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Imagining Russia: Making Feminist Sense of US-Russia Relations
by Kimberly A. Williams
SUNY Press
April 1, 2012
A bold work of feminist international relations that contributes to our understanding of the gendered, racialized, and heteronormative dynamics of U.S. foreign policy, both in relations with Russia and in the invasion of Iraq.
Co-winner of the 2009 SUNY Press Dissertation/First Book Prize in Women’s and Gender Studies, Imagining Russia uses U.S.–Russian relations between the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a case study to examine the deployment of gendered, racialized, and heteronormative visual and narrative depictions of Russia and Russians in contemporary narratives of American nationalism and U.S. foreign policy. Through analyses of several key post-Soviet American popular and political texts, including the hit television series The West Wing, Washington D.C.’s International Spy Museum, and the legislative hearings of the Freedom Support Act and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, Williams calls attention to the production and operation of five types of “gendered Russian imaginaries” that were explicitly used to bolster support for and legitimize U.S. geopolitical unilateralism after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, demonstrating the ways that the masculinization of U.S. military, political, and financial power after 1991 paved the way for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“Williams has written a masterful look at the gendered rhetoric produced in the West (and sometimes by Russians themselves) to describe post-Soviet Russia in the aftermath of the Cold War … Highly recommended.” — CHOICE
“This is an outstanding book and an excellent example of feminist IR analysis. The thesis and objectives are to show the ideological causes of (asymmetrical and deteriorating) U.S.–Russian relations, which Williams convincingly argues are rooted in gendered understandings.” — Valentine M. Moghadam, coeditor of Making Globalization Work for Women: The Role of Social Rights and Trade Union Leadership.
Biography
Dr. Williams is an award-winning author, teacher, community activist, and engaging public speaker. She is Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Women's & Gender Studies at Mount Royal University where she teaches courses on men and masculinities, feminist, critical race, queer theories, and global gender issues, including the transnational sex industry, globalization, and health and health care policies and practices.
Having earned her PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of Maryland in the traditional territories of the Pamunkey and Piscataway, Williams is a white settler trying to live unsettled in Treaty 7 territory, on the hereditary homelands of the Niitsitapi (the Blackfoot Confederacy: Siksika, Piikani, Kainai), the Îyârhe Nakoda, and Tsuut'ina Nations, and of the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III. Williams acknowledges the treaty agreements that have not been honoured by her ancestors and works daily to restore active Indigenous presence and good relations in a city now known as Calgary, where the Elbow River meets the Bow.
Her current project, due out in early 2021, is entitled _Truck Nutz, Petro Cowboys, and Rodeo Queens: Gender Matters at the Calgary Stampede_ (Fernwood Publishers). She has also developed an historical walking tour of Calgary's consensual adult sex trade industry called _Booze, Broads & Brothels._