Gender And Landscape

Gender and Landscape is a feminist inquiry into a long-ignored area of study: the landscape. Although there has been an exhaustive investigation into issues of gender as they intersect with space and place, very little has been written about the gendering of the landscape. This volume provides a bridge between feminist discussions of space and place as something 'lived' and landscape interpretations as something 'viewed'.

This volume, a feminist inquiry into the landscape, provides a bridge between feminist discussions of space and place and landscape interpretations.

While many fields struggle to specify feminine contributions, the work of women has always played a fundamental role in American landscape architecture. Women claim responsibility for many landscape types now taken for granted, including community gardens, playgrounds, and streetscapes. This collection of essays by leaders in the discipline addresses the ways that gender has influenced the history, design practice and perception of landscapes. It highlights women's relation to landscape architecture, presents the professional efforts of women in the landscape realm, examines both the perception and experience of landscapes by women, and speculates on ways to re-imagine gender and the landscape.

While gender has been the subject of extensive critical inquiry, the debate has focused primarily on the human, particularly the female, body. The spaces bodies occupy and the ways in which those spaces are depicted in landscape art has not, however, been subject to investigation. This book is the first sustained attempt to fill this gap in art history.

Examining representations of physical and metaphorical landscape in Charlotte Bront1/2, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, Henson explores the way gender attitudes are expressed, both in descriptions of physical and metaphorical landscape and in the idea of nature, through the gendered voices of the narrators. Henson looks at the influence of changing aesthetic theory, arguing that factors such as scientific enquiry and industrialization changed the representation of landscape and of Englishness in these 'realist' novels."

In the early 1970s, empowered by the civil rights and women's movements, a new group of women writers began speaking to the American public. Their topic, broadly defined, was the postmodern American West. By the mid-1980s, their combined works made for a bona fide literary groundswell in both critical and commercial terms. However, as Krista Comer notes, despite the attentions of publishers, the media, and millions of readers, literary scholars have rarely addressed this movement or its writers. Too many critics, Comer argues, still enamored of western images that are both masculine and antimodern, have been slow to reckon with the emergence of a new, far more "feminine," postmodern, multiracial, and urban west. Here, she calls for a redesign of the field of western cultural studies, one that engages issues of gender and race and is more self-conscious about space itself_especially that cherished symbol of western "authenticity," open landscape. Surveying works by Joan Didion, Wanda Coleman, Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, Barbara Kingsolver, Pam Houston, Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, and Mary Clearman Blew, Comer shows how these and other contemporary women writers have mapped new geographical imaginations upon the cultural and social spaces of today's American West.

The poems in Landscape with Sex and Violence explore what it means to be a woman, a sexual being, and a trauma survivor in contemporary America.

Modernity was critically important to the formation and evolution of landscape architecture, yet its histories in the discipline are still being written. This book looks closely at the work and influences of some of the least studied figures of the era: established and less well-known female landscape architects who pursued modernist ideals in their designs. The women discussed in this volume belong to the pioneering first two generations of professional landscape architects and were outstanding in the field. They not only developed notable practices but some also became leaders in landscape architectural education as the first professors in the discipline, or prolific lecturers and authors. As early professionals who navigated the world of a male-dominated intellectual and menial work force they were exponents of modernity. In addition, many personalities discussed in this volume were either figures of transition between tradition and modernism (like Silvia Crowe, Maria Teresa Parpagliolo), or they fully embraced and furthered the modernist agenda (like Rosa Kliass, Cornelia Oberlander). The chapters offer new perspectives and contribute to the development of a more balanced and integrated landscape architectural historiography of the twentieth century. Contributions come from practitioners and academics who discuss women based in USA, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, South Africa, the former USSR, Sweden, Britain, Germany, Austria, France and Italy. Ideal reading for those studying landscape history, women’s studies and cultural geography.

University and College Women’s and Gender Equity Centers examines the new institutional contexts surrounding women’s centers. It looks at the possibilities for, as well as the challenges to, advocating for gender equity in higher education, and the ways in which women’s and gender equity centers contribute to and lead that work. The book first describes the landscape of women’s centers in higher education and explores the structures within which the centers are situated. In doing so, the book shows the ways in which many women’s centers have expanded their work to include working with athletics, Greek life, men, transgender students, international students, student parents, veterans, etc. Contributions then delve into the profession of women’s center work itself, and ask how women’s center work has become "professionalized?" Threats and challenges to women’s and gender equity centers are also explored, as contributions look at how their expansion has helped or complicated the role of centers? The collection concludes by highlighting current successes and forward-thinking approaches in women’s centers and asking how gender equity centers can best prepare for the future? Through narratives, case studies, and by offering strategies and best practice, University and College Women’s and Gender Equity Centers will engage emerging and existing equity centre professionals and women’s and gender studies faculty and students and help them to move the work of gender equity forward in the next decade.

This multi-authored scholarly volume explores the divide between men and women in their consumption of news media, looking at how the sexes read and use news, historically and currently, how they use technology to access their news, and how today’s news pertains to and is used by women. The volume also addresses diversity issues among women’s use of news, considering racial, ethnic, international and feminist perspectives. The volume is intended to help readers understand adult news use behavior--a critical and timely issue considering the state of newspapers and television news in today’s multi-media news environment.