A Companion to Gender Studies presents a unified and comprehensive vision of its field, and its new directions. It demonstrates in action the rich interplay between gender and other markers of social position and (dis)privilege, such as race, class, ethnicity, and nationality. The contributions are heterogeneous, ranging from essay statements, even provocations, to state-of-the-art overviews. Leading experts in the field cover all the significant ideas of concern to Gender Studies, including the engagements and entanglements with Women's Studies and Masculinity Studies.

The essays benefit from the fruits of decades of earlier work by feminist and race critical scholars to understand, analyze, and challenge the distinct ways in which life is gendered. Organized thematically and written in a lucid and lively fashion, each chapter gives insightful consideration to the differing views on its topic, and also clarifies each contributor's own position. This is a Companion for readers, teachers, and students across the world. Students of feminist and gender theory - as well as scientists, social scientists, humanists, theorists, and cultural analysts of these subjects - will find this an enriching and exciting volume of original scholarship.

Philomena Essed isProfessor of Critical Race, Gender and Leadership Studies, PhD in Leadership and Change Program, Antioch University, USA, and Affiliated Researcher, Graduate Gender Program, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She is the author of Everyday Racism: Reports from Women of Two Cultures (1990) while her other books include Understanding Everyday Racism (1991); Diversity: Gender, Color and Culture (1996), and Refugees and the Transformation of Societies (2004). With David Theo Goldberg, she edited Race Critical Theories: Text and Context (Blackwell 2001).

David Theo Goldberg is Director of the system-wide University of California Humanities Research Institute. A tremendously prolific author and editor, his most recent publications include The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism (Wiley-Blackwell 2008), The Racial State (Blackwell 2001), Racial Subjects: Writing on Race in America (1997), Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader (Blackwell 1994), Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Blackwell 1993), and Anatomy of Racism (1990). He is also editor, with Ato Quayson, of Relocating Postcolonialism (Blackwell 2002).

Audrey Kobayashi is Queen's Research Chair and Professor of Geography and Women's Studies at Queen's University, Canada. Her articles have appeared in The Professional Geographer, The Journal of Geography, and The Canadian Journal of Women and the Law.