Florida without Borders

Book excerpt: Florida without Borders: Women at the Intersections of the Local and Global highlights the problems facing women around the world by featuring papers that explore women’s activism across borders regarding gender and human rights, issues regarding women and poverty, globalization, economic value of immigrant labor, militarism and human trafficking. Also discussed are the opportunities and obstacles women face when they act to counter the negative impact of these forces. This anthology is a collection of essays by feminist scholars and students who examine discourses on border crossings, political and cultural censorship, gendered codes of conduct, prescribed behavior for women and the activism that emerges to address identity formation, to advance contested meanings and to build coalitions. Throughout the essays, the authors investigate the concepts of the gendered body in the context of global activism, the uses of women’s bodies in domestic, military, and sexual service, and the breaching of the body’s borders and boundaries in the project of feminist social change.