Synopses & Reviews
Are you fearful for our future? Read Leading the Way and be inspired. The twenty-one activists you meet in this book are perfectly attuned to the sense of responsibility and complex consciousness required to be an ethical citizen today. -Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, authors of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future Trigg's collection provides rich evidence that feminist praxis is alive and well among a new generation of feminists. -Nancy A. Naples, author of Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse, and Activist Research Leading the Way is a collection of personal essays written by twenty-one young, hopeful American women who describe their work, activism, leadership, and efforts to change the world. It responds to critical portrayals of this generation of twenty-somethings as being disengaged and apathetic about politics, social problems, and civic causes. Bringing together graduates of a women's leadership certificate program at Rutgers University's Institute for Women's Leadership, these essays provide a contrasting picture to assumptions about the current death of feminism, the rise of selfishness and individualism, and the disaffected Millennium Generation. Reflecting on a critical juncture in their lives-the years during college and the beginning of careers or graduate studies-the contributors' voices demonstrate the ways that diverse, young, educated women in the United States are embodying and formulating new models of leadership, at the same time as they are finding their own professional paths, ways of being, and places in the world. They reflect on controversial issues such as gay marriage, gender, racial profiling, war, immigration, poverty, urban education, and health care reform in a post-9/11 era. Leading the Way introduces readers to young women who are being prepared and empowered to assume leadership roles with men in all public arenas, and to accept equal responsibility for making positive social change in the twenty-first century. Mary K. Trigg is an associate professor in the department of women's and gender studies and director of leadership programs and research at the Institute for Women's Leadership, Rutgers University.
Review
"Trigg's collection provides rich evidence that feminist praxis is alive and well among a new generation of feminists."Nancy A. Naples, Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse, and Activist Research
Review
"Are you fearful for our future? Read Leading the Way and be inspired. The 21 activists you meet in this book are perfectly attuned to the sense of responsibility and complex consciousness required to be an ethical citizen today."Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future
Review
andquot;By exploring the lives of vibrant, significant women who have long been ignored, Trigg adds fascinating new insight to our understanding of the post-suffrage years. Feminism as Lifeandrsquo;s Work is a major contribution to the literature on womenandrsquo;s history.andquot;
Review
andquot;Mary Trigg provides vivid portraits of four fascinating feminists whose careers spanned the 1910s to the 1940s. Their activities pre- and post-1920 challenge the traditional wave model and capture the intellectual, social, and political shifts that shaped modern American feminism.andquot;
Review
andquot;Triggandrsquo;s Leading the Way is an engaging anthology that encourages both students and educators alike not only to reevaluate our notions of leadership through a feminist lens but also to become more active community leaders ourselves.andquot;
Review
andquot;In this innovative group biography, Trigg uses the lives of four well-known and#39;modernand#39; feministsandmdash;author Inez Haynes Irwin, historian Mary Ritter Beard, activist Doris Stevens, and psychologist Lorine Pruetteandmdash;to trace changes in the womenandrsquo;s movement and womenandrsquo;s lives after the suffrage movement. Trigg provides a meaningful challenge to the metaphor of and#39;wavesand#39; in US feminism. A valuable addition to understanding this little-studied generation of activists. Highly recommended.andquot;
Review
andquot;Feminism as Lifeand#39;s Work reminds us - in minute detail - what it took to keep the midcentury struggle for womenand#39;s rights alive through two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the postwar period andhellip; Here, Trigg brings the cause and its champions back to vivid life and reminds us of our debt to unsung feminist pioneers.andquot;
Synopsis
Leading the Way is a collection of personal essays written by twenty-one young, hopeful American women who describe their work, activism, leadership, and efforts to change the world. It responds to critical portrayals of this generation of "twenty-somethings" as being disengaged and apathetic about politics, social problems, and civic causes.
Bringing together graduates of a women's leadership certificate program at Rutgers University's Institute for Women's Leadership, these essays provide a contrasting picture to assumptions about the current death of feminism, the rise of selfishness and individualism, and the disaffected Millennium Generation. Reflecting on a critical juncture in their livesùthe years during college and the beginning of careers or graduate studiesùthe contributors' voices demonstrate the ways that diverse, young, educated women in the United States are embodying and formulating new models of leadership, at the same time as they are finding their own professional paths, ways of being, and places in the world. They reflect on controversial issues such as gay marriage, gender, racial profiling, war, immigration, poverty, urban education, and health care reform in a post-9/11 era.
Leading the Way introduces readers to young women who are being prepared and empowered to assume leadership roles with men in all public arenas, and to accept equal responsibility for making positive social change in the twenty-first century.
Synopsis
Leading the Way is a collection of personal essays written by twenty-one young, hopeful American women who describe their work, activism, leadership, and efforts to change the world. It responds to critical portrayals of this generation of "twenty-somethings" as being disengaged and apathetic about politics, social problems, and civic causes. Contributors reflect on controversial issues such as gay marriage, gender, racial profiling, war, immigration, poverty, urban education, and health care reform in a post-9/11 era.
Synopsis
Tracing the intertwined lives and work of four women who carried forward the cause of feminism after the suffrage victory in 1920, this book recasts the andldquo;doldrumsandrdquo; of the womenandrsquo;s movement as a time of experimentation in new realmsandmdash;the National Womenandrsquo;s Party; sexuality, marriage, and relations with men; and work and financial independenceandmdash;and documents struggles that prefigure those of a later generation.
Synopsis
With suffrage secured in 1920, feminists faced the challenge of how to keep their momentum going. As the center of the movement shrank, a small, self-appointed vanguard of andldquo;modernandrdquo; women carried the cause forward in life and work.
Feminism as Lifeandrsquo;s Work profiles four of these women: the author Inez Haynes Irwin, the historian Mary Ritter Beard, the activist Doris Stevens, and Lorine Pruette, a psychologist.and#160; Their life-stories, told here in full for the first time, embody the changes of the first four decades of the twentieth centuryandmdash;and complicate what we know of the period.
Through these womenandrsquo;s intertwined stories, Mary Trigg traces the changing nature of the womenandrsquo;s movement across turbulent decades rent by world war, revolution, global depression, and the rise of fascism. Criticizing the standard division of feminist activism as a series of historical waves, Trigg exposes how Irwin, Beard, Stevens, and Pruette helped push the U.S. feminist movement to victory and continued to propel it forward from the 1920s to the 1960s, decades not included in the andldquo;waveandrdquo; model. At a time widely viewed as the andldquo;doldrumsandrdquo; of feminism, the women in this book were in fact taking the cause to new sites: the National Womenandrsquo;s Party; sexuality and relations with men; marriage; and work and financial independence. In their utopian efforts to reshape work, sexual relations, and marriage, modern feminists ran headlong into the harsh realities of male power, the sexual double standard, the demands of motherhood, and gendered social structures.
In Feminism as Lifeandrsquo;s Work, Irwin, Beard, Stevens, and Pruette emerge as the heirs of the suffrage movement, guardians of a long feminist tradition, and catalysts of the belief in equality and difference.and#160; Theirs is a story of courage, application, and perseveranceandmdash;a story that revisits the andldquo;bleak and lonely yearsandrdquo; of the U.S. womenandrsquo;s movement and emerges with a fresh perspective of the history of this pivotal era.
About the Author
and#160;MARY K. TRIGG is an associate professor of womenandrsquo;s and gender studies at Rutgers University.and#160; She has published an edited collection, Leading the Way: Young Womenandrsquo;s Activism for Social Change, also from Rutgers University Press, 2010.and#160;
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Part One Learning Leadership
Chapter 1 Going Back Home
Chapter 2 Soldier in a Long, White Dress
Chapter 3 Living While Muslim
Chapter 4 "What Are You?"
Chapter 5 Leading by Example
Chapter 6 Acting on a Grander Scale
Chapter 7 Learning the Meaning of One
Part Two Re-Imagining Leadership
Chapter 8 Storybooks and Fairytales from Rural Teso
Chapter 9 Navigating Identity Politics in Activism
Chapter 10 Finding the Face in Public Health Policy
Chapter 11 Eating with a Spoon
Chapter 12 Giving Voice to the Unheard
Chapter 13 Moving through Message
Chapter 14 The Transformation of a Chrysalis
Part Three Leadership in Practice
Chapter 15 Changing the Face of Leadership
Chapter 16 Choosing Nursing
Chapter 17 Safe Keepers and Wage Earners
Chapter 18 Blurring the Lines That Divide
Chapter 19 Practicing Leadership
Chapter 20 Stories from the Sidelines
Chapter 21 Creating Knowledge