Salomania and the Representation of Race and Gender in Modern Erotic Dance situates the 1908 dance craze, which The New York Times called “Salomania,” as a crucial event and a turning point in the history of the modern business of erotic dance. Framing Salomania with reference to imperial ideologies of motherhood and race, it works toward better understanding the increasing value of the display of the undressed female body in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This study turns critical attention to cultures of maternity in the late 19th century, primarily with reference to the ways in which women are defined in relation to their genitals as patriarchal property and space and are valued according to reproduction as their primary labour. Erotic dance as it takes shape in the modern representation of Salome insists both that the mother is and is not visible in the body of the dancer, a contradiction this study characterizes as reproductive fetishism. Looking at a range of media, the study traces the modern figure of Salome through visual art, writing, early psychoanalysis and dance, from "hootchie kootch" to the performances dancer Maud Allan called “mimeo-dramatic” to mid-20th-century North American films such as Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Charles Lamont's Salome, Where She Danced to the 21st-century HBO series The Sopranos.

In Feminist Praxis Revisited, Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) practitioners reflect on how the field has sought to integrate its commitment to activism and social change with community-based learning in post-secondary institutions. Teaching about and for social change has been a core value of the field since its inception, and co-op, practica, and internships have long been part of the curriculum in the professional schools. However, liberal arts faculties are increasingly under pressure to integrate community engagement practices and respond to labour market demands for greater student “employability.” That demand creates challenges and possibilities as WGS programs and instructors adapt to changing post-secondary agendas. This book examines how WGS programs can continue to prioritize the foundational critiques of inequality, power, privilege, and identity in the face of a post-secondary push toward praxis as resumé building, skills acquisition, and the bridging of town-and-gown differences. It pushes students to reflect critically on their own experiences with feminist praxis through critical reflections offered by the contributors along with examples of practical approaches to community-based/experiential learning.

Jean de La Taille's play Les Corrivaus is the comical story of the rivalry between Filadelfe and Euverte for the lovely Fleurdelys. Difficulties are resolved symmetrically, and matrimony is the order at the end of the day--though, in the best Renaissance tradition, the difficulties had appeared grave indeed. The play should appeal to anyone interested in the theatre, but it is of considerable importance to historians of Renaissance drama, since it is generally accepted as the earliest surviving French humanist comedy written in prose, and the first to be based on Italian models. In particular, La Taille draws heavily upon Le Maçon's translation of Boccaccio's Decameron. The play also amplifies understanding of numerous conventions of Renaissance drama--especially those related to stagecraft, plot, and thematic treatment--yet La Taille transcends mere conventionality in his skilled treatment of character and plot. He also manages to accomplish his didactic purpose, informing his audience of the foibles of lovers, with a minimum of sententious moralizing.

Moving Together: Dance and Pluralism in Canada explores how dance intersects with the shifting concerns of pluralism in a variety of racial and ethnic communities across Canada. Focusing on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, contributors examine a broad range of dance styles used to promote diversity and intercultural collaborations. Examples include Fijian dance in Vancouver; Japanese dance in Lethbridge; Danish, Chinese, Kathak, and Flamenco dance in Toronto; African and European contemporary dance styles in Montréal; and Ukrainian dance in Cape Breton. Interviews with Indigenous and Middle Eastern dance artists along with an artist statement by a Bharata Natyam and contemporary dance choreographer provide valuable artist perspectives. Contributors offer strategies to decolonize dance education and also challenge longstanding critiques of multiculturalism. Moving Together demonstrates that dance is at the cutting edge of rethinking the contours of race and ethnicity in Canada and is necessary reading for scholars, students, dance artists and audiences, and everyone interested in thinking about the future of racial and ethnic pluralism in Canada.

In this new collection, contributors from a variety of disciplines provide a critical context for the relationship between feminist pedagogy and academic feminism by exploring the complex ways that critical perspectives can be brought into the classroom. This book discusses the processes employed to engage learners by challenging them to ask tough questions and craft complex answers, wrestle with timely problems and posit innovative solutions, and grapple with ethical dilemmas for which they seek just resolutions. Diverse experiences, interests, and perspectives—together with the various teaching and learning styles that participants bring to twenty-first-century universities—necessitate inventive and evolving pedagogical approaches, and these are explored from a critical perspective. The contributors collectively consider the implications of the theory/practice divide, which remains central within academic feminism’s role as both a site of social and gender justice and as a part of the academy, and map out some of the ways in which academic feminism is located within the academy today.

Health is a gendered concept in Western cultures. Customarily it is associated with strength in men and beauty in women. This gendered concept was transmitted through visual representations of the ideal female and male bodies, and ubiquitous media images resulted in the absorption of universal standards of beauty and health and generalized desires to achieve them. Today, genuine or self-styled experts—from physicians to newspaper columnists to advertisers—offer advice on achieving optimal health. Topics in this collection are wide ranging and include childbirth advice in Victorian Australia and Cold War America, menstruation films, Canadian abortion tourism, the Pap smear, the Body Worlds exhibition, and fat liberation. Masculinity is explored among drunkards in antebellum Philadelphia and family memoirs during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Seemingly objective public health advisories are shown to be as influenced by commercial interests, class, gender, and other social differentiations as marketing approaches are, and the message presented is mediated to varying degrees by those receiving it. This book will be of interest to scholars in women’s studies, health studies, marketing, media studies, social history and anthropology, and popular culture.

A detailed ethnographic and historical analysis of how traditional Tongan values continue to play key roles in the way that Tongans make their way in the modern world.