult in early modern Russia / Eve Levin -- Protectors of women and the lower orders : constructing sainthood in modern Russia / Nadieszda Kizenko -- Till the end of time : the Apocalypse in Russian historical experience before 1500 / Michael S. Flier -- Women and the Orthodox faith in Muscovite Russia : spiritual experience and practice / Isolde Thyrãet -- Quotidian Orthodoxy : domestic life in early modern Russia / Daniel H. Kaiser -- God of our mothers : reflections on lay female spirituality in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russia / Gary Marker -- Paradoxes of piety : the Nizhegorod convent of the Exaltation of the Cross, 1807-1935 / William G. Wagner -- Orthodoxy as ascription (and beyond) : religious identity on the edges of the Orthodox community, 1740-1917 / Paul W. Werth -- Epilogue: A view from the West / Thomas N. Tentler.