Undisciplined Women: Tradition and Culture in Canada

Undisciplined Women, an interdisciplinary collection of twenty essays dealing with women and culture in Canada, explores a neglected area in folklore scholarship. Covering a range of subjects from female sailors to women preachers, contributors examine how women have been involved in identifying, collecting, and interpreting women's folklore, how various images of women have been created, used, and resisted, and how women transform their own - and others' - lives and culture.

Contributors demonstrate that informal traditional and popular expressive cultural forms continue to be central to Canadians' gender constructions and clearly display the creation and re-creation of women's often subordinate position in society. They not only explore positive and negative images of women - the witch, the Icelandic Mountain Woman, and the Hollywood "killer dyke" - but also examine how actual women - taxi drivers, quilters, spiritual healers, and storytellers - negotiate and remake these images in their lives and work. Contributors also propose models for facilitating feminist dialogue on traditional and popular culture in Canada.

Drawing on perspectives from women's studies, folklore, anthropology, sociology, art history, literature, and religious studies, Undisciplined Women is an insightful exploration of the multiplicity of women's experiences and the importance of reclaiming women's cultures and traditions.