Abstracts of Books

Abstracts of Books General Lois Banner. In Full Flower: Aging Women, Power and Sexuality, A History. New York: Knopf, 1992. xi + 422 pp. ISBN 0-394-57943-7. Lois Banner explores perceptions of aging women and older womanyounger man relationships from andent times to the present in the West and relates them to large political, sodal, and cultural changes. She finds denigration of older women but also contradictions which reveal their influence and the chaUenges that they present to gender definitions. For example, she connects a new masculinity required by nation-buüding in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to an increase in negative perceptions of older women. This is a broad survey which draws on social history, art, Uterature, anthropology, psychology, and gender theories for its interpretations. Topics range from the end of goddess worship to an analysis of the film "Sunset Boulevard" and include a comparison of Margaret FuUer to Colette, the relationship of age to charges of witchcraft, changes in clothing styles, the relation of the family to the state, and others. Susan C. Cook and Judy S. Tsou, eds. Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music. Urbana: University of IUinois Press, 1994. xü + 241 pp; ilL ISBN 0-252-02036-7 (cl). This coUection of essays opens up exdting new avenues for musicology through feminist analysis of music and musical culture. The volume begins with two theoretical artides which outline the recent development of feminist musicology. These are foUowed by eight essays which prove that a feminist musicology is not only possible, but necessary. Jennifer Posf s "Erasing the Boundaries Between PubUc and Private in Women's Performance Traditions" sets the tone of the volume by offering a crosscultural theoretical perspective on women's music. The wide selection of essays on Western music from the Renaissance to the present foUows Posf s lead by examining the music of several different Western cultures. In addition, the volume includes essays on popular music (rap), folk music (baUads), and house music. © 1995 Journal of Women-s History, Vol. 7 No. ζ (Summer) 1995 Abstracts of Books 177 Laurence Goldstein, ed. The Female Body: Figures, Styles, Speculations. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991. χ + 317 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-472-09477-7 (cl); 0-472-06477-0 (pb). This coUection, cuUed from two special issues of the Michigan Quarterly Review (1990-91), addresses widely varied issues rdated to the female body in forms ranging from fidion and poetry to personal reminiscence and scholarly essay. Among the topics are: female adolescence as a point of potential rebeUion; the logical incoherence of abortion arguments (both pro and con); representations of the female body in contemporary women's art; the reinforcement of body image through the discourse of plastidty (from advertisement to Madonna videos); the sexual dynamics of ballroom dancing; cross-dressing women; the gendering of poetic voice; fictions of mechanized creation; paraUels between medical and artistic discourse about control over women's bodies; and the sodal meaning of hysteredomy. Gübert Herdt, ed. Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History. New York: Zone Books, 1994. 614 pp.; Ul. ISBN 0-942299-81-7. Herdf s extended introduction frames his argument for culturaUy constructed "third sexes" in opposition to a dominant sexually dimorphic paradigm that he attributes to such theorists as Rousseau, Darwin, Freud, and early anthropologists. Herdt argues that such cultural phenomena as crossdressing, homosexual desire, and transsexualism signal—but are not themselves markers of—an intermediate sex. Such a third sex emerges, however, only when spedfic cultural systems aUow for a corresponding gender subjectivity (or sense of identity), either in sanctioned sodal roles or subcultures. The essays cover both Western and non-Western cultures and historical periods from ancient to contemporary. Susan Starr Sered. Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 330 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-19-508395-4 (cl). Anthropologist Susan Sered conducts a detaüed comparison of twelve very different "women's religions" (religious groups dominated by women), ranging from Christian Sdence to Korean shamanism. Sered urges scholars to move beyond theories of deprivation and of psychological /sexual dysfunction that are used to explain away women's reUgious...