Based on the memoirs of Lilly Wust, wife of a Nazi officer who falls in love with a Jewish woman in Germany during WW II. While main focus is on the Jewish characters, it also vividly depicts a lesbian culture that developed while many German men were away & addresses Lilly’s struggles with coming to terms with love for a woman. At the same time, the accuracy in this film is questionable.

The Second Sex is an extraordinarily important work in the development of feminism, but cannot be lightly tackled. Although there are excellent chapters that cover periods within a woman’s life, the book as a whole is a bit thick/dense to digest in one sitting, even if that sitting lasted a full semester. I recommend reading the introduction & 1 or 2 chapters relevant to an individual project.

One of the most comprehensive accounts of history of the female body I came across. Draws on variety of primary sources to paint picture about young women’s bodies from the Victorian period forward. Focused on everything from menstruation to sexual expression, this book opened my eyes to ways in which the body is & is viewed differently now than in the past, using engaging/accessible language.

Unlike the other Butler text this is surprisingly accessible. Each section stands alone as an essay and the language is easier to digest. I was slightly confused by the selection of topics she addresses that did not always seem to be universally central to gender theory. Still, I would recommend this text because it’s an “easy-to-read” Butler & she is so important to gender theory.

This book is easy-to-read, even for an individual not particularly versed in art terminology. Presents a detailed history, but frames approaches in contemporary feminist language & paints clear picture of larger positioning of women in art, as subjects & artists. In many of the chapters, Chadwick brought to light issues that resonate with larger theme of importance of female expression.

In Verses, DiFranco’s feminist tendencies are clear & poems like My IQ, Tiptoe, Platforms, Camping and Reprieve illuminate the many contradictions of contemporary life as a woman addressing issues like menstruation, high-heeled shoes, and female socialization. I would highly recommend these DiFranco poems to someone seeking to understand and study gender and sexuality though literary expression.

Incredibly helpful. While size of the book was daunting, half is notes/bibliography. Addresses gender & the sexing of the body in more sophisticated manner than in Myths & supports arguments with graphs, tables & funny cartoons. Enabled me to understand facts behind some experiences described by women in Venus Boyz, one of the most important films within my study.

I found this movie to be eye-opening. That women & men seek intimacy and companionship in sex/host industry is interesting enough, but the relationship between the male/female sex workers in Japan raises larger questions about the culture driving such a strange sex industry in the first place.

hooks is able to place many common topics of contemporary feminist theory within larger context, illuminating importance & breaking down false assumptions by pointing out counter-arguments. Divided into 12 easy-to-read sections that can be read independently and I would have to highly recommend this book for anyone interested in feminist theory.

There is so much crammed into this book, I had a hard time differentiating between the really significant articles and the supplementary. Based primarily on studies of male/female power dynamics and violence on one side and bisexuality /queer theory on the other. Very few of the articles actually addressed the active expression of heterosexuality by women.

Lauretis is quoted so often not only because what she is saying makes sense, but because it matters. I found the opening and closing chapters the most useful . The way she explains gender construction and dissects creates patterns of linguistic feminism are provoking and spot-on with describing the actual experience of femininity and female-ness intersects with its more theoretical construction.

The central text used in Nancy Gray’s feminist theory course, I purchased this book thinking it would help me develop an understanding of the framework of contemporary feminism within which I would be able to situate my own research. I did not find it to be particularly helpful since most of the articles were specifically aimed at transnational feminism.

Not as good as Breasts, but occasionally thought provoking. Ex: One group of men, interviewed together, though fraternity brothers all thought/talked about sex completely differently. This illustrates an important element of this film: it focused more on the men’s thoughts on sex than on body image, unlike the female version of this film.

This film significantly exceeded my expectations. Rather than just having a subplot of a lesbian relationship, it also focused on difficulty of coupling within Chinese-American families, particularly when romances are non-traditional. While I thought the resolution seemed inaccurate, the depiction of the close-knit community presented insight into the importance of family, tradition & approval.

Since the film bills Annabel as a gender studies undergrad, I imagined this film would address Chong’s exploits as a porn star from an academic perspective. Instead, the portrayal raised a lot of questions for me about her sincerity in being content with her role in the porn industry. Does show how being a part of pornography industry affects other aspects of life.

Focuses on sexualities/self-discovery of a number of characters, male and female, with a wide variety of relationships to sex. While I thought this film did a great job at addressing some sexuality issues and demonstrated the wide variety of ways in which people experience sex, it was so non-memorable that I actually rented it a second time, forgetting I had seen it before.

Initially hesitant because of mixed reviews, my concerns about this book were very legitimate. While some subjects Tavris approaches were highly relevant to my study, her methodology and the way she presents issues left much of the book worthless and the rest inconclusive. Tavris seeks to dismantle a number of myths, but relies on strange data and resources to do so.

This film presents an interesting look at life for lesbian women at the turn of the century, specifically highlighting the cross-dressing theatre and the affluent play-women cultures. This film does an excellent job of presenting segments of theatrical life for women that were often less visible than their on-stage lives.

A collection of essays by people with different relationships to feminism. To the extent that it aims to show the real face of feminism, it succeeds where other similar collections have failed because the essays are written by good writers and it even includes chapters written by men, feminists that often get left out of other compilations.

More about one woman’s struggle with AIDS than specifically about any sort of female sexuality, I thought that this film was important because it illuminated the hardships that arise for women in Africa because of the very clear gender imbalance, including the sexual implications.