Synopses & Reviews
The acceleration of economic globalization and the rapid global flows of people, culture, and information have intensified the importance of developing transnational understandings of contemporary issues. Transnational Feminism in the United States examines how transnational perspectives shape the ways in which we create and disseminate knowledge about the world within the United States, and how the paradigm of transnational feminism is affected by national narratives and public discourses within the country itself. An innovative theoretical project that is both deconstructive and constructive, this bookinterrogates the limits of feminist thought, primarily through case studies that illustrate its power to create new fields of research out of traditionally interdisciplinary lines of inquiry. Leela Fernandes discusses ways to approach, analyze, and capture processes that exceed and unsettle the nation-state within the transnational feminist paradigm. Examining the links between power and knowledge that bind interdisciplinary theory and research, she shines new light on issues such as human rights as well as academic debates about transnational feminist perspectives on global issues. A thought-provoking analysis, Transnational Feminism in the United States powerfully contributes to the field of Womens Studies and related cross-disciplinary scholarship on feminist theory and gender from a global perspective. Leela Fernandes is Professor of Womens Studies and Political Science at the University of Michigan, and author of Indias New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform; Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills; and Transforming Feminist Practice.
Review
"Leela Fernandes focuses a sharp analytic lens on the representational practices, cross-border politics, and symbolic constructions of transnationalism within U.S. feminism. Her call for accountability and interrogation of feminist knowledge production is one that should be heard by all those interested in challenging inequalities and resisting disciplining tendencies within transnational feminist praxis."-Nancy Naples,author of Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothering, Community Work, and the War on Poverty
Review
"Unveiling the reproduction of the national in the transnational and the disciplining of interdisciplinarity, Fernandes deftly illustrates the minefields that women's and gender studies, postcolonial, and other interdisciplinary scholars traverse as they seek to produce transformative knowledge. Transnational Feminism in the United States is essential reading, ushering us into a more ethical practice of feminism and politics." -Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd,author of Gender, Race, and Nationalism in Contemporary Black Politics
About the Author
Leela Fernandes is Professor of Womens Studies and Political Science at the University of Michigan, and author of Indias New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform; Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class and Culture in the Calcutta Jute Mills; and Transforming Feminist Practice.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction2. U.S. State Practices and the Rhetoric of Human Rights3. Transnational Economies of Representation and the Labor of the Traveling Subaltern4. Regimes of Visibility and Transnational Feminist Knowledge 5. Institutional Practice and the Field of Womens Studies 6. Race, Transnational Feminism, and Paradigms of Difference 7. Afterword: The Moment of Transnational Feminism in the United States