The English novel is an important part of English literature. This article mainly concerns novels, written in English, by novelists who were born or have spent a significant part of their lives in England, or Scotland, or Wales, or Northern Ireland (or Ireland before 1922). However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to novels in other languages or novelists who are not primarily British where appropriate.
Early novels in English

The English novel has generally been seen as beginning with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722),[1] though John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) and Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688) are also contenders, while earlier works such as Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, and even the "Prologue" to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have been suggested.[2] Another important early novel is Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, which is both a satire of human nature, as well as a parody of travellers' tales like Robinson Crusoe.[3] The rise of the novel as an important literary genre is generally associated with the growth of the middle class in England.
Other major 18th-century English novelists are Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), author of the epistolary novels Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and Clarissa (1747–48); Henry Fielding (1707–1754), who wrote Joseph Andrews (1742) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749); Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), who published Tristram Shandy in parts between 1759 and 1767;[4] Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774), author of The Vicar of Wakefield (1766); Tobias Smollett (1721–1771), a Scottish novelist best known for his comic picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), who influenced Charles Dickens;[5] and Fanny Burney (1752–1840), whose novels "were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen," wrote Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796).[6]
A noteworthy aspect of both the 18th- and 19th- century novel is the way the novelist directly addressed the reader. For example, the author might interrupt his or her narrative to pass judgment on a character, or pity or praise another, and inform or remind the reader of some other relevant issue.
Romantic period

The phrase Romantic novel has several possible meanings. Here it refers to novels written during the Romantic era in literary history, which runs from the late 18th century until the beginning of the Victorian era in 1837. But to complicate matters there are novels written in the romance tradition by novelists like Walter Scott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Meredith.[7] In addition the phrase today is mostly used to refer to the popular pulp-fiction genre that focusses on romantic love. The Romantic period is especially associated with the poets William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats, though two major novelists, Jane Austen and Walter Scott, also published in the early 19th century.
Horace Walpole's 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto, invented the Gothic fiction genre. The word gothic was originally used in the sense of medieval.[8] This genre combines "the macabre, fantastic, and supernatural" and usually involves haunted castles, graveyards and various picturesque elements.[9] Later novelist Ann Radcliffe introduced the brooding figure of the Gothic villain which developed into the Byronic hero. Her most popular and influential work, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), is frequently described as the archetypal Gothic novel. Vathek (1786), by William Beckford, and The Monk (1796), by Matthew Lewis, were further notable early works in both the Gothic and horror genres.
Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818), as another important Gothic novel as well as being an early example of science fiction.[10]
The vampire genre fiction began with John William Polidori's The Vampyre (1819). This short story was inspired by the life of Lord Byron and his poem The Giaour. An important later work is Varney the Vampire (1845), where many standard vampire conventions originated: Varney has fangs, leaves two puncture wounds on the neck of his victims, and has hypnotic powers and superhuman strength. Varney was also the first example of the "sympathetic vampire", who loathes his condition but is a slave to it.[11]

Among more minor novelists in this period Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) and Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) are worthy of comment. Edgeworth's novel Castle Rackrent (1800) is "the first fully developed regional novel in English" as well as "the first true historical novel in English" and an important influence on Walter Scott.[12] Peacock was primarily a satirist in novels such as Nightmare Abbey (1818) and The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829).
Jane Austen's (1775–1817) works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism.[13] Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.[14] Austen brings to light the hardships women faced, who usually did not inherit money, could not work and where their only chance in life depended on the man they married. She reveals not only the difficulties women faced in her day, but also what was expected of men and of the careers they had to follow. This she does with wit and humour and with endings where all characters, good or bad, receive exactly what they deserve.  Her work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become accepted as a major writer. The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship and the emergence of a Janeite fan culture. Austen's  works include Pride and Prejudice (1813) Sense and Sensibility (1811), Mansfield Park, Persuasion and Emma.
The other major novelist at the beginning of the early 19th century was Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), who was not only a highly successful British novelist but "the greatest single influence on fiction in the 19th century ... [and] a European figure".[15] Scott established the genre of the historical novel with his series of  Waverley Novels, including Waverley (1814), The Antiquary (1816), and The Heart of Midlothian (1818).[16] However, Austen is today widely read and the source for films and television series, while Scott is less often read.
Victorian novel
It was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. Another important fact is the number of women novelists who were successful in the 19th century, even though they often had to use a masculine pseudonym. At the beginning of the 19th century most novels were published in three volumes. However, monthly serialization was revived with the publication of Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers in twenty parts between April 1836 and November 1837. Demand was high for each episode to introduce some new element, whether it was a plot twist or a new character, so as to maintain the readers' interest. Both Dickens and Thackeray frequently published this way.[17]
The 1830s and 1840s saw the rise of social novel, also known as social problem novel,  that "arose out of the social and political upheavals which followed the Reform Act of 1832".[18] This was in many ways a reaction to  rapid industrialization, and the social, political and economic issues associated with it, and was a means of commenting on abuses of government and industry and the suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England's economic prosperity.[19] Stories of the working class poor were directed toward middle class to help create sympathy and promote change. An early example is Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1837–38).

Charles Dickens emerged on the literary scene in the 1830s with the two novels already mentioned. Dickens wrote vividly about London life and struggles of the poor,  but in a good-humoured fashion, accessible to readers of all classes. One of his most popular works to this day is  A Christmas Carol (1843). In more recent years Dickens has been most admired for his later novels, such as Dombey and Son (1846–48), Great Expectations (1860–61), Bleak House (1852–53) and Little Dorrit (1855–57) and Our Mutual Friend (1864–65). An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray, who during the Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now much less read and is known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair (1847). In that novel he satirizes whole swaths of humanity while retaining a light touch. It features his most memorable character, the engagingly roguish Becky Sharp.
The Brontë sisters were other significant novelists in the 1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they were first published but were subsequently accepted as classics. They had written compulsively from early childhood and were first published, at their own expense in 1846 as poets under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The sisters returned to prose, producing a novel each the following year: Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey. Later, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) and Charlotte's Villette (1853) were published. Elizabeth Gaskell was also a successful writer and first novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848. Gaskell's North and South contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of England with the wealthier south. Even though her writing conforms to Victorian conventions, Gaskell usually frames her stories as critiques of contemporary attitudes: her early works focused on factory work in the Midlands. She always emphasised the role of women, with complex narratives and dynamic female characters.[20]
Anthony Trollope (1815–82) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era.  Some of his best-loved works are set in the imaginary county of Barsetshire, including The Warden (1855) and Barchester Towers (1857). He also wrote perceptive novels on political, social, and gender issues, and on other topical matters, including The Way with Live Now (1875). Trollope's novels portrayed the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early Victorian England.
George Eliot's (Mary Ann Evans (1819–80) first novel Adam Bede was published in 1859. Her works, especially Middlemarch 1871–72), are important examples of literary realism, and are admired for their combination of high Victorian literary detail combined with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines they often depict.

An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the countryside is seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). A Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, he was also influenced both in his novels and poetry by Romanticism, especially by William Wordsworth.[21] Charles Darwin is another important influence on Thomas Hardy.[22] Like Charles Dickens he was also highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focussed more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life, and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898, so that initially he gained fame as the author of such novels as, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886),  Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). He ceased writing novels following adverse criticism of this last novel. In novels such as The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the d'Urbervilles Hardy attempts to create modern works in the genre of tragedy, that are modelled on the Greek drama, especially Aeschylus and Sophocles, though in prose, not poetry, a novel not drama, and with characters of low social standing, not nobility.[23] Another significant late 19th-century novelist is George Gissing (1857–1903) who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best known novel is New Grub Street (1891).
Important developments occurred in genre fiction in this era. Although pre-dated by John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River in 1841, the history of the modern fantasy genre is generally said to begin with George MacDonald, the influential author of The Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes (1858). William Morris was a popular English poet who also wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Moonstone (1868), is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language, while The Woman in White is regarded as one of the finest sensation novels. H. G. Wells's (1866–1946) writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels like The Time Machine (1895), and The War of the Worlds (1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians, and Wells is seen, along with Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905), as a major figure in the development of the science fiction genre. He also wrote realistic fiction about the lower middle class in novels like Kipps (1905) and The History of Mr Polly (1910).
20th century
The major novelists writing in Britain at the start of the 20th century were an Irishman James Joyce (1882–1941) and two immigrants, American Henry James (1843–1916) and Pole Joseph Conrad (1857–1924). The modernist tradition in the novel, with its emphasis "towards the ever more minute and analytic exposition of mental life", begins with James and Conrad, in novels such as The Ambassadors (1903), The Golden Bowl (1907) and Lord Jim (1900).[24] Other important early modernists were Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957), whose novel Pointed Roof (1915), is one of the earliest example of the stream of consciousness technique and D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), who wrote with understanding about the social life of the lower and middle classes, and the personal life of those who could not adapt to the social norms of his time. Sons and Lovers (1913), is widely regarded as his earliest masterpiece. There followed The Rainbow (1915), though it was immediately seized by the police, and its sequel Women in Love published in 1920.[25] Lawrence attempted to explore human emotions more deeply than his contemporaries and challenged the boundaries of the acceptable treatment of sexual issues, most notably in Lady Chatterley's Lover, which was privately published in Florence in 1928. However, the unexpurgated version of this novel was not published until 1959.[26] Then in 1922 Irishman James Joyce's important modernist novel Ulysses appeared.  Ulysses has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".[27] Set during one day in Dublin in June 1904, in it Joyce creates parallels with Homer's epic poem the Odyssey.[28]
Another significant modernist in the 1920s was Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), who was an influential feminist and a major stylistic innovator associated with the stream-of-consciousness technique. Her novels include Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931). Her essay collection A Room of One's Own (1929) contains her famous dictum; "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction".[29]

But while modernism was to become an important literary movement in the early decades of the new century, there were also many fine novelists who were not modernists. This include E.M. Forster ((1879–1970), John Galsworthy ((1867–1933) (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1932), whose novels include The Forsyte Saga, Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) author of The Old Wives' Tale, and H. G. Wells (1866–1946). Though Forster's work is "frequently regarded as containing both modernist and Victorian elements".[30] E. M. Forster's A Passage to India (1924), reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier works such as A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910), examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of Edwardian society in England. The most popular British writer of the early years of the 20th century was arguably Rudyard Kipling ((1865–1936), a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems and to date the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1907).
A significant English writer in the 1930s and 1940s was George Orwell (1903–50), who is especially remembered for his satires of totalitarianism, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Animal Farm (1945). Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) satirised the "bright young things" of the 1920s and 1930s, notably in A Handful of Dust (1934), and Decline and Fall (1928), while  Brideshead Revisited (1945) has a theological basis, setting out to examine the effect of divine grace on its main characters.[31] Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) published his famous dystopia Brave New World in 1932, the same year as John Cowper Powys's (1872–1963) A Glastonbury Romance. Samuel Beckett (1906–89) published his first major work, the novel Murphy in 1938. This same year Graham Greene's (1904–91) first major novel Brighton Rock was published. Then in 1939 James Joyce's published Finnegans Wake. In this work Joyce creates a special language to express the consciousness of  a character who is dreaming.[32]

Graham Greene was an important novelist whose works span the 1930s to the 1980s. Greene was a convert to Catholicism and his novels explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Notable for an ability to combine serious literary acclaim with broad popularity, his novels include, The Heart of the Matter (1948), A Burnt-Out Case (1961), and The Human Factor (1978). Evelyn Waugh's (1903–66) career also continued after World War II, and in "1961 he completed his most considerable work, a trilogy about the war entitled Sword of Honour.[33] In 1947 Malcolm Lowry published Under the Volcano, while George Orwell's satire of totalitarianism, 1984, was published in 1949. One of the most influential novels of the immediate post-war period was William Cooper's (1910–2002) naturalistic Scenes from Provincial Life (1950), which was a conscious rejection of the modernist tradition.[34] Other novelists writing in the 1950s and later were: Anthony Powell (1905–2000) whose twelve-volume cycle of novels A Dance to the Music of Time (1951–75), is a comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid-20th century; comic novelist Kingsley Amis is best known for his academic satire Lucky Jim (1954); Nobel Prize laureate William Golding's allegorical novel Lord of the Flies (1954), explores how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British schoolboys marooned on a deserted island; philosopher Iris Murdoch was a prolific writer of novels that deal with such things as sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her works including Under the Net (1954), The Black Prince (1973) and The Green Knight (1993). Scottish writer Muriel Spark's also began publishing in the 1950s. She pushed the boundaries of realism in her novels. Her first, The Comforters (1957), concerns a woman who becomes aware that she is a character in a novel; The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), at times takes the reader briefly into the distant future to see the various fates that befall its characters. Anthony Burgess is especially remembered for his dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), set in the not-too-distant future, which was made into a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1971. In the entirely different genre of Gothic fantasy Mervyn Peake (1911–68) published his highly successful Gormenghast trilogy between 1946 and 1959.
Immigrant authors played a major role in post-war literature. Doris Lessing (1919) from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), published her first novel The Grass is Singing in 1950, after immigrating to England. She initially wrote about her African experiences. Lessing soon became a dominant presence in the English literary scene, frequently publishing right through the century, and won the Nobel prize for literature in 2007. Salman Rushdie (born 1945) is another among a number of post Second World War writers from the former British colonies who permanently settled in Britain. Rushdie achieved fame with Midnight's Children 1981, which was awarded both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Booker prize, and named Booker of Bookers in 1993. His most controversial novel The Satanic Verses (1989), was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. V. S. Naipaul (born 1932), born in Trinidad, was another immigrant, who wrote among other things A House for Mr Biswas (1961) and A Bend in the River (1979). Naipaul won the Nobel Prize in Literature.[35] Also from the West Indies George Lamming (born 1927) is best remembered for In the Castle of the Skin (1953). Another important immigrant writer Kazuo Ishiguro (born 1954) was born in Japan, but his parents immigrated to Britain when he was six.[36] His works include, The Remains of the Day 1989, Never Let Me Go 2005.

Scotland has in the late 20th-century produced several important novelists, including James Kelman (born 1946), who like Samuel Beckett can create humour out of the most grim situations. How Late it Was, How Late (1994), won the Booker Prize that year; A. L. Kennedy (born 1965) whose 2007 novel  Day was named Book of the Year in the Costa Book Awards.[37] In 2007 she won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature;[38] Alasdair Gray (born 1934) whose Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) is a dystopian fantasy set in his home town Glasgow. Another contemporary  Scot is Irvine Welsh, whose novel  Trainspotting (1993), gives a brutal depiction of the lives of working class Edinburgh drug users.[39]
Angela Carter (1940–1992) was a novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. Writing from the 1960s until the 1980s, her novels include, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972) and Nights at the Circus (1984). Margaret Drabble (born 1939) is a novelist, biographer and critic, who has published from the 1960s until this century. Her older sister, A. S. Byatt (born 1936) is best known for Possession published in 1990.
Martin Amis (born 1949) is one of the most prominent of contemporary British novelists. His best-known novels are Money (1984) and London Fields (1989). Pat Barker (born 1943) has won many awards for her fiction. Novelist and screenwriter Ian McEwan (born 1948) is another of contemporary Britain's most highly regarded writers. His works include The Cement Garden (1978) and Enduring Love (1997), which was made into a film. In 1998 McEwan won the Man Booker Prize with Amsterdam, while Atonement (2001) was made into an Oscar-winning film. McEwan was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 2011. Zadie Smith's (born 1975) Whitbread Book Award winning novel White Teeth (2000), mixes pathos and humour, focusing on the later lives of two war time friends in London. Julian Barnes (born 1946) is another successful living novelist, who won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his book The Sense of an Ending, while three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Among popular novelists Daphne Du Maurier wrote Rebecca, a mystery novel, in 1938 and W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) Of Human Bondage (1915), a strongly autobiographical novel, is generally agreed to be his masterpiece. In genre fiction Agatha Christie was an important writer of crime novels, short stories and plays, best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Christie's novels include Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Death on the Nile (1937), and And Then There Were None (1939). Another popular writer during the Golden Age of detective fiction was Dorothy L. Sayers, while Georgette Heyer created the historical romance genre.
Survey
In 2003 the BBC carried out a UK survey entitled The Big Read in order to find the "nation's best-loved novel" of all time, with works by English novelists Tolkien, Austen, Pullman, Adams and Rowling making up the top five on the list.[40]
Famous novelists (alphabetical order)

Amis, Kingsley
Amis, Martin
Austen, Jane
Barnes, Julian
Becket, Samuel
Brontë, Anne
Brontë, Charlotte
Brontë, Emily
Burney, Fanny, later Madame D'Arblay
Butler, Samuel
Carroll, Lewis
Collins, Wilkie
Conan Doyle, Arthur
Conrad, Joseph
Defoe, Daniel
Dickens, Charles
Disraeli, Benjamin
Eliot, George
Fielding, Henry
Ford, Ford Madox
Forster, E. M.
Forster, Margaret
Gaskell, Elizabeth
Gissing, George
Goldsmith, Oliver
Greene, Graham
Hardy, Thomas
Huxley, Aldous
James, Henry
Joyce, James
Kipling, Rudyard
Lawrence, D. H.
Lessing, Doris
Lewis, C. S.
Lewis, Wyndham
Lowry, Malcolm
Meredith, George
Murdoch, Iris
Naipaul, V. S.
Oliphant, Margaret, traditionally known as Mrs Oliphant
Orwell, George
Powell, Anthony
Powys, John Cowper
Powys, T. F.
Pullman, Philip
Reade, Charles
Richardson, Dorothy
Richardson, Samuel
Rushdie, Salman
Sackville-West, Vita
Scott, Walter
Shelley, Mary
Smith, Charlotte Turner
Smollett, Tobias
Sterne, Laurence
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Swift, Jonathan
Thackeray, William
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Trollope, Anthony
Ward, Mary, traditionally known as Mrs Humphry Ward
Waugh, Evelyn
Wells, H. G.
Wilde, Oscar
Woolf, Virginia
Wyndham, John

See also

Novel
List of English novelists
List of English writers
List of literary movements
American novel
British regional literature
British literature
English literature
Industrial novel
Modernism
Postmodern literature


The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age system, preceded by the Stone Age (Neolithic) and the Bronze Age. It is an archaeological era in the prehistory and protohistory of Europe and the Ancient Near East, and by analogy also used of other parts of the Old World.
The three-age system was introduced in the first half of the 19th century for the archaeology of Europe in particular, and by the later 19th century expanded to the archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Its name harks back to the mythological "Ages of Man" of Hesiod. As an archaeological era it was first introduced for Scandinavia by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen in the 1830s. By the 1860s, it was embraced as a useful division of the "earliest history of mankind" in general[1] and began to be applied in Assyriology. The development of the now-conventional periodization in the archaeology of the Ancient Near East was developed in the 1920s to 1930s.[2]
As its name suggests, Iron Age technology is characterized by the production of tools and weaponry by ferrous metallurgy (ironworking), more specifically from carbon steel.
The duration of the Iron Age varies depending on the region under consideration. It is defined by archaeological convention, and the mere presence of cast or wrought iron is not sufficient to represent an Iron Age culture; rather, the term "Iron Age" implies that the production of carbon steel has been perfected to the point where mass production of tools and weapons superior to their bronze equivalents become possible.
In the Ancient Near East, this transition takes place in the wake of the so-called Bronze Age collapse, in the 12th century BC. The technology soon spreads throughout the Mediterranean region and to South Asia.
Its further spread to Central Asia, Eastern and Central Europe is somewhat delayed, and Northern Europe is reached still later, by about 500 BC.
The Iron Age is taken to end, also by convention, with the beginning of the historiographical record.
This usually does not represent a clear break in the archaeological record; for the Ancient Near East the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire c. 550 BC (considered historical by virtue of the record by Herodotus) is usually taken as a cut-off date, and in Central and Western Europe the Roman conquests of the 1st century BC serve as marking for the end of the Iron Age. The Germanic Iron Age of Scandinavia is taken to end c. AD 800, with the beginning of the Viking Age.
In South Asia, the Iron Age is taken to begin with the ironworking Painted Gray Ware culture and to end with the reign of Ashoka (3rd century BC).  The use of the term "Iron Age" in the archaeology of South, East and Southeast Asia is more recent, and less common, than for western Eurasia; at least in China prehistory had ended before iron-working arrived, so the term is infrequently used.  The Sahel (Sudan region) and Sub-Saharan Africa are outside of the three-age system, there being no Bronze Age, but the term "Iron Age" is sometimes used in reference to early cultures practicing ironworking such as the Nok culture of Nigeria.

Chronology

Rough Three-age system timeline for the Ancient Near East; consult particular article for details
Increasingly the Iron Age in Europe is being seen as a part of the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East, in ancient India (with the post-Rigvedic Vedic civilization), ancient Iran, and ancient Greece (with the Greek Dark Ages). In other regions of Europe the Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe and the 6th century BC in Northern Europe. The Near Eastern Iron Age is divided into two subsections, Iron I and Iron II. Iron I (1200–1000 BC) illustrates both continuity and discontinuity with the previous Late Bronze Age. There is no definitive cultural break between the 13th and 12th centuries BC throughout the entire region, although certain new features in the hill country, Transjordan and coastal region may suggest the appearance of the Aramaean and Sea People groups. There is evidence, however, of strong continuity with Bronze Age culture, although as one moves later into Iron I the culture begins to diverge more significantly from that of the late 2nd millennium.
The Iron Age as an archaeological period is roughly defined as that part of the prehistory of a culture or region during which ferrous metallurgy was the dominant technology of metalworking. The periodization is not strictly tied to the presence of ferrous metallurgy and is to some extent a matter of convention.
The characteristic of an Iron Age culture is mass production of tools and weapons made from steel, typically alloys with a carbon content between approximately 0.30% and 1.2% by weight.
Only with the capability of the production of carbon steel does ferrous metallurgy result in tools or weapons that are equal or superior to bronze. To this day bronze and brass have not been replaced in many applications, with the spread of steel being based as much on economics as on metallurical advancements. A range of techniques have been used to produce steel from smelted iron, including techniques such as case-hardening and forge welding that were used to make cutting edges stronger.
By convention, the Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is taken to last from c. 1200 BC (the Bronze Age collapse) to c. 550 BC (or 539 BC), taken as the beginning of historiography (Herodotus) or the end of the proto-historical period.
In Central and Western Europe, the Iron Age is taken to last from c. 800 BC to c. 1 BC, in Northern Europe from c. 500 BC to 800 AD.
In China, there is no recognizable prehistoric period characterized by ironworking, as Bronze Age China transitions almost directly into the Qin dynasty of imperial China; "Iron Age" in the context of China is sometimes used for the transitonal period of c. 500 BC to 100 BC during which ferrous metallurgy was present even if not dominant.
The following gives an overview over the different conventions delimiting the "Iron Age" for various regions of the Old World, with indication of the subsequent historical epoch.

Early ferrous metallurgy

The earliest-known iron artifacts are nine small beads dated to 3200BC, which were found in burials at Gerzeh, Lower Egypt. They have been identified as meteoric iron shaped by careful hammering.[3]  Meteoric iron, a characteristic iron–nickel alloy, was used by various ancient peoples thousands of years before the Iron Age. Such iron, being in its native metallic state, required no smelting of ores.[4][5]
Smelted iron appears sporadically in the archeological record from the middle Bronze Age. Whilst terrestrial iron is naturally abundant, its high melting point of 1,538°C (2,800°F) placed it out of reach of common use until the end of the second millennium BC. Tin's low melting point of 231.9°C (449.4°F) and copper's relatively moderate melting point of 1,085°C (1,985°F) placed them within the capabilities of the Neolithic pottery kilns, which date back to 6000BC and were able to produce temperatures greater than 900°C (1,650°F).[6] In addition to specially designed furnaces, ancient iron production needed to develop complex procedures for the removal of impurities, for regulating the admixture of carbon in combination with hot-working to achieve a useful balance of hardness and strength (steel) and for adding alloys to prevent rust; see Ferrous metallurgy.
The earliest tentative evidence for iron-making is a small number of iron fragments with the appropriate amounts of carbon admixture found in the Proto-Hittite layers at Kaman-Kalehöyük and dated to 2200–2000BC. Akanuma (2008) concludes that "The combination of carbon dating, archaeological context, and archaeometallurgical examination indicates that it is likely that the use of ironware made of steel had already begun in the third millennium BC in Central Anatolia".[7]  Souckova-Siegolová (2001) shows that iron implements were made in Central Anatolia in very limited quantities around 1800 BC and were in general use by elites, though not by commoners, during the New Hittite Empire (∼1400–1200 BC).[8]
Similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron working in the Ganges Valley in India have been tentatively dated to 1800BC. Tewari (2003) concludes that "knowledge of iron smelting and manufacturing of iron artifacts was well known in the Eastern Vindhyas and iron had been in use in the Central Ganga Plain, at least from the early second millennium BC".[9] By the Middle Bronze Age increasing numbers of smelted iron objects (distinguishable from meteoric iron by the lack of nickel in the product) appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South Asia. African sites are turning up dates as early as 1200 BC.[10][11][12]
Modern archaeological evidence identifies the start of large-scale iron production in around 1200BC, marking the end of the Bronze Age. Between 1200 BC and 1000 BC diffusion in the understanding of iron metallurgy and use of iron objects was fast and far-flung. Anthony Snodgrass[13][14] suggests that a shortage of tin, as a part of the Bronze Age Collapse and trade disruptions in the Mediterranean around 1300BC, forced metalworkers to seek an alternative to bronze. As evidence, many bronze implements were recycled into weapons during that time. More widespread use of iron led to improved steel-making technology at lower cost. Thus, even when tin became available again, iron was cheaper, stronger and lighter, and forged iron implements superseded cast bronze tools permanently.[15]

Ancient Near East
The Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is believed to have begun with the discovery of iron smelting and smithing techniques in Anatolia or the Caucasus and Balkans in the late 2nd millennium BC (c. 1300BC).[16] The earliest bloomery smelting of iron is found at Tell Hammeh, Jordan around 930BC (14C dating).
The Early Iron Age artefacts found in Kultepe site, Azerbaijan show that iron smelting was known and used in this region before the 2nd millennium BC (as early as the 3rd millennium BC).[17][18]
Western Asia
In the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, the initial use of iron reaches far back, to perhaps 3000 BC.[19] One of the earliest smelted iron artifacts known was a dagger with an iron blade found in a Hattic tomb in Anatolia, dating from 2500BC.[20] The widespread use of iron weapons which replaced bronze weapons rapidly disseminated throughout the Near East (North Africa, southwest Asia) by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.
The development of iron smelting was once attributed to the Hittites of Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age.
As part of the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age, the Bronze Age collapse saw the slow, comparatively continuous spread of iron-working technology in the region.
It was long held that the success of the Hittite Empire during the Late Bronze Age had been based on the advantages entailed by the "monopoly" on ironworking at the time.[21] Accordingly, the invading Sea Peoples would have been responsible for spreading the knowledge through that region.
The view of such a "Hittite monopoly" has come under scrutiny and no longer represents a scholarly consensus.[21]
While there are some iron objects from Bronze Age Anatolia, the number is comparable to iron objects found in Egypt and other places of the same time period; and only a small number of these objects are weapons.[22]

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details
 Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age  Historic Iron Age
Egypt

The Iron Age in Egyptian archaeology essentially corresponds to the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt.
Iron metal is singularly scarce in collections of Egyptian antiquities. Bronze remained the primary material there until the conquest by Neo-Assyrian Empire in 671 BC. The explanation of this would seem to lie in the fact that the relics are in most cases the paraphernalia of tombs, the funeral vessels and vases, and iron being considered an impure metal by the ancient Egyptians it was never used in their manufacture of these or for any religious purposes. It was attributed to Seth, the spirit of evil who according to Egyptian tradition governed the central deserts of Africa.[19]
In the Black Pyramid of Abusir, dating before 2000BC, Gaston Maspero found some pieces of iron. In the funeral text of Pepi I, the metal is mentioned.[19] A sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah as well as a battle axe with an iron blade and gold-decorated bronze shaft were both found in the excavation of Ugarit.[20] A dagger with an iron blade found in Tutankhamun's tomb, 13th century BC, was recently examined and found to be of meteoric origin.[24][25][26]
Europe

In Europe, the Iron Age is the last stage of prehistoric Europe and the first of the protohistoric periods, which initially means descriptions of a particular area by Greek and Roman writers. For much of Europe, the period came to an abrupt local end after conquest by the Romans, though ironworking remained the dominant technology until recent times.  Elsewhere it may last until the early centuries AD, and either Christianization or a new conquest in the Migration Period.

Iron working was introduced to Europe in the late 11th century BC,[27] probably from the Caucasus, and slowly spread northwards and westwards over the succeeding 500 years.  The Iron Age did not start when iron first appeared in Europe but it began to replace bronze in the preparation of tools and weapons.[28] It did not happen at the same time all around Europe; local cultural developments played a role in the transition to the Iron Age. For example the Iron Age of Prehistoric Ireland begins around 500 BC, when the Greek Iron Age had already ended, and finishes around 400 AD. The widespread use of the technology of iron was implemented in Europe simultaneously with Asia.[29] The prehistoric Iron Age in Central Europe divided into two periods based on historical events – Hallstatt (early Iron Age) and La Tene (late Iron Age) cultures.[30] Material cultures of Hallstatt and La Tene consist of 4 phases (A, B, C, D phases).[31][32][33]

The Iron Age in Europe is characterized by an elaboration of designs in weapons, implements, and utensils.[19] These are no longer cast but hammered into shape, and decoration is elaborate and curvilinear rather than simple rectilinear; the forms and character of the ornamentation of the northern European weapons resembles in some respects Roman arms, while in other respects they are peculiar and evidently representative of northern art.
Citania de Briterios located in Guimaraes, Portugal is one of the examples of archaeological sites of the Iron Age. This settlement (fortified villages) covered an area of 3.8 hectares and served for Celtiberians as a stronghold against Roman invasions. İt dates more than 2500 years back. The site was researched by Francisco Martins Sarmento starting from 1874. A number of amphoras, coins, fragments of pottery, weapons, pieces of jewelry, as well as ruins of a bath and its Pedra Formosa (literally Beauty stones) revealed here.[34][35]
Asia
Central Asia
The Iron Age in Central Asia began when iron objects appear among the Indo-European Saka in present-day Xinjiang between the 10th century BC and the 7th century BC, such as those found at the cemetery site of Chawuhukou.[36]
The Pazyryk culture is an Iron Age archaeological culture (c. 6th to 3rd centuries BC) identified by excavated artifacts and mummified humans found in the Siberian permafrost in the Altay Mountains.
East Asia

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details
 Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age  Historic Iron Age
In China, Chinese bronze inscriptions are found around 1200BC, preceding the development of iron metallurgy, which was known by the 9th century BC,[37][38]   Therefore in China prehistory had given way to history periodized by ruling dynasties by the start of iron use, so "Iron Age" is not typically used as to describe a period in Chinese history.  Iron metallurgy reached the Yangzi Valley toward the end of the 6th century BC.[39] The few objects were found at Changsha and Nanjing. The mortuary evidence suggests that the initial use of iron in Lingnan belongs to the mid-to-late Warring States period (from about 350 BC). Important non-precious husi style metal finds include Iron tools found at the tomb at Guwei-cun of the 4th century BC.[40]
The techniques used in Lingnan are a combination of bivalve moulds of distinct southern tradition and the incorporation of piece mould technology from the Zhongyuan. The products of the combination of these two periods are bells, vessels, weapons and ornaments and the sophisticated cast.
An Iron Age culture of the Tibetan Plateau has tentatively been associated with the Zhang Zhung culture described in early Tibetan writings.

In Japan, iron items, such as tools, weapons, and decorative objects, are postulated to have entered Japan during the late Yayoi period (c. 300BC–AD300)[41] or the succeeding Kofun period (c. AD250–538), most likely through contacts with the Korean Peninsula and China.
Distinguishing characteristics of the Yayoi period include the appearance of new pottery styles and the start of intensive rice agriculture in paddy fields. Yayoi culture flourished in a geographic area from southern Kyūshū to northern Honshū. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes referred to collectively as the Yamato period; The word kofun is Japanese for the type of burial mounds dating from that era.

Iron objects were introduced to the Korean peninsula through trade with chiefdoms and state-level societies in the Yellow Sea area in the 4th century BC, just at the end of the Warring States Period but before the Western Han Dynasty began.[42][43] Yoon proposes that iron was first introduced to chiefdoms located along North Korean river valleys that flow into the Yellow Sea such as the Cheongcheon and Taedong Rivers.[44] Iron production quickly followed in the 2nd century BC, and iron implements came to be used by farmers by the 1st century in southern Korea.[42] The earliest known cast-iron axes in southern Korea are found in the Geum River basin. The time that iron production begins is the same time that complex chiefdoms of Proto-historic Korea emerged. The complex chiefdoms were the precursors of early states such as Silla, Baekje, Goguryeo, and Gaya[43][45] Iron ingots were an important mortuary item and indicated the wealth or prestige of the deceased in this period.[46]
South Asia

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details
 Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age  Historic Iron Age

Iron was being used in Mundigak to manufacture some items in the 3rd millennium BC such as a small copper/bronze bell with an iron clapper, a copper/bronze rod with two iron decorative buttons,. and a copper/bronze mirror handle with a decorative iron button.[47] Artefacts including small knives and blades have been discovered in the Indian state of Telengana which have been dated between 2,400 BC and 1800 BC[48][49]  The history of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent began during the 2nd millennium BC. Archaeological sites in India, such as Malhar, Dadupur, Raja Nala Ka Tila, Lahuradewa, Kosambi and Jhusi, Allahabad in present-day Uttar Pradesh show iron implements in the period 1800–1200BC.[9] Archaeological excavations in Hyderabad show an Iron Age burial site.[50] Rakesh Tewari[51] believes that around the beginning of the Indian Iron Age (13th century BC), iron smelting was widely practiced in India. Such use suggests that the date of the technology's inception may be around the 16th century BC.[9]
The beginning of the 1st millennium BC saw extensive developments in iron metallurgy in India. Technological advancement and mastery of iron metallurgy was achieved during this period of peaceful settlements. One iron working centre in east India has been dated to the first millennium BC.[52] In Southern India (present day Mysore) iron appeared as early as 12th to 11th centuries BC; these developments were too early for any significant close contact with the northwest of the country.[52] The Indian Upanishads mention metallurgy.[53] and the Indian Mauryan period saw advances in metallurgy.[54] As early as 300BC, certainly by AD200, high quality steel was produced in southern India, by what would later be called the crucible technique. In this system, high-purity wrought iron, charcoal, and glass were mixed in a crucible and heated until the iron melted and absorbed the carbon.[55]
The protohistoric Early Iron Age in Sri Lanka lasted from 1000BC to 600BC. however evidence of Iron usage was found in Excavation of a Protohistoric Canoe burial Site in Haldummulla[56] and has been dated to 2400 BC. Radiocarbon evidence has been collected from Anuradhapura and Aligala shelter in Sigiriya.[57][58][59][60] The Anuradhapura settlement is recorded to extend 10ha (25 acres) by 800BC and grew to 50ha (120 acres) by 700–600BC to become a town.[61] The skeletal remains of an Early Iron Age chief were excavated in Anaikoddai, Jaffna. The name 'Ko Veta' is engraved in Brahmi script on a seal buried with the skeleton and is assigned by the excavators to the 3rd century BC. Ko, meaning "King" in Tamil, is comparable to such names as Ko Atan and Ko Putivira occurring in contemporary Brahmi inscriptions in south India.[62] It is also speculated that Early Iron Age sites may exist in Kandarodai, Matota, Pilapitiya and Tissamaharama.[63]
Southeast Asia

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details
 Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age  Historic Iron Age
Archaeology in Thailand at sites Ban Don Ta Phet and Khao Sam Kaeo yielding metallic, stone, and glass artifacts stylistically associated with the Indian subcontinent suggest Indianization of Southeast Asia beginning in the 4th to 2nd centuries BC during the late Iron Age.[64]
In Philippines and Vietnam, the Sa Huynh culture showed evidence of an extensive trade network. Sa Huynh beads were made from glass, carnelian, agate, olivine, zircon, gold and garnet; most of these materials were not local to the region, and were most likely imported. Han-Dynasty-style bronze mirrors were also found in Sa Huynh sites. Conversely, Sa Huynh produced ear ornaments have been found in archaeological sites in Central Thailand, Taiwan (Orchid Island).[65]:211–217
Sub-Saharan Africa

In Sub-Saharan Africa, where there was no continent-wide universal Bronze Age, the use of iron succeeded immediately the use of stone.[19]
Metallurgy was characterized by the absence of a Bronze Age, and the transition from "stone to steel" in tool substances. Early evidence for iron technology in Sub-Saharan Africa can be found at sites such as KM2 and KM3 in northwest Tanzania. Nubia was one of the relatively few places in Africa to have a sustained Bronze Age along with Egypt and much of the rest of North Africa.

Very early copper and bronze working sites in Niger may date to as early as 1500BC. There is also evidence of iron metallurgy in Termit, Niger from around this period.[10][66]
Nubia was a major manufacturer and exporter of iron after the expulsion of the Nubian dynasty from Egypt by the Assyrians in the 7th century BC.[67]
Iron and copper working in Sub-Saharan Africa spread in conjunction with the Bantu expansion, from the Cameroon region to the African Great Lakes in the 3rd century BC, reaching the Cape around AD400.[10]
However, iron working may have been practiced in Central Africa as early as the 3rd millennium BC.[68]
Instances of carbon steel based on complex preheating principles were found to be in production around the 1st century AD in northwest Tanzania.[69]

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details
 Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age  Historic Iron Age
Image gallery

Iron Age Examples
Dun Carloway broch, Lewis, Scotland
A replica Iron Age thatched roof, Butser Ancient Farm, Hampshire, England
Iron Age roundhouse
Iron Age roundhouse
Iron Age roundhouse
Broborg Knivsta, prehistoric castle

See also

Blast furnace
Fogou
Human timeline
Life timeline
List of archaeological periods
List of archaeological sites
Roman metallurgy

Further reading
Chang, Claudia. Rethinking Prehistoric Central Asia: Shepherds, Farmers, and Nomads. New York: Routledge, 2018.
Collis, John. The European Iron Age. London: B.T. Batsford, 1984.
Cunliffe, Barry W. Iron Age Britain. Rev. ed. London: Batsford, 2004.
Davis-Kimball, Jeannine., V. A Bashilov, and L. Tiablonskiĭ. Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes In the Early Iron Age. Berkeley, CA: Zinat Press, 1995.
Finkelstein, Israel, and Eli Piasetzky. “The Iron Age Chronology Debate: Is the Gap Narrowing?” Near Eastern Archaeology 74.1 (2011): 50–55.
Jacobson, Esther. Burial Ritual, Gender, and Status In South Siberia In the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age. Bloomington: Indiana University, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1987.
Mazar, Amihai. “Iron Age Chronology: A Reply to I. Finkelstein.” Levant 29 (1997): 157–167.
––. “The Iron Age Chronology Debate: Is the Gap Narrowing? Another Viewpoint.” Near Eastern Archaeology 74.2 (2011): 105–110.
Medvedskaia, I.N. Iran: Iron Age I. Oxford: B.A.R., 1982.
Shinnie, P.L. The African Iron Age. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.
Tripathi, Vibha. The Age of Iron In South Asia: Legacy and Tradition. New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2001.
Waldbaum, Jane C. From Bronze to Iron: The Transition From the Bronze Age to the Iron Age In the Eastern Mediterranean. Göteborg: P. Aström, 1978.

Library resources about
 Iron Age
General
 from resourcesforhistory.com
 – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016).
Publications
Andre Gunder Frank and William R. Thompson, . American Institute of Archaeology, San Francisco, January, 2004.
News
. Archaeologists have found evidence of a massacre linked to Iron Age warfare at a hill fort in Derbyshire. BBC. 17 April 2011


Rice production is important to the economy of the United States. Of the country's row crop farms, rice farms are the most capital-intensive, and have the highest national land rental rate average. In the US, all rice acreage requires irrigation. In 2000-09 approximately 3.1 million acres in the US were under rice production, while an increase is expected in the next decade to approximately 3.3 million acres.[1] US Rice represents rice producers in the six largest rice-producing states of Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Texas.[2][3]
History
Early history

African rice (a separate species from Asian rice, originally domesticated in the inland delta of the Upper Niger River[4][5]) was introduced to the United States in the 17th century. It is mentioned to have been under cultivation in Virginia as far back as 1609, although it is reported that one bushel of rice had been sent to the colony later, in the summer of 1671, on the cargo vessel William and Ralph. In 1685, a bag of Madagascar rice known as "Gold Seede" was given to Dr. Henry Woodward. A tax law of 26 September 1691 had permitted payment of taxes by the colonists by way of rice and other commodities.[6]
[7]
The  colonies of South Carolina and Georgia prospered and amassed great wealth from rice planting, based on the slave labor obtained from the Senegambia area of West Africa and from coastal Sierra Leone. One batch of slaves was advertised as "a choice cargo of Windward and Gold Coast Negroes, who have been accustomed to the planting of rice." At the port of Charleston, through which 40% of all American slave imports passed, slaves from Africa brought the highest prices in recognition of their prior knowledge of rice culture, which was put to use on the many rice plantations around Georgetown, Charleston, and Savannah.[6]

Enslaved Africans cleared the land, diked the marshes and built the irrigation system, skimming the freshwater layer off the high tide, flushing the fields, and adjusting the water level to the development stage of the rice. Rice was planted, hoed, and harvested with hand tools; plows and harvest wains could be pulled by mules or oxen wearing special shoes.[6] At first rice was milled by hand with wooden paddles, then winnowed in sweetgrass baskets (the making of which was another skill brought by slaves from Africa). The invention of the rice mill increased profitability of the crop, and the addition of water power for the mills in 1787 by American millwright Jonathan Lucas was another step forward.
Rice production was not merely unhealthy but lethal. One 18th-century writer wrote:[6]

If a work could be imagined peculiarly unwholesome and even fatal to health, it must be that of standing like the negroes, ankle and mid-leg deep in water which floats an ouzy mud, and exposed all the while to a burning sun which makes the air they breathe hotter than the human blood; these poor wretches are then in a furness of stinking putrid effluvia.

Inadequate food, housing, and clothing, malaria, yellow fever, venomous snakes, alligators, hard labour, and brutal treatment killed up to a third of Low Country slaves within a year. Not one child in ten lived to age sixteen. However, in the 1770s, a slave could produce rice worth more than six times his or her own market value in a year, so this high death rate was not uneconomical for their owners. Rice plantations could produce profits of up to 26 percent per year. Runaways, on the other hand, were a problem:[6]

I gave them a hundred lashes more than a dozen times; but they never quit running away, till I chained them together, with iron collars round their necks, and chained them to spades, and made them do nothing but dig ditches to drain the rice swamps. They could not run away then, unless they went together, and carried their chains and spades with them. I kept them in this way two years....
— one overseer's method of controlling slaves, reported by fugitive slave Charles Ball

Most plantations were run on the task system, where a slave was given one or more tasks, estimated at ten hours' hard work, each day. After they had finished the tasks to the overseer's satisfaction, they could spend the remainder of the day as they chose, often on growing their food, spinning, sewing their clothes, or building their houses (slaves were typically supplied with nails and five yards of cloth per year). The task system, and the unwillingness of free people to live in rice-growing areas, may have led to the greater survival of African culture among the Gullah.[6]
In the country's early years, rice production was limited to the South Atlantic and Gulf states. For almost the first 190 years of rice production in the US, the principal producers were South Carolina and Georgia. Limited amounts were grown in North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.[9]
19th century

Rice was introduced into the southern states of Louisiana and east Texas in the mid-19th century.[10] Meanwhile, soil fertility in the east fell, especially for inland rice.[6]
Emancipation in 1863 freed rice workers. East-coast rice farming required hard, skilled work under extremely unhealthy conditions, and without slave labour, profits fell. Increasing automation in response came too late, and a series of hurricanes that hit Carolina in the late 1800s and damaged levees put an end to the industry. Production shifted to the Deep South,[11] where the geography was more favourable to mechanization.[9]
These events can be seen in rice production statistics. In 1839, the total production was 80,841,422 pounds, of which 60,590,861 pounds were grown in South Carolina and 12,384,732 pounds in Georgia. In 1849, cultivation reached 215,313,497 pounds.[12] Between 1846 and 1861, annual rice production in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia averaged more than 105 million pounds of cleaned rice, with South Carolina producing more than 75 percent.

At the census of 1870, after emancipation, the production of rice decreased to 73,635,021 pounds. In 1879, the total area devoted to rice was 174,173 acres, and the total production of clean rice was up again to 110,131,373 pounds. A decade later, the total area devoted to rice cultivation was 161,312 acres, and the total production of clean rice equaled 128,590,934 pounds; this represented a 16.76 percent increase in the amount produced, with a decrease of 7.38 percent in the area under cultivation.[12]
Between 1890 and 1900, Louisiana and Texas increased rice crop acreage to such an extent that they produced almost 75 percent of the country's product. Between 1866 and 1880, the annual production of the three states averaged just under 41 million pounds, of which South Carolina produced more than 50 percent. After 1880, their average annual production approximated 46 million pounds of cleaned rice, of which North Carolina produced 5.5 million, South Carolina 27 million and Georgia 13.5 million pounds.[9]
The rice industry in Louisiana began around the time of the Civil War. For a number of years, production was small, but during the 1870s the industry began to assume large proportions, averaging nearly 30 million pounds for the decade and exceeding 51 million pounds in 1880. In 1885, the production reached 100 million pounds, and in 1892, 182 million pounds. The great development of the rice industry in Louisiana after 1884 resulted from the opening up of a prairie region in the southwestern part of the state, and the development of a system of irrigation and culture which made possible the use of harvesting machinery similar to that used in the wheat fields of the Northwest, greatly reducing the costs of production. In 1896, yield from the Louisiana rice fields, where harvesting machinery was used, was good. However the milling process was not successful commercially in some rice varieties. The loss due to the milling process was considerable, particularly of the unbroken rice in the "head rice" variety.[9]
20th century to present

Rice was established in Arkansas in 1904, California in 1912, and the Mississippi Delta in 1942.[3] Rice cultivation in California in particular started during the California Gold Rush. It was introduced primarily for the consumption of about 40,000 Chinese laborers who were brought as immigrants to the state; only a small area was under rice cultivation to meet this requirement. However, commercial production began only in 1912 in the town of Richvale in Butte County.[13] Since then, California has cultivated rice in a big way, and as of 2006, its production of rice was the second largest in the United States.[14]
Production

Rice culture in the southeastern U.S. became less profitable with the loss of slave labor after the American Civil War, and it finally died out just after the turn of the 20th century. Today, people can visit the historic Mansfield Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina, the state's only remaining rice plantation with the original mid-19th century winnowing barn and rice mill. The predominant strain of rice in the Carolinas was from Africa and was known as "Carolina Gold". The cultivar has been preserved and there are current attempts to reintroduce it as a commercially grown crop.[15]
In 1900, the annual production of rice in the US was approximately half the annual consumption. The two principal varieties of lowland rice which were cultivated in the Atlantic States were the "gold seed rice" and white rice, which were the original rice varieties introduced into the US. Gold seed rice was notable for the larger yield of the grain. It thus practically superseded white rice which was cultivated in the earlier years. Experiments with upland rice demonstrated that it could grow over large areas of the country but the crop's yield and quality are inferior to lowland rice produced by irrigation methods.[9]

Since then, California has cultivated rice on a large scale, and as of 2006 its production was the second largest in the United States,[14] after Arkansas, with production concentrated in six counties north of Sacramento.[16]
During 2012, the estimated rice production was 199 million cwt, or 19.9 billion lbs. This was a rise of 8% over the production of 2011. The harvested area also recorded a rise from 2.68 million ha in 2012 to 2.7 million ha in 2013. Another record was of the yield during 2012 recorded at 7,449 pounds per acre, higher than the 2011 yield by 382 pounds per acre.[17]
Six states now account for over 99% of all rice grown in the US. These are Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas. As of 2003, Arkansas topped the list with a production level of 213 million bushels against a total production of 443 million bushels in the country, and the annual per capita consumption reported is in excess of 28 pounds.[18]
Types of rice

The earliest types grown in Carolina were the African Oryza glaberrima, the prized "Carolina Gold". Asian Oryza sativa was "Carolina White".
After the total decline of rice cultivation in Carolina, "Carolina Gold" is now cultivated in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.[6]
In California, production is dominated by short and medium grain japonica varieties, including cultivars developed for the local climate such as Calrose, which makes up as much as 85% of the state's crop. The broad classification of rice grown includes Long Grain Rice, Medium Grain Rice and Short Grain Rice.[19]
While now more than 100 varieties of rice are grown in the world, in the US 20 varieties of rice are commercially produced, primarily in the states of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and California. Primary classification of rice grown are the long, medium or short grain type. The Long Grain Rice is slender and long, the Medium Grain Rice is plump but not round, and the Short Grain Rice is round. The forms of rice are Brown Rice, Parboiled Rice and Regular-Milled White Rice.[18][20]
The domestic utilization of rice in the US is food use (58%), while 16% is used in food and beer processing and 10% is used in pet food.[20]
Special varieties of rice, such as jasmine rice and basmati rice which are of the aromatic variety, are imported from Thailand, India, and Pakistan, as such varieties have not been evolved in the US; this demand for import is quite substantial and largely to meet the increasing population of the rice-eating ethnic community.[21]
Milling process
Harvested rice is subject to milling to remove the husk, which encloses the kernel. Before this process is started, the rice from the field is subject to a cleaning process to remove stalks and any extraneous material by means of special machinery. In the case of parboiled rice, a steam pressure process is adopted for milling. After drying, the rice is subjected to further processing to remove the hull and then polished.  Brown rice is processed through a shelling machine which removes the hull. The resulting brown rice retains the brawn layer around the kernel. In the case of white rice, the hull and the brawn are removed and polished in a polishing machine, producing a polished kernel.[18]
Exports
The first export of rice from Carolina was 5 tons in 1698, which rose to 330 tons by 1700 and jumped to 42,000 tons in 1770. However, as a result of the abolition of slave labour, export from Carolina eventually ceased.[6]
While the rice production in the US accounts for about 2% of world production, its exports account for about 10% of all exports. The export is mostly of high-quality rice of the long and combined medium/short-grain varieties of rice. The type of rice exported is rough or unmilled rice, parboiled rice, brown rice, and fully milled rice. Exports to Mexico and Central America are mostly of the rough rice variety. Other countries to which the US exports rice include Mexico, Central America, Northeast Asia, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, Canada, the European Union (EU-27), and Sub-Saharan Africa.[21]
The exported variety is free of genetically enhanced (GE) rice. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are the agreements under which the US exports its rice and this has resulted in an increase of exports from the country since the 1990s.[21]
Culture

A popular festival observed on New Year's Day, by many Americans (mostly from the southern states) is the preparation and consuming of a rice cuisine called the "Hoppin' John". Since rice is associated with slave labour as their staple diet (with horse-beans made in to a  pulp by boiling; boiled yams and occasionally a small amount of beef or pork) it is eaten in the US on New Year's Day in the belief that it brings good luck since people who "eat poor New Year's Day, eat rich the rest of the year."[6]
The International Rice Festival is held every year in Crowley, Louisiana, on Friday and Saturday of the third weekend in October. It is the largest and oldest agricultural festival of Louisiana. The festival is a celebration of rice as a staple food and its economic importance in the world.[22] The tradition was set in 1927 as a Rice Carnival by Sal Right, a pioneer of the rice industry. However, the celebration of this festival in Crowley is also attributed to Harry D Wilson, Commissioner of Agriculture. It is also said that the festival was the idea of the Governor to celebrate the festival on the occasion of the silver jubilee of establishment of the city of Crowley on 25 October 1937.[23]
See also
African rice
Wild rice


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 Feminismportalvt
Gender studies is a field for interdisciplinary study devoted to gender identity and gendered representation as central categories of analysis. This field includes women's studies (concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics), men's studies and queer studies.[1] Sometimes, gender studies is offered together with study of sexuality.
These disciplines study gender and sexuality in the fields of literature, language, geography, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, cinema, media studies,[2] human development, law, public health and medicine.[3] It also analyzes how race, ethnicity, location, class, nationality, and disability intersect with the categories of gender and sexuality.[4][5]
Regarding gender, Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one."[6] This view proposes that in gender studies, the term "gender" should be used to refer to the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities and not to the state of being male or female in its entirety.[7] However, this view is not held by all gender theorists. Beauvoir's is a view that many sociologists support (see Sociology of gender), though there are many other contributors to the field of gender studies with different backgrounds and opposing views, such as psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and feminists such as Judith Butler.
Gender is pertinent to many disciplines, such as literary theory, drama studies, film theory, performance theory, contemporary art history, anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics and psychology. However, these disciplines sometimes differ in their approaches to how and why gender is studied. For instance in anthropology, sociology and psychology, gender is often studied as a practice, whereas in cultural studies representations of gender are more often examined. In politics, gender can be viewed as a foundational discourse that political actors employ in order to position themselves on a variety of issues.[8] Gender studies is also a discipline in itself, incorporating methods and approaches from a wide range of disciplines.[9]
Each field came to regard "gender" as a practice, sometimes referred to as something that is performative.[10] Feminist theory of psychoanalysis, articulated mainly by Julia Kristeva[11] (the "semiotic" and "abjection") and Bracha L. Ettinger[12] (the feminine-prematernal-maternal matrixial Eros of borderlinking and com-passion,[13] "matrixial trans-subjectivity" and the "primal mother-phantasies"),[14] and informed both by Freud, Lacan and the object relations theory, is very influential in gender studies.
According to Sam Killermann, Gender can also be broken into three categories, gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex.[15] These three categories are another way of breaking down gender into the different social, biological, and cultural constructions. These constructions focus on how femininity and masculinity are fluid entities and how their meaning is able to fluctuate depending on the various constraints surrounding them.
Influences
Psychoanalytic theory
A number of theorists have influenced the field of gender studies significantly, specifically in terms of psychoanalytic theory. Among these are Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Bracha L. Ettinger, and Mark Blechner.
Gender studied under the lens of each of these theorists looks somewhat different. In a Freudian system, women are "mutilated and must learn to accept their lack of a penis" (in Freud's terms a "deformity").[16] Lacan, however, organizes femininity and masculinity according to different unconscious structures. Both male and female subjects participate in the "phallic" organization, and the feminine side of sexuation is "supplementary" and not opposite or complementary.[17] The concept of sexuation (sexual situation), which posits the development of gender-roles and role-play in childhood, is useful in countering the idea that gender identity is innate or biologically determined. In other words, the sexuation of an individual has as much, if not more, to do with their development of a gender identity as being genetically sexed male or female.[18]
Julia Kristeva has significantly developed the field of semiotics. She contends that patriarchal cultures, like individuals, have to exclude the maternal and the feminine so that they can come into being.[19] Mark Blechner expanded psychoanalytic views of sex and gender.[20] He has argued that there is a "gender fetish" in western society, in which the gender of sexual partners is given enormously disproportionate attention over other factors involved in sexual attraction, such as age and social class.[21]
Bracha L. Ettinger transformed subjectivity in contemporary psychoanalysis since the early 1990s with the Matrixial[22] feminine-maternal and prematernal Eros[13] of borderlinking (bordureliance), borderspacing (bordurespacement) and co-emergence. The matrixial feminine difference defines a particular gaze[23] and it is a source for trans-subjectivity and transjectivity[24] in both males and females. Ettinger rethinks the human subject as informed by the archaic connectivity to the maternal and proposes the idea of a Demeter-Persephone Complexity.[25]
Cultures can have very different norms of maleness and masculinity. Blechner identifies the terror, in Western males, of penetration. Yet in many societies, being gay is defined only by being a male who lets himself be penetrated. Males who penetrate other males are considered masculine and not gay and are not the targets of prejudice.[26] In one particular culture in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea for example, receptive fellatio is the norm for early adolescence and seen as a requirement for developing normal manliness.[27]
Feminist psychoanalytic theory
Feminist theorists such as Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin, Jane Gallop, Bracha L. Ettinger, Shoshana Felman, Griselda Pollock,[28] Luce Irigaray and Jane Flax have developed a Feminist psychoanalysis and argued that psychoanalytic theory is vital to the feminist project and must, like other theoretical traditions, be criticized by women as well as transformed to free it from vestiges of sexism (i.e. being censored). Shulamith Firestone, in "The Dialectic of Sex" calls Freudianism the misguided feminism and discusses how Freudianism is almost completely accurate, with the exception of one crucial detail: everywhere that Freud writes "penis", the word should be replaced with "power".
Critics such as Elizabeth Grosz accuse Jacques Lacan of maintaining a sexist tradition in psychoanalysis.[29] Others, such as Judith Butler, Bracha L. Ettinger and Jane Gallop have used Lacanian work, though in a critical way, to develop gender theory.[30][31][32]
According to J. B. Marchand, "The gender studies and queer theory are rather reluctant, hostile to see the psychoanalytic approach."[33]
For Jean-Claude Guillebaud, gender studies (and activists of sexual minorities) "besieged" and consider psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts as "the new priests, the last defenders of the genital normality, morality, moralism or even obscurantism".[34]
Judith Butler's worries about the psychoanalytic outlook under which sexual difference is "undeniable" and pathologizing any effort to suggest that it is not so paramount and unambiguous ...".[35] According to Daniel Beaune and Caterina Rea, the gender-studies "often criticized psychoanalysis to perpetuate a family and social model of patriarchal, based on a rigid and timeless version of the parental order".[36]
Literary theory
Psychoanalytically oriented French feminism focused on visual and literary theory all along. Virginia Woolf's legacy as well as "Adrienne Rich's call for women's revisions of literary texts, and history as well, has galvanized a generation of feminist authors to reply with texts of their own".[37] Griselda Pollock and other feminists have articulated Myth and poetry[38] and literature,[38][39][40] from the point of view of gender.
Post-modern influence
The emergence of post-modernism theories affected gender studies,[18] causing a movement in identity theories away from the concept of fixed or essentialist gender identity, to post-modern[41] fluid[42] or multiple identities.[43] The impact of post-structuralism, and its literary theory aspect post-modernism, on gender studies was most prominent in its challenging of grand narratives. Post-structuralism paved the way for the emergence of queer theory in gender studies, which necessitated the field expanding its purview to sexuality.[44]
In addition to the expansion to include sexuality studies, under the influence of post-modernism gender studies has also turned its lens toward masculinity studies, due to the work of sociologists and theorists such as R. W. Connell, Michael Kimmel, and E. Anthony Rotundo.[45][46]
These changes and expansions have led to some contentions within the field, such as the one between second wave feminists and queer theorists.[47] The line drawn between these two camps lies in the problem as feminists see it of queer theorists arguing that everything is fragmented and there are not only no grand narratives but also no trends or categories. Feminists argue that this erases the categories of gender altogether but does nothing to antagonize the power dynamics reified by gender. In other words, the fact that gender is socially constructed does not undo the fact that there are strata of oppression between genders.
Development of theory
History
The history of gender studies looks at the different perspectives of gender. This discipline examines the ways in which historical, cultural, and social events shape the role of gender in different societies. The field of gender studies, while focusing on the differences between men and women, also looks at sexual differences and less binary definitions of gender categorization.[48]
After the universal suffrage revolution of the twentieth century, the women's liberation movement of the 1960 and 1970s promoted a revision from the feminists to "actively interrogate" the usual and accepted versions of history as it was known at the time. It was the goal of many feminist scholars to question original assumptions regarding women's and men's attributes, to actually measure them, and to report observed differences between women and men.[49] Initially, these programs were essentially feminist, designed to recognize contributions made by women as well as by men. Soon, men began to look at masculinity the same way that women were looking at femininity, and developed an area of study called "men's studies".[50] It was not until the late 1980s and 1990s that scholars recognized a need for study in the field of sexuality. This was due to the increasing interest in lesbian and gay rights, and scholars found that most individuals will associate sexuality and gender together, rather than as separate entities.[50][51]
Although doctoral programs for women's studies have existed since 1990, the first doctoral program for a potential PhD in gender studies in the United States was approved in November 2005.[52]
In 2015, Kabul University became the first university in Afghanistan to offer a master's degree course in gender and women's studies.[53]
Women's studies

Women's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. It often includes feminist theory, women's history (e.g. a history of women's suffrage) and social history, women's fiction, women's health, feminist psychoanalysis and the feminist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities and social sciences.
Men's studies

Men's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning men, masculism, gender, and politics. It often includes feminist theory, men's history and social history, men's fiction, men's health, feminist psychoanalysis and the feminist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities and social sciences. Timothy Laurie and Anna Hickey-Moody suggest that there 'have always been dangers present in the institutionalisation of "masculinity studies" as a semi-gated community', and note that 'a certain triumphalism vis-à-vis feminist philosophy haunts much masculinities research'.[54]
Gender in Asia

Certain issues associated with gender in Eastern Asia and the Pacific Region are more complex and depend on location and context. For example, in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia, a heavy importance of what defines a woman comes from the workforce. In these countries, "gender related challenges tend to be related to economic empowerment, employment, and workplace issues, for example related to informal sector workers, feminization of migration flows, work place conditions, and long term social security".[55] However, in countries who are less economically stable, such as Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, Laos, Cambodia, and some provinces in more remote locations, "women tend to bear the cost of social and domestic conflicts and natural disasters".[55]
One issue that remains consistent throughout all provinces in different stages of development is women having a weak voice when it comes to decision-making. One of the reasons for this is the "growing trend to decentralization [which] has moved decision-making down to levels at which women's voice is often weakest and where even the women's civil society movement, which has been a powerful advocate at national level, struggles to organize and be heard".[55]
East Asia Pacific's approach to help mainstream these issues of gender relies on a three-pillar method.[56] Pillar one is partnering with middle-income countries and emerging middle-income countries to sustain and share gains in growth and prosperity. Pillar two supports the developmental underpinnings for peace, renewed growth and poverty reduction in the poorest and most fragile areas. The final pillar provides a stage for knowledge management, exchange and dissemination on gender responsive development within the region to begin. These programs have already been established, and successful in, Vietnam, Thailand, China, as well as the Philippines, and efforts are starting to be made in Laos, Papua New Guinea, and Timor Leste as well. These pillars speak to the importance of showcasing gender studies.[55]
Judith Butler

The concept of gender performativity is at the core of philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler's work Gender Trouble. In Butler's terms the performance of gender, sex, and sexuality is about power in society.[10][57] She locates the construction of the "gendered, sexed, desiring subject" in "regulative discourses". A part of Butler's argument concerns the role of sex in the construction of "natural" or coherent gender and sexuality.[58] In her account, gender and heterosexuality are constructed as natural because the opposition of the male and female sexes is perceived as natural in the social imaginary.[10]
Criticisms
Historian and theorist Bryan Palmer argues that gender studies' current reliance on post-structuralism – with its reification of discourse and avoidance of the structures of oppression and struggles of resistance – obscures the origins, meanings, and consequences of historical events and processes, and he seeks to counter current trends in gender studies with an argument for the necessity to analyze lived experiences and the structures of subordination and power.[59]
Authors Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge propose in the book Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies that the attempt to make women's studies serve a political agenda has led to problematic results such as dubious scholarship and pedagogical practices that resemble indoctrination more than education.
Rosi Braidotti (1994) has criticized gender studies as "the take-over of the feminist agenda by studies on masculinity, which results in transferring funding from feminist faculty positions to other kinds of positions. There have been cases... of positions advertised as 'gender studies' being given away to the 'bright boys'. Some of the competitive take-over has to do with gay studies. Of special significance in this discussion is the role of the mainstream publisher Routledge who, in our opinion, is responsible for promoting gender as a way of deradicalizing the feminist agenda, re-marketing masculinity and gay male identity instead."[60] Calvin Thomas countered that, "as Joseph Allen Boone points out, 'many of the men in the academy who are feminism's most supportive 'allies' are gay,'" and that it is "disingenuous" to ignore the ways in which mainstream publishers such as Routledge have promoted feminist theorists.[61]
Gender studies, and more particularly queer studies within gender studies, were repeatedly criticized by the Vatican. Pope Francis spoke about "ideological colonization",[62] by which he meant that "gender ideology" threatens traditional family and fertile heterosexuality. France was one of the first countries where this claim became widespread when Catholic movements marched in the streets of Paris against the bill on gay marriage and adoption.[63] Bruno Perreau has shown that this fear has deep historical roots.[64] He argues that the rejection of gender studies and queer theory expresses anxieties about national identity and minority politics. Jayson Harsin studied the French anti-gender theory movement's social media aspects, finding that they demonstrate qualities of global right-wing populist post-truth politics.[65]
Teaching certain aspects of gender theory was banned in public schools New South Wales after an independent review into how the state teaches sex and health education and the controversial material included in the teaching materials.[66]
State and governmental attitudes to gender studies
In Central and Eastern Europe ‘anti-gender’ movements are on the rise, especially, in Hungary, Poland, and Russia.[67][68]
Russia
In Russia gender studies are at the moment tolerated, however state support practices that pushes gender agenda related to perspectives on gender of those in power – e.g. law solving in detail specifics of domestic violence was abolished in 2017.[69] Since 2010 the Russia has also been leading a campaign at the UNHRC to recognise so-called ‘traditional values’ as a legitimate consideration in human rights protection and promotion.[70]
Hungary
Gender studies programs were banned in Hungary in October 2018. In a statement released by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's office, a spokesperson stated that "The government's standpoint is that people are born either male or female, and we do not consider it acceptable for us to talk about socially constructed genders rather than biological sexes." The ban has attracted criticism from several European universities which offer the program, among them the Budapest-based Central European University, whose charter was revoked by the government, and is widely seen as part of the Hungarian ruling party's move towards totalitarianism.[71]
China
The Central People's Government supports studies of gender and social development of gender in history and practices that lead to gender equality. Citing Mao Zedong's philosophy, "Women hold up half the sky", this may be seen as continuation of equality of men and women introduced as part of Cultural Revolution.[72]
Other people whose work is associated

Sara Ahmed
Simone de Beauvoir
Kate Bornstein
Marie-George Buffet
Judith Butler
Micha Cárdenas
Pat Condell
Ian Condry
Yves Durand
Bracha L. Ettinger
Warren Farrell
Martine Faure
Michel Foucault
Nancy Fraser
Kristen R. Ghodsee
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Madeleine Grumet
Jack Halberstam
Donna Haraway
Rosemary Hennessy
bell hooks
Karen Horney
Luce Irigaray
Evelyn Fox Keller
Alfred Kinsey
Julia Kristeva
Audre Lorde
Martine Martinel
Angela McRobbie
Laura Mulvey
Vincent Peillon
Bruno Perreau
Griselda Pollock
Emma L. E. Rees
Gayle Rubin
Sarojini Sahoo
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Kaja Silverman
Dean Spade
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Robert Stoller
Sandy Stone
Sylvia Walby
Otto Weininger
Monique Wittig
Mary Wollstonecraft

See also

Detransition
Family economics
Femininity and masculinity
Feminism and masculism
Feminist movement
Feminist theory
French feminist theory
Gender and security sector reform
Gender dysphoria
Gender history
Gender identity
Gender role
Gender sensitization
Genderqueer
Gynocentrism and androcentrism
Heteronormativity
Homophobia and biphobia
Intersex
List of transgender-related topics
Male Studies in the Caribbean
Men and feminism
Men's liberation movement
Men's movement
Men's rights movement
Misogyny and misandry (sexism)
Onomastics for gender studies
Postfeminism
Postgenderism
Queer theory
Selective exposure theory
Sex and gender distinction
Sex differences in humans
Sex differences in psychology
Sexism
Sexual orientation hypothesis
Stereotype
Third gender
Transgender
Transphobia
Women in Asia
Women's rights
Women's studies and men's studies

Bibliography

Cárdenas, Micha and Barbara Fornssler, 2010. Trans Desire/Affective Cyborgs. New York: Atropos press. ISBN0-9825309-9-4

Ettinger, Bracha L., 2006. "From Proto-ethical Compassion to Responsibility: Besidedness, and the three Primal Mother-Phantasies of Not-enoughness, Devouring and Abandonment". Athena: Philosophical Studies. Vol. 2. ISSN.

Frug, Mary Joe. "A Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto (An Unfinished Draft)", in "Harvard Law Review", Vol. 105, No. 5, March, 1992, pp.1045–1075. ISSN

, a museum of women's history and women and gender movement
, a report based on a survey on roles of men and women

, a look at the changing culture of women entrepreneurship in Asia

What's the average class size for Queer theory in UT?


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 (royalnavy.mod.uk)

How many ships are currently in Britain's Naval forces?