Profile
A feminist activist and writer, I have combined these activities with being a university professor since 1969. It’s all connected: imagining and reading about change, being skeptical about the meaning of particular social changes, being part of change. What I wish for my students: action and criticism of the action taken, engagement and distance, and, finally, pleasure in this inside/outside life.
Curriculum Vitae
Degrees Held
PhD, Literature, University of London
BA, Summa Cum Laude, Cornell University
Professional Affiliations:
- Co-founder and Board Member of the Network of East-West Women (NEWW)
- Co-founder (with Drucilla Cornell) of Take Back the Future
- MLA
- National Women’s Studies Association
- Editorial Board, Dissent
- PEN
- New York Institute for the Humanities (NYU)
- Transregional Center for Democratic Studies (The New School)
Recent Publications:
Books:
The Feminist Memoir Project: Voices from Women’s Liberation, ed. with Rachel DuPlessis, Crown 1998; reissued by Rutgers University Press, 2007
Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality , ed. with Christine Stansell and Sharon Thompson, Monthly Review Press, 1983. Reprinted as Desire, London: Virago Press, 1984. Reprinted as Die Politik des Begehrens, Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1985
Selected Recent Articles:
“Dangerous Worlds: Teaching Film in Prison” (“Notes from One Prison”), Dissent, Summer 2011: 94–106.
“Refugees from Utopia: Remembering, Forgetting and the Making of The Feminist Memoir Project,” Memory and the Future: Transnational Politics, Ethics and Society, ed. Adam Brown, Yifat Gutman, and Amy Sodaro (Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 141–157.
“The Joy of Memory: Ary Zolberg’s Memoir,” Social Research: An International Quarterly of the Social Sciences, Vol. 77, No. 1, Spring 2010: 385–390.
“Women’s Anniversaries: Snapshots of Polish Feminism Since 1989,” Dissent, Fall 2009: 61–67.
Research Interests
Feminism in Eastern and Central Europe since 1989; feminist theory/intellectual history of contemporary feminism; the personal essay
Awards and Honors
Courage in Public Scholarship Award, NSSR Europe, 2015
Fulbright Specialist Award in Gender Studies and American Studies, The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State, and the Council for International Exchange and Scholars Award, period: 2010-2015 (renewable)
Stem Cells Across Curriculum Grant, 2010-2012. Selected as consultant on the university grant from the State of New York. Goal: to plan curricula to inform the public about the issues at stake in stem cell research. Activities include building bibliography, teaching model classes, participating in courses using our modules, frequent team meetings. Principal investigator: Katayoun Chamany
Faculty Support Initiative Grant/Student Assistant Fund, Office of the Provost, The New School, June 2011
Visiting Scholar Grant, The European Union’s European Institute for Gender Equality, Vilnius, Lithuania, May 2011
Fulbright Specialist Grant to teach Gender Studies at the European University of Tirana, Albania, March 2011
Erasmus Mundus Visiting Scholar Award, Centre for European Studies’ International Masters in Economy, State and Society (IMESS), Jagiellonian University, Poland, 2010–2011
Distinguished University Teaching Award, The New School, 2010
Innovations in Education Grant, The New School, 2010
Faculty Development Grant, with Victoria Hattam, The New School for Social Research, 2004