True Confessions: Feminist Professors Tell Stories Out of School

by Susan Gubar (Editor)

Overview

Twenty-seven pioneering thinkers share their discovery of and commitment to feminism in this essential collection.

In a series of autobiographical reflections, the contributors to True Confessions, including Gayatri Spivak, Sandra M. Gilbert, Hortense Spillers, and Martha Nussbaum, among others, tell us what experiences ground their activism and how they confronted the dilemmas they faced in the course of their training and careers. Why do a family's religious practices captivate or repel girls grappling with their parents' faith? What happens when a lesbian graduate student assumes she must be closeted, or when a female professor encounters hostility from other women on the faculty, or when a feminist professor is accused of sexually harassing her graduate students?

Susan Gubar has selected the most influential thinkers in the humanities to elucidate the origins as well as the consequences of their commitment to feminism and its institutionalization in higher education. This is an indispensable book for anyone who cares about the place of feminism in today's landscape.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393082203
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/22/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	492 KB

About the Author

Susan Gubar is an acclaimed memoirist and literary critic. Together with Sandra M. Gilbert, she was awarded the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle. A Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Indiana University, she lives in Bloomington.

Table of Contents

Introduction Susan Gubar ix

I Personal Views

My Father's Penis Nancy K. Miller 3

A Reasonable Facsimile Jane Marcus 9

Answering for the Consequences Tania Modleski 24

The Historian, Her Mother, and Her Dead Women: Past, Present, and Places In Between Dyan Elliott 36

Fleeing and Pioneering Women: Matrophobia and My (Asian American) Feminist Praxis Shirley Geok-lin Lim 42

Labial Politics Patricia Yaeger 51

The Piano Lesson Jane Tompkins 58

In My Family, We Spoke in Tongues Rayna Rapp 73

Confessions of a Culinary Transvestite Sandra M. Gilbert 81

Islam in the Family Leila Ahmed 98

Foremothers Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 111

Lost (and Found?) in Translation Hazel Carby 123

Unreconciled Lives Neferti Tadiar 132

Feminism, Black and Blue Ann duCille 147

II Professional Vistas

"Don't Smile So Much": Philosophy and Women in the 1970s Martha C. Nussbaum 157

Crashing the Top: Women at Elite Universities Ann Douglas 172

Hiding Lillian Faderman 181

Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment Jane Gallop 190

I Dreamed Again That I Was Drowning, with a Postscript Annette Kolodny 205

"Anyway, We Certainly Don't Want to Be Lumped In with Black Studies!" Frances Smith Foster 219

Quarrels into Ploughshares: Feminism and Race Hortense J. Spillers 235

What I Have Learned as a Chicana Professor, or, "En Bocas Cerradas no Entran Moscas" Tey Diana Rebolledo 247

The Psychoanalyst, the Sociologist, and the Feminist: A Retrospect Nancy J. Chodorow 256

Critical Connections in Religion: An Intellectual Autobiography Rosemary Radford Ruether 270

Not Too Far from Brooklyn: Growing Up, Growing Old with Art Linda Nochlin 285

The Making of a Feminist Musicologist Susan McClary 301

"I Will Survive": Changing Trends in Feminism and Performance Jill Dolan 311

Notes on Contributors 323

Acknowledgments 333

Credits 334