Kathleen B. Jones

Cities of Women is a work of historical literary fiction inspired by a decade of research on the medieval life and times of the proto-feminist, Christine de Pizan, the first European woman of letters to support herself as a writer. Like A.S. Byatt's Possession, the story moves between present and past in a dual narrative, evoking the spare joys and monumental pitfalls facing medieval women artists, and a contemporary woman who becomes obsessed with medieval books. Verity Frazier, a disillusioned professor of history, risks her career when she sets out to prove that the artist responsible for the illuminations in the medieval manuscripts of Christine de Pizan was a remarkable woman named Anastasia. As Anastasia's story unfolds against the richly evoked 15th century backdrop of moral disaster and political intrigue, yet extraordinary creativity, Verity finds little evidence of the artist's existence, while discovering the missing pieces to make her own life whole.

Cities of Women

Professor Kathleen B Jones

In COMPASSIONATE AUTHORITY Kathleen B. Jones takes up some of the most central debates in contemporary feminist analysis - debates concerning the nature of the categories of feminist theory, the development of alternative interpretative strategies in feminist theory, and the position of authority in both feminist theory and practice. Engaging the criticisms of feminist theory offered both by postmodernist feminists and the writings of feminists of color, and employing the textual strategies of feminist film theory, Jones reads canonical texts in modern political theory "against the grain." In doing so, she demonstrates the ways in which gender has been used to construct the paradigms of politics and the practices of authority. Jones explicates the historical roots of the definition of authority as sovereignty and considers the limited usefulness of this conceptualization for the feminist project. She counters this formulation of authority which has dominated political discourse for centuries with an alternative conceptualization of "compassionate authority." This feminist reconstruction of the theory and practice of authority provides a basis for the foundation of a new and meaningful order, for a "woman-friendly" polity. This work uses authority as the means to examine how political analysis is transformed by thinking through gender. In doing so, it makes an original and important contribution to the field of feminist political theory: a burgeoning field in which many political concepts have received rich and extensive treatment and yet, a field in which the question of authority has never before been systematically explored. Drawing on the writings of feminist philosophers, literarycritics, film theorists, and historians, as well as on the more orthodox texts of political theory, this book will have broad appeal to scholars and students of women's studies, political science, and a range of interdisciplinary studies.

Democracy and the Representation of Women

Compassionate Authority

Anna G. Jónasdóttir

This collection of theoretical and empirical research on gender and politics assembles contributions from a group of international scholars providing varied accounts of the political interests of gender. It examines how to bridge the gap between discursive and socio-materialist accounts of gender relations and politics. Offering new models for theoretical and empirical research, the first five chapters provide a theoretical framework for the collection, while the following eight chapters shed light on key concepts through detailed case studies of such topics as human rights, womens movements, gendered labor markets, international monetary policy, equality policy, and queer politics.--Publisher's description.

Redoing Theory and Research with a Feminist Face

The Political Interests of Gender Revisited

Kathleen B. Jones brings a scholar's insights and a lyrical voice to this philosophical memoir about her thirty-year fascination with Hannah Arendt, one of the 20th century's most controversial thinkers. With Arendt as her guide, Jones recounts stories from her own life interwoven with Arendt's life and work, demonstrating Arendt's enduring relevance to thinking about the dilemmas of modern life. Editorial Reviews "An extraordinary accomplishment! First off, the writing is beautiful. Diving for Pearls is both biography and autobiography. As a biography of Hannah Arendt it is scholarly and sensitive, guided by Arendt's own hauntingly autobiographical biography of Rahel Varnhagen. As autobiography, it is literary, honest and thoughtful in the Arendtian sense of being actively engaged in thinking. Jones adopts Arendt as a thinking partner, and moves with her toward existential responsibility and gratitude for one's own life. Arendt commented that love is a kind of friendship across the distance the world puts between us. Kathleen B. Jones shows us how love and friendship are possible even across the distance in time the world puts between generations." Daniel Maier-Katkin, author of Stranger from Abroad: Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friendship and Forgiveness "Kathleen B. Jones has done what is rarely possible: writing with stunning intellect from the depths of her own heart. In Diving for Pearls, as in all of her work, Jones emulates Arendt by letting no thought go unexamined, no belief unchallenged, no tradition remain a sacred cow. With her typical no-holds-barred honesty, Jones weaves the fascinating story of her own life through this study of Arendt, probing the difference between what we are and who we are, to get at what it means to live authentically and ethically both as individuals and as citizens of the many communities we inhabit." Laurel Corona, author of Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance, and The Mapmaker's Daughter. "Kathleen B. Jones "slips into the skin" of Hannah Arendt to masterfully weave Arendt's thought and life together with significant moments in her own life story. What Jones finds illuminates the lives of female thinkers and the links between intellectual women across time and place. A beautifully written exploration of memory, loss, responsibility, and love, this book is an exemplar of passionate and engaged political thinking." Lori Marso, author of Feminist Thinkers and the Demands of Femininity: The Lives and Work of Intellectual Women.

A Thinking Journey with Hannah Arendt

Diving for Pearls

Valerie Bryson

"Including studies of the sexual self and sexual subjectivities, socio-political processes of normativization, and social structures of sexuality and gender in national and transnational contexts, this book offers a view of sexuality as a broad and complex dimension of historically changing social-cultural and human-material reality"--EBL.

Intersectional and Transnational Perspectives

Sexuality, Gender and Power

Using the murder of Andrea O'Donnell, who was killed by her boyfriend, and her own experiences as a launch pad, the author examines the dichotomy between love and power. The text looks at the unreasonable choices women feel they have to make between care for themselves and care for another.

Kathleen B. Jones

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