Sure to take its place alongside the literary landmarks of modern feminism, Elaine Showalter's brilliant, provocative work chronicles the roles of feminist intellectuals from the eighteenth century to the present. With sources as diverse as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Scream 2, Inventing Herself is an expansive and timely exploration of women who possess a boundless determination to alter the world by boldly experiencing love, achievement, and fame on a grand scale. These women tried to work, travel, think, love, and even die in ways that were ahead of their time. In doing so, they forged an epic history that each generation of adventurous women has rediscovered. Focusing on paradigmatic figures ranging from Mary Wollstonecraft and Margaret Fuller to Germaine Greer and Susan Sontag, preeminent scholar Elaine Showalter uncovers common themes and patterns of these women's lives across the centuries and discovers the feminist intellectual tradition they embodied. The author brilliantly illuminates the contributions of Eleanor Marx, Zora Neale Hurston, Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret Mead, and many more. Showalter, a highly regarded critic known for her provocative and strongly held opinions, has here established a compelling new Who's Who of women's thought. Certain to spark controversy, the omission of such feminist perennials as Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Virginia Woolf will surprise and shock the conventional wisdom. This is not a history of perfect women, but rather of real women, whose mistakes and even tragedies are instructive and inspiring for women today who are still trying to invent themselves.

Inventing Herself is an account of women, from the 18th century to the present, who lived life on a grand scale. Uncovering the lives of feminist intellectuals, Elaine Showalter shows how the intellectual standard for modern feminists has been compromised by the spectre of celebrity.

In a searing historical novel, Tonya Bolden illuminates post-Reconstruction America in an intimate portrait of a determined young woman who dares to seize the opportunity of a lifetime. As a young black woman in 1880s Savannah, Essie's dreams are very much at odds with her reality. Ashamed of her beginnings, but unwilling to accept the path currently available to her, Essie is trapped between the life she has and the life she wants. Until she meets a lady named Dorcas Vashon, the richest and most cultured black woman she's ever encountered. When Dorcas makes Essie an offer she can't refuse, she becomes Victoria. Transformed by a fine wardrobe, a classic education, and the rules of etiquette, Victoria is soon welcomed in the upper echelons of black society in Washington, D. C. But when the life she desires is finally within her grasp, Victoria must decide how much of herself she is truly willing to surrender.

本书考察妇女运动第二波以来美国性别批评的历史缘起、文学诉求和政治使命，整理性别理论的思想资源、观念形态和文化主张，尝试用性别视角反思文学理论生成的外部条件和内在陈述方式。全书论述把伊莲·肖沃尔特的女性批评学和朱迪斯·巴特勒对性别的文化批判思想作为问题本身，探讨美国性别批评思想的历程及政治相关性。

Neuroscience has found that neuroplasticity of brain cells allows brains to invent themselves. Remodeling of brains can be facilitated by schools and universities. What may be done to accelerate that positive inventing so as to prepare for rapidly accelerating change? As an IBM advertisement reads: “It is time to ask smarter questions.” This book helps the reader do that. What is worse than being blind to something? “Being blind to your blindness” says Eric Haseltine who has worked for both Disney and the National Security Agency. Being blind to what our brains can do is slowly changing. Brain researchers recently found that we can now be our own subjects of brain experimentation. Research shows how one can change one’s brain by changing one’s mind. In her 2010 high school valedictorian speech Erica Goldson courageously said: “The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it.” This book shows professors, teachers, parents, and interested citizens how students can become aware and reach higher levels of consciousness.

Since his drowning in 1917, Tom Thomson has been recreated by poets, playwrights, novelists, filmmakers, biographers, and other artists as a legendary figure synonymous with Canada and its northern identity. Touted as a great artist cut off in his prime, his mysterious death in Canoe Lake, Algonquin Park, and the controversy about his final resting-place fired the popular imagination and raised him to the status of a national hero. In "Inventing Tom Thomson" Sherrill Grace examines many of the ways in which the figure of Thomson has been imagined by Canadians. Even people who do not know his paintings well will recognize "The Jack Pine" and know his legend through the marketing of Thomson memorabilia on the Web, in museums, and in stores. Grace suggests that the figure we have come to recognize as Tom Thomson is inextricably associated with many of the qualities that we believe characterize Canadian culture - love of the wilderness, northern purity, solitary independence, and a masculine ability to canoe, camp, fish, and rough it in the bush. "Inventing Tom Thomson" is about those artists who have felt compelled to imagine their own Tom Thomsons and about what the man has come to represent to the culture at large - it is about us and how the stories about this exceptional painter have shaped our sense of who we are as a nation.