Crossing Boundaries: Feminisms and the Critique of Knowledges

First published in 1988, Crossing Boundaries challenges existing disciplines and fields of study from a feminist perspective, contesting their presumptions, and questioning and crossing their boundaries. The book provides a broad-ranging overview of the state of feminist interventions in the social and natural sciences and the humanities. It illustrates something of the diversity of approaches to theory and scholarship which is evident in the work of feminists. It analyses crucial problems in the way traditional knowledges are conceived, and poses exciting new alternatives. Here is a lively display of the vigour of feminist investigations, from mathematics to literary criticism, from biology to socialism, from equal pay to polyandry. This book will introduce the reader to the work of feminist thinkers and will be a valuable text for students and teachers of sociology and women’s studies. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Original Title Page Original Copyright Page Table of Contents Contributors Preface Part I: Women and the Sciences Introduction Chapter 1: Feminism and science Chapter 2: Mathematics: a barrier for women? Chapter 3: Biology, the popular weapon: sex differences in cognitive function Part II: Women and the Humanities lntroduction Chapter 4: Towards a feminist philosophy of the body Chapter 5: Polyandry, 'pollution', 'prostitution'. The problems of eurocentrism and androcentrism in Polynesian studies Chapter 6: Feminist readings: the case of Christina Stead Chapter 7: The in(ter)vention of feminist knowledges Part III: Women in Australia lntroduction Chapter 8: The feminisation of poverty Chapter 9: Equal pay, a family wage, or both? Part IV: Feminisms, Feminists and Forgotten Women lntroduction Chapter 10: Pre–World War I socialist feminism in Germany: homo economicus Chapter 11: Rose Scott's vision: feminism and masculinity, 1880–1925 Chapter 12: Millicent Garrett Fawcett: a Victorian liberal feminist? Chapter 13: Aileen Palmer's second coming of age Bibliography