International Day of Action for Women’s Health

May 28 is the International Day of Action for Women’s Health. For over 30 years, women’s rights advocates and allies in the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) movement worldwide have commemorated this day in diverse ways. Visit the campaign’s website for more information and ways to participate.

At a time when women’s human rights, particularly sexual and reproductive rights, continue to be systematically violated worldwide, our Fertility, Reproduction, and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives series remains an important resource for understanding the complex and multifaceted issue of human reproduction. View our latest and forthcoming titles in the series below.


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A place for sexually variant and gender non-conforming America

On May 17th 1990, the World Health Organization decided to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. 14 years later, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia was established to expose the relentless violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexuals, transgender, intersex people and all other people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities or expressions, and sex characteristics.

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An Interview with Courtney Work

Courtney Work is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnology, National Chengchi University (Taiwan). She studied at Cornell University, and has published multiple papers on the intersections of religion, traditional practices, and the politics of land, global development, and climate change. She is the author of the forthcoming title Tides of Empire: Religion, Development, and Environment in Cambodia, a new volume in our Asian Anthropologies series.


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Freed from Fear and Sadness: The New Germany

Michael Meng and Adam R. Seipp

The writing of German history since 1945 has often, if not excessively, been shaped by critical and negative attitudes; or, as Baruch Spinoza would put it, by excessive fear and sadness in the face of human suffering. Ruination, mourning, absence, destruction, and failure are the leitmotifs of postwar German historiography. Amid this chorus of negativity, however, a few exceptions stand out. One of whom is our mentor, Konrad Jarausch, who over the past decade or so has written several books on Germany’s transformation into a rational democratic society––the very society that Spinoza suggests can achieve peace insofar as it frees people from the negative and divisive emotions of sadness and fear.

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An Interview with Julie Patricia Johnson

Julie Patricia Johnson is an associate researcher at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of The Candle and the Guillotine: Revolution and Justice in Lyon, 1789–93, published by Berghahn Books. She has presented her research at international conferences and has published work in journals such as French History and Lilith: A Feminist History Journal.

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