Naomi Black – författare

This prestigious new edition of the most controversial of Woolf's works includes an illuminating introduction and full annotations by the editor.

Feminist Politics on the Farm examines rural women''s organizations, politics, feminism, agricultural life, and personal relations. The women studied were clearly progressive in their opinions and the authors show that their original and varied opinions cast doubt on much of the standard literature about non-elite women''s understanding of mainstream politics and the women''s movement. These rural women differed significantly from the usual stereotypes of farm women as apolitical and conservative. Nor were they the reactionaries implied by theories of modernization. Instead, they were supportive of women''s political activism, and of their equality and self-assertiveness, and were as feminist as other women in Canada and France. Political scientist Naomi Black and historian Gail Cuthbert Brandt worked collaboratively, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Their study is in large part based on a lengthy questionnaire administered by local interviewers in 1988-89 to almost 400 women living on family farms near Bordeaux and Montreal. They also include analyses of the women''s organizations to which half of the subjects belonged, Cercles defermières in Quebec and Groupements de développement et de vulgarisation agricole féminins in France. Throughout the book the authors reflect, in language accessible to the general reader, upon the advantages and disadvantages of using conventional quantitative approaches to explore women''s experience and opinions.

Before the Second World War and long before the second wave of feminism, Virginia Woolf argued that women's experience, particularly in the women's movement, could be the basis for transformative social change. Grounding Virginia Woolf's feminist beliefs in the everyday world, Naomi Black reclaims Three Guineas as a major feminist document. Rather than a book only about war, Black considers it to be the best, clearest presentation of Woolf's feminism.Woolf's changing representation of feminism in publications from 1920 to 1940 parallels her involvement with the contemporary women's movement (suffragism and its descendants, and the pacifist, working-class Women's Co-operative Guild). Black guides us through Woolf's feminist connections and writings, including her public letters from the 1920s as well as "A Society," A Room of One's Own, and the introductory letter to Life As We Have Known It. She assesses the lengthy development of Three Guineas from a 1931 lecture and the way in which the form and illustrations of the book serve as a feminist subversion of male scholarship. Virginia Woolf as Feminist concludes with a discussion of the continuing relevance of Woolf's feminism for third-millennium politics.

Before the Second World War and long before the second wave of feminism, Virginia Woolf argued that women's experience, particularly in the women's movement, could be the basis for transformative social change. Grounding Virginia Woolf's feminist beliefs in the everyday world, Naomi Black reclaims Three Guineas as a major feminist document. Rather than a book only about war, Black considers it to be the best, clearest presentation of Woolf's feminism.Woolf's changing representation of feminism in publications from 1920 to 1940 parallels her involvement with the contemporary women's movement (suffragism and its descendants, and the pacifist, working-class Women's Co-operative Guild). Black guides us through Woolf's feminist connections and writings, including her public letters from the 1920s as well as "A Society," A Room of One's Own, and the introductory letter to Life As We Have Known It. She assesses the lengthy development of Three Guineas from a 1931 lecture and the way in which the form and illustrations of the book serve as a feminist subversion of male scholarship. Virginia Woolf as Feminist concludes with a discussion of the continuing relevance of Woolf's feminism for third-millennium politics.