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The Feminist Avant-Garde
Transatlantic Encounters of the Early Twentieth Century

The first major study of twentieth-century feminism as an Anglo-American phenomenon.

Lucy Delap (Author)

9780521124904, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 10 December 2009

376 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.55 kg

Review of the hardback: '… [an] identity in opposition to the mainstream women's movement has recently been plucked out of obscurity and is presented wonderfully in Lucy Delap's The Feminist Avant-Garde. … Meticulously researched and beautifully written …' Contemporary British History

In the early twentieth century the term 'feminist' was used by self-consciously 'modern' men and women, to distinguish their ideas from those of 'the women's movement', and even to adopt anti-suffrage positions. In the first major study of twentieth-century feminism as an Anglo-American phenomenon, Lucy Delap offers a unique perspective on the politics of gender during this period. Delap explores the intellectual history and cultural politics of Anglo-American feminism in a way that challenges the reader to rethink the nature of both the 'avant-garde' and 'feminism'. Focusing on the development of transnational feminisms within Edwardian and interwar print culture, feminist political argument is placed at the centre of an account of modernism, highlighting some unexpected and often uncomfortable components, including the feminist fascination with individualism and egoism; ambivalence over World War One; utopian thinking and captivation by the idea of 'the simple life'; anti-Semitism; sexual radicalism; and ideas about 'the superwoman'.

Introduction
1. 'Fastidious, difficult, different': Anglo-American feminists
2. Transatlantic interchanges and rival storm-centres
3. Individualism in feminist political argument
4. The state, the home and nurturing citizenship
5. The endowment of motherhood controversy
6. The modern and the pre-modern: feminist utopian thinking
7. The genius and the superwoman: feminist appropriations
8. Feminists and the impact of world war
9. 'Ephemeral vanguardism': conclusions and post-war developments.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], History of ideas [JFCX], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW]

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