Reviews Archives - Page 8 of 17

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Reflections of a Federal Judge from Jim Crow Mississippi

A Jo Freeman Review of ‘Won Over’

March 23, 2019 • by Jo Freeman

When I was working in Mississippi for SCLC in 1966, I would not have believed that any of the young white men I saw on the streets (mostly harassing us) would ever reject white supremacy. They appeared as dedicated to its domination as sports fans are to their clubs. William Alsup writes that ...

Reflections of a Federal Judge from Jim Crow Mississippi

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The All Too Human Behavioral Geneticists

A review of Aaron Panofsky’s Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics

March 14, 2019 • by Isaac Ariail Reed

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a social theorist of our generation, possessed of rich data and much sociological insight, must be in want of Bourdieu. In what follows, I will try to explicate why I think the ironic meaning of this statement is as true as its literal ...

The All Too Human Behavioral Geneticists

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A Homage to the Victims of Germany’s Neo-Nazis

Author Esther Dischereit laments the deaths of Turkish immigrants murdered by a German terrorist cell

March 3, 2019 • by Emilia Otte

Between 2000 and 2007, a Neo-Nazi terrorist cell murdered ten people across Germany. Even though eight of the victims were Turkish immigrants, the state didn’t initially consider the deaths to be racially motivated. It wasn’t until 2011, when two of the members staged a failed bank robbery, that the police forces connected the ...

A Homage to the Victims of Germany’s Neo-Nazis

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Banned for Life – from Mississippi

Review of Brenda Travis, written with John Obee

February 28, 2019 • by Jo Freeman

At age 17 Brenda Travis was banned from the state of Mississippi, or so she was told. Forced to leave family and friends behind because she got involved in the civil rights movement she spent most of her life someplace else, but always felt like an exile. Brenda was just 16 ...

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Why Does Patriarchy Persist?

A review of Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider’s book on the price of patriarchy

February 26, 2019 • by Ali Shames-Dawson

There are books that do what they set out to do: they make their points clearly, they argue something new, they uncover something for us. Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider’s new book, Why Does Patriarchy Persist?, does more than that. It is a spark. It is something like a book-length speech ...

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Love and Hope in the New Left

A Review of Making History, Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America

February 21, 2019 • by Maurice Isserman

In the summer of 1974 Dick Flacks, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, published an article entitled “Making History vs. Making Life: Dilemmas of an American Left” in the political quarterly,Working Papers for a New Society. Long defunct, the publication Working Papers was distinguished, among other things, for ...

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How to Live One’s Values in All The “Little” Choices

A Review of Making History, Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America

February 20, 2019 • by Myra Marx Ferree

Living in interesting times is reputedly a curse, but Mickey and Dick Flacks tell a story of such times that makes them positively charming. The title suggests a voyage of discovery, both of each other and of national experiences and values, but the book itself has less to say about ...

How to Live One’s Values in All The “Little” Choices

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A Place of Grief and Revolution

A Review of Gina Apostol’s Filipino novel, Insurrecto

February 7, 2019 • by Jen Mediano

When you crack open Gina Apostol’s Insurrecto, there’s an old-timey cast of characters and a listing of parts and chapters set off by florid fonts and curlicues. The reader thinks this will serve to orient her. If I use this key, you think, I will know who the main and minor ...

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The Politics of Female Sexuality in ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’

What a recent Bollywood film can tell us about risk, pleasure, desire and feminism.

February 4, 2019 • by Shiv D. Sharma

In an advisory issued by the Information and Broadcasting ministry in December 2017, the Indian government banned the telecast of condom advertisements across all television channels until 10 pm on the contention that some of them were “indecent and can impact children.” The implicit idea behind the advisory is that anything involving ...

The Politics of Female Sexuality in ‘Lipstick Under My Burkha’

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From Tax Laws to Military Benefits

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Early Battles Against Sex Discrimination

January 23, 2019 • by Tanya L. Roth

In late December, Focus Features released On the Basis of Sex, a biopic about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Starring Felicity Jones, On the Basis of Sex highlights Ginsburg’s journey through law school, her teaching career, and her family relationships, particularly with her husband, Martin, and her daughter, Jane. The film shows ...

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Crusader Without Violence 60 Years Later

The first biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is reissued

January 21, 2019 • by Jo Freeman

Lawrence D. Reddick was a history professor at Alabama State College — the state school for blacks — when the Montgomery Bus Boycott brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to national prominence in 1955-56. They had known each other casually in Atlanta; both had moved to Montgomery to accept jobs only recently. On ...

Crusader Without Violence 60 Years Later

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Feminism and the Intersectional Politics of Anger

Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

December 28, 2018 • by Holloway Sparks

I began reading Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger the week of Brett Kavanaugh’s second appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Like so many other feminists, I found Kavanaugh’s bellicose and evasive performance utterly infuriating, and I was incensed by Republicans’ sputtering indignation that he had to address the accusations ...