Carolyn J. Eichner, "Feminism's Empire" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Feminism's Empire\xa0(Cornell UP, 2022) investigates the complex relationships between imperialisms and feminisms in the late nineteenth century and demonstrates the challenge of conceptualizing "pro-imperialist" and "anti-imperialist" as binary positions. By intellectually and spatially tracing the era's first French feminists' engagement with empire, Carolyn J. Eichner explores how feminists opposed\u2014yet employed\u2014approaches to empire in writing, speaking, and publishing. In differing ways, they ultimately tied forms of imperialism to gender liberation. Among the era's first anti-imperialists, French feminists were enmeshed in the hierarchies and epistemologies of empire. They likened their gender-based marginalization to imperialist oppressions. Imperialism and colonialism's gendered and sexualized racial hierarchies established categories of inclusion and exclusion that rested in both universalism and ideas of "nature" that presented colonized people with theoretical, yet impossible, paths to integration. Feminists faced similar barriers to full incorporation due to the gendered contradictions inherent in universalism. The system presumed citizenship to be male and thus positioned women as outsiders. Feminism's Empire connects this critical struggle to hierarchical power shifts in racial and national status that created uneasy linkages between French feminists and imperial authorities.\nDr. Carolyn J. Eichner about is a Professor of History and Women\u2019s and Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.\xa0Feminism\u2019s Empire\xa0is her third book.\xa0Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune\xa0came out in 2004 and\xa0The Paris Commune: A Brief History\xa0came out in 2022.\xa0Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune\xa0was published in French as\xa0Franchir les barricades: les femmes dans la Commune de Paris\xa0(\xc9ditions de la Sorbonne, 2020). Translated by Bastien Craipain, it was a finalist for the Prix Augustin Thierry in 2021, an award from the city of Paris for a historical study concerning the period between Antiquity and the late 19th century. In 2022-2023 she will be a Fulbright Research scholar in France and will be in residence at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis.\nMichael G. Vann\xa0is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of\xa0The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam\xa0(Oxford University Press, 2018). When he\u2019s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies