Joan Smith – författare

'Pacy, witty and authoritative' Jonathan Freedland 'In her hands, ancient history becomes a vivid avenue of approach to a burning modern-world concern… a powerful and important book' Daily Telegraph A superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome's most important women – dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years. Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith has worked for years to raise awareness of violence against women and girls, and has been instrumental in bringing the innate misogyny of the police to public attention. Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac reinterprets the bloody, violent story of twenty-three women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Fewer than half a dozen of them can be said with any confidence to have died of natural causes.These were the wives, mothers and daughters of the emperors from Augustus to Nero, via their ‘mad’ relative Caligula. They were the most privileged women of their time, but their lives were overshadowed, dominated and controlled by these men. Raped, killed, ripped apart from their children and mostly airbrushed from history, Joan Smith brings their extraordinary and tragic stories back into focus. There are no nymphomaniacs here.Instead, the book pieces together the human stories, showing how they struggled for control of their lives at a time when both the law and culture were stacked against them. These women shared in a spirited, inspiring and sometimes reckless resistance to male authority.Smith brings to this history not only a fresh interpretation of the original texts but also an understanding of what we know now about the mechanics of domestic abuse. The way these women have been misrepresented for two thousand years speaks volumes not just about ancient misogyny but the origin and persistence of attitudes that continue to blight women’s lives today.

'Pacy, witty and authoritative' Jonathan Freedland 'In her hands, ancient history becomes a vivid avenue of approach to a burning modern-world concern… a powerful and important book' Daily Telegraph A superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome's most important women – dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years. Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith has worked for years to raise awareness of violence against women and girls, and has been instrumental in bringing the innate misogyny of the police to public attention. Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac reinterprets the bloody, violent story of twenty-three women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Fewer than half a dozen of them can be said with any confidence to have died of natural causes.These were the wives, mothers and daughters of the emperors from Augustus to Nero, via their ‘mad’ relative Caligula. They were the most privileged women of their time, but their lives were overshadowed, dominated and controlled by these men. Raped, killed, ripped apart from their children and mostly airbrushed from history, Joan Smith brings their extraordinary and tragic stories back into focus. There are no nymphomaniacs here.Instead, the book pieces together the human stories, showing how they struggled for control of their lives at a time when both the law and culture were stacked against them. These women shared in a spirited, inspiring and sometimes reckless resistance to male authority.Smith brings to this history not only a fresh interpretation of the original texts but also an understanding of what we know now about the mechanics of domestic abuse. The way these women have been misrepresented for two thousand years speaks volumes not just about ancient misogyny but the origin and persistence of attitudes that continue to blight women’s lives today.

''Pacy, witty and authoritative'' Jonathan Freedland''In her hands, ancient history becomes a vivid avenue of approach to a burning modern-world concern… a powerful and important book'' Daily TelegraphA superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome''s most important women – dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years.Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith has worked for years to raise awareness of violence against women and girls, and has been instrumental in bringing the innate misogyny of the police to public attention. Unfortunately,She Was a Nymphomaniac reinterprets the bloody, violent story of twenty-three women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Fewer than half a dozen of them can be said with any confidence to have died of natural causes.These were the wives, mothers and daughters of the emperors from Augustus to Nero, via their ‘mad’ relative Caligula. They were the most privileged women of their time, but their lives were overshadowed, dominated and controlled by these men. Raped, killed, ripped apart from their children and mostly airbrushed from history, Joan Smith brings their extraordinary and tragic stories back into focus. There are no nymphomaniacs here.Instead, the book pieces together the human stories, showing how they struggled for control of their lives at a time when both the law and culture were stacked against them. These women shared in a spirited, inspiring and sometimes reckless resistance to male authority.Smith brings to this history not only a fresh interpretation of the original texts but also an understanding of what we know now about the mechanics of domestic abuse. The way these women have been misrepresented for two thousand years speaks volumes not just about ancient misogyny but the origin and persistence of attitudes that continue to blight women’s lives today.

'Pacy, witty and authoritative' Jonathan Freedland 'In her hands, ancient history becomes a vivid avenue of approach to a burning modern-world concern… a powerful and important book' Daily Telegraph A superb and illuminating history of Imperial Rome's most important women – dispelling the myths and misogyny that have distorted their reputations for over 2000 years. Writer, activist and journalist Joan Smith has worked for years to raise awareness of violence against women and girls, and has been instrumental in bringing the innate misogyny of the police to public attention. Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac reinterprets the bloody, violent story of twenty-three women closely associated with the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome. Fewer than half a dozen of them can be said with any confidence to have died of natural causes.These were the wives, mothers and daughters of the emperors from Augustus to Nero, via their ‘mad’ relative Caligula. They were the most privileged women of their time, but their lives were overshadowed, dominated and controlled by these men. Raped, killed, ripped apart from their children and mostly airbrushed from history, Joan Smith brings their extraordinary and tragic stories back into focus. There are no nymphomaniacs here.Instead, the book pieces together the human stories, showing how they struggled for control of their lives at a time when both the law and culture were stacked against them. These women shared in a spirited, inspiring and sometimes reckless resistance to male authority.Smith brings to this history not only a fresh interpretation of the original texts but also an understanding of what we know now about the mechanics of domestic abuse. The way these women have been misrepresented for two thousand years speaks volumes not just about ancient misogyny but the origin and persistence of attitudes that continue to blight women’s lives today.

For decades, the story of Rome's civil wars has been told through the deeds of a handful of extraordinary men. Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Pompey fleeing to Egypt. Antony dying in Cleopatra's arms after a botched suicide. But this is only half the story – and not even the most interesting half. In Uncivil, Joan Smith restores to their rightful place the women who lived through one of the most catastrophic periods in ancient history. They are a remarkable cast: Fulvia, who married two gang bosses and a general, raised her own army and terrified Rome's most powerful men; Cleopatra, the brilliant strategist whose careful political calculations have been buried under centuries of fantasy and misogyny; Servilia, Caesar's great love, who remained a formidable political operator even after her son plunged a knife into the man she had loved for decades; and Cornelia, who watched her husband Pompey beheaded from a ship moored off the coast of Egypt.But Smith also recovers the unnamed women whose stories have never been told: the wives who hid proscribed husbands in laundry bags and between ceiling joists; the women of Rome who endured five days of mass rape when Marius's troops stormed the city in 87 BC – an atrocity so thoroughly ignored by modern historians that its omission seems deliberate; the slaves and freedwomen prostituted by their owners to the most powerful men in Rome.Drawing on a lifetime's expertise in both Roman history and the politics of gender, Smith exposes the systematic violence that underpinned Roman society and challenges us to read the ancient sources with fresh eyes. The result is a history of the late Roman Republic that is at once more complete and more disturbing than anything that has come before.

For decades, the story of Rome's civil wars has been told through the deeds of a handful of extraordinary men. Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Pompey fleeing to Egypt. Antony dying in Cleopatra's arms after a botched suicide. But this is only half the story – and not even the most interesting half.In Uncivil, Joan Smith restores to their rightful place the women who lived through one of the most catastrophic periods in ancient history. They are a remarkable cast: Fulvia, who married two gang bosses and a general, raised her own army and terrified Rome's most powerful men; Cleopatra, the brilliant strategist whose careful political calculations have been buried under centuries of fantasy and misogyny; Servilia, Caesar's great love, who remained a formidable political operator even after her son plunged a knife into the man she had loved for decades; and Cornelia, who watched her husband Pompey beheaded from a ship moored off the coast of Egypt.But Smith also recovers the unnamed women whose stories have never been told: the wives who hid proscribed husbands in laundry bags and between ceiling joists; the women of Rome who endured five days of mass rape when Marius's troops stormed the city in 87 BC – an atrocity so thoroughly ignored by modern historians that its omission seems deliberate; the slaves and freedwomen prostituted by their owners to the most powerful men in Rome.Drawing on a lifetime's expertise in both Roman history and the politics of gender, Smith exposes the systematic violence that underpinned Roman society and challenges us to read the ancient sources with fresh eyes. The result is a history of the late Roman Republic that is at once more complete and more disturbing than anything that has come before.

This is a long overdue addition to a series of books and edited collections spawned initially from Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World-System. These 12 `theoretically informed case studies' from a 1987 conference add considerable insight to the heavy emphasis of the World-Systems approaches on macroeconomic determinism with the inclusion of ideological and cultural factors. Most cases address how capital uses social categories to cheapen industrial labor costs in Asia and the US. Two illuminating chapters analyze the `minoritization of immigrants' and variations in masculinity norms as aspects of this labor cheapening process. ChoiceA collection of papers presented at the Eleventh Annual Political Economy of the World-System Conference, this volume illustrates the degree to which fundamental processes of the world-system entail racist and sexist practices. The contributors have taken as their focus the attempt to both explain--in social, political, or historical terms--the pervasiveness of racism and sexism and trace the relationship between the two and the organization of the contemporary political economy. Taken together, their papers offer a more coherent treatment of the problem than has heretofore been available. By integrating an understanding of racial and sexual oppression with that of other processes that constitute the world-economy they offer new insights into the workings of the world-system and new hope for concerted efforts to eliminate racism and sexism.Many of the essays included here take the form of theoretically informed case studies. Detailed historical works explore such issues as labor force formation in the New York garment industry in the late 19th and early 20th century and competition in the world textile industry in the latter half of the 1880s. A critical analysis of the construction of census categories and an examination of the myths of differential ethnic success provide real-world examples of discrimination and its effects. A number of papers focus on the implications of our understanding of racial and sexual oppression for political struggle, while others assess the impact of women's exclusion from the workforce on power relationships in the home. Two major theoretical pieces address the issues in more general terms, emphasizing the circumstances under which racism and sexism are created and recreated in various contexts. Taken as a whole, the volume provides a necessary and enlightening re-examination of the role of race and gender in the world-economy.

Our poorest urban neighbourhoods experience economic and social difficulties that uniquely affect the lives of those who live there. This volume examines the policies and initiatives now underway on both sides of the Atlantic to revitalize those areas. With contributors from the US, France and the UK the volume explains the nature of specific community building programmes and explores critical issues such as the role of partnerships and the importance of race and gender in urban regeneration.

The economic recovery of the 1990s brought with it a surge of new jobs, but the prospects for most working Americans improved little. Family income rose only slightly and the period witnessed a significant degradation of the quality of work as well as in what people could expect from their waged employment. In this book, Margaret K. Nelson and Joan Smith take a look inside the households of working-class Americans to consider how they are coping with large-scale structural changes in the economy, specifically how the downgrading of jobs has affected survival strategies, gender dynamics, and political attitudes. Drawing on both randomly distributed telephone surveys and in-depth interviews, Nelson and Smith explore the differences in the survival strategies of two groups of working-class households in a rural county: those in which at least one family member has been able to hold on to good work (a year-round, full-time job that carries benefits) and those in which nobody has been able to secure or retain steady employment.They find that households with good jobs are able to effectively use all of their labor power--they rely on two workers; they engage in on-the-side businesses; and they barter with friends and neighbors. In contrast, those living in families without at least one good job find themselves considerably less capable of deploying a complex, multi-faceted survival strategy. The authors further demonstrate that this difference between the two sets of households is accompanied by differences in the gender division of labor within the household and the manner in which individuals make sense of, and respond to, their employment.

This book, first published in 1992, seeks an explanation of the pattern of sharp discrepancy of wage levels across the world-economy for work of comparable productivity. It explores how far such differences can be explained by the different structures of households as 'income-pooling units', examining three key variables: location in the core or periphery of the world-economy; periods of expansion versus periods of contraction in the world-economy; and secular transformation over time. The authors argue that both the boundaries of households and their sources of income are molded by the changing patterns of the world-economy, but are also modes of defense against its pressures. Drawing empirical data from eight local regions in three different zones - the United States, Mexico and southern Africa - this book presents a systematic and original approach to the intimate link between the micro-structures of households and the structures of the capitalist world-economy at a global level.

This book, first published in 1992, seeks an explanation of the pattern of sharp discrepancy of wage levels across the world-economy for work of comparable productivity. It explores how far such differences can be explained by the different structures of households as 'income-pooling units', examining three key variables: location in the core or periphery of the world-economy; periods of expansion versus periods of contraction in the world-economy; and secular transformation over time. The authors argue that both the boundaries of households and their sources of income are molded by the changing patterns of the world-economy, but are also modes of defense against its pressures. Drawing empirical data from eight local regions in three different zones - the United States, Mexico and southern Africa - this book presents a systematic and original approach to the intimate link between the micro-structures of households and the structures of the capitalist world-economy at a global level.

Our poorest urban neighbourhoods experience economic and social difficulties that uniquely affect the lives of those who live there. This volume examines the policies and initiatives now underway on both sides of the Atlantic to revitalize those areas. With contributors from the US, France and the UK the volume explains the nature of specific community building programmes and explores critical issues such as the role of partnerships and the importance of race and gender in urban regeneration.

Our poorest urban neighbourhoods experience economic and social difficulties that uniquely affect the lives of those who live there. This volume examines the policies and initiatives now underway on both sides of the Atlantic to revitalize those areas. With contributors from the US, France and the UK the volume explains the nature of specific community building programmes and explores critical issues such as the role of partnerships and the importance of race and gender in urban regeneration.

Loretta Lawson, a feminist professor visiting Paris to deliver a paper on the oppressive nature of masculine grammatical forms, stumbles across the murder of an Oxford don.But when the body disappears, she returns to England without alerting the French police, but is resolved to solve the mystery from across the Channel.The BBC adaptation of A Masculine Ending, starring Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton, premiered in 1992.''I love Loretta'' - P.D. James''Ms. Smith is a literate writer who, in this accomplished novel, manages both to educate and to entertain, which is no mean achievement.'' - The New York Times

The full story of Britain''s nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s has only recently begun to emerge. Here, for the first time, through interviews and eye-witness accounts from men who watched the mushroom clouds drift over Australia and the Pacific Ocean, the tests are vividly recreated. Using official documents recently made public, evidence gathered by the Australian government''s Royal Commission of Inquiry into the tests, and her own experience as an investigative journalist, Joan Smith argues forcefully that the bomb tests are far from being a historical anecdote. They remain with us in the shape of the victims - servicemen, civilians and aborigines who witnessed them - and through Britain''s continuing programme of nuclear weapons tests in the United States. In this disturbing and horrific book, first published in 1985, Joan Smith raises crucial questions about the British government''s responsibility to the people who took part in the tests - and shows how their effects may yet have a devastating impact on Britain''s nuclear industry.

Loretta Lawson is not overjoyed when an old acquaintance, Sandra, turns up knocking on Loretta''s doorstep on Christmas Eve. After a week of wrecking havock on Loretta''s content, quiet life, Sandra suddenly disappears. Loretta''s relief turns to suspicion when she finds out that Sandra died in a mysterious car crash. As Loretta investigates further, she finds herself dragged into Sandra''s messy life and death.The BBC adaptation of Don''t Leave Me This Way stars Imelda Staunton and Bill Nighy.''Don''t Leave Me This Way is the third clever mystery by Joan Smith...a nicely crafted novel with a decidedly feminist twist.'' - The Globe and Mail

Loretta Lawson is already a little apprehensive about spending a hot, muggy weekend alone in New York City at her friend Toni's apartment. And it seems her fears are confirmed when she receives a series of mysterious and threatening phone calls. What's more, as she explores the exciting, unfamiliar city, she has the uneasy impression that someone is watching her, perhaps even following her. Is Loretta the target of these unnerving attentions or are they aimed at Toni?Loretta begins to think that she cannot trust her own judgment; the one person who might lend a hand--her ex-husband, journalist John Tracey, also in New York on a story--has too many problems of his own to help. In the end, Loretta must face the terrifying events that unfold alone. . . .

July 1997: Lebanon makes the British headlines when an Englishwoman dies in a landmine explosion near the town of Nabatiyeh.The dead woman is Aisha, a former model with an Egyptian mother, visiting the Middle East for the first time. Reporters descend on her Somerset home, linking her death with Princess Diana's high profile campaign for a ban on landmines. Amanda, a young features writer, is sent to Beirut to write a human interest story about Aisha's death. There she finds a city only just recovering from more than a decade of civil war. Lebanon is still occupied by Israel in the south, prompting a bloody conflict with Hezbollah, and she realises that thousands of ordinary Lebanese are trapped between two ruthless enemies. She begins to suspect that Aisha may have been another victim of this forgotten war. But with a wayward princess and a charismatic new prime minister making headlines at home, how can she make sure that justice is done for Aisha - and for Lebanon?

When a woman's decomposed body is found in the aging barn of Oxford don Bridget Bennett's estate, Loretta knows her friend Bridget's shock is genuine. Unfortunately, the local constabulary are not so sure. And the tabloid press has a field day.But when the police try to identify the dead woman and any possible connection to Bridget and her devoted husband, only Bridget seems alarmed at what might surface. Loretta tries to piece the puzzle together herself-with little success. Until a police blunder illuminates a dire suspicion she had all along...."Here is crime fiction displaying its flexibility: working on disparate levels and contriving to be at once mysterious, entertaining and stimulating." - The Guardian

What do the attacks in London Bridge, Manchester and Westminster have in common with those at the Charlie Hebdo offices, the Finsbury Park Mosque attack and multiple US shootings? They were all carried out by men with histories of domestic violence.TERRORISM BEGINS AT HOME. Terrorism is seen as a special category of crime that has blinded us to the obvious - that it is, almost always, male violence. The extraordinary link between so many tragic recent attacks is that the perpetrators have practised in private before their public outbursts. In these searing case studies, Joan Smith, feminist and human rights campaigner, makes a compelling and persuasive argument for a radical shift in perspective. Incomprehensible ideology is transformed through her clear-eyed research into a disturbing but familiar pattern.From the Manchester bomber to the Charlie Hebdo attackers, from angry white men to the Bethnal Green girls, from US school shootings to the London gang members who joined ISIS, Joan Smith shows that, time and time again, misogyny, trauma and abuse lurk beneath the rationalizations of religion or politics. Until Smith pointed it out in 2017, criminal authorities missed this connection because violence against women is dangerously normalised. Yet, since domestic abuse often comes before a public attack, it's here a solution to the scourge of our age might be found. Thought-provoking and essential, Home-Grown will lift the veil on a revelatory truth.

How are women supposed to make sense of the world today? Women have never had more freedom yet questions of inequality persist from the bedroom to the workplace. A quarter of a century after the publication of her seminal text Misogynies, Joan Smith looks at what women have achieved - and the price they've paid for it. From Amy Winehouse to Pussy Riot, from the veil to domestic violence, a war is being fought over women's bodies and minds. Smith shows how misogyny has assumed new and dangerous forms as we confront an economic, social and religious backlash. But that's only part of the story. The female eunuch has become the public woman, and she isn't going to go quietly. Written with wit and passion, this forensic analysis sets out what we're up against - and how to fight back.

Misogynies is one of the most celebrated feminist texts by a British author. First published in 1989, it created shock waves with its analyses of history, literature and popular culture. Joan Smith drew on her own experience as one of the few women reporting the Yorkshire Ripper murders and looked at novels, slasher movies, Page Three and Princess Diana, teasing out the attitudes that brought them together. A feminist classic, Smith''s exploration of fear and hatred of women resonates to this day.