I received my Ph.D. from The History of Ideas Department at Brandeis University.  Since that time, my research interests have continued to revolve around the history of ideas, particularly those that involve gender.  In my current book, “Identity Before and After Identity Politics,” I look at some of the ideas that have shaped understandings of the male/female distinction and of race in the United States from the late eighteenth century until the present. I believe that when we understand how our own ideas about social categories and institutions have changed over time, we can adopt a more reflective attitude towards them, keeping those that seem justified and abandoning those which no longer fit current conditions.  This kind of understanding also helps us in understanding our differences from others and thus promotes greater tolerance towards such differences.

BOOKS

"Identity, Before and After Identity Politics," forthcoming from Cambridge University Press

The Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern, (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999; published in the British Commonwealth, Europe and the Middle East by Open University Press)

Gender and History: The Limits of Social Theory in the Age of the Family (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)

EDITED BOOKS

Series editor, "Thinking Gender" for Routledge: 32 books published

Editor of The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory (N.Y.: Routledge, 1997)

Co-editor with Steven Seidman, Social Postmodernism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Editor with introduction, Feminism/Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1990). Selected for the Critics Choice Award, 1990, American Educational Studies Association. Reviewed in The New York Review of Books, May 1990. A shortened version of this anthology has been translated into Spanish as Feminismo/posmodernismo (Feminaria, Buenos Aires, 1992); translated and published in Croatian as Feminizam/ Postmodernizam (Zagreb, Croatia: Liberata publishing, spring 2000).

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

Among my most important articles are the following:

"Interpreting Gender," in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 20., No. 1, Autumn, 1994, pp. 79-105. This essay has been translated into Japanese and German and reprinted in numerous places.

"Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," co-authored with Nancy Fraser and first published in Communication, Vol. 10, Nos. 3 and 4, 1988, pp. 345-366. This essay has been translated into Spanish, Turkish, French, Japanese, Chinese, and German and also reprinted in numerous places.

HONORS AND AWARDS

Residential Fellowship at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life, The Divinity School of Harvard University, 1998-99

University at Albany, Bread and Roses Award, 1997

NEH Visiting Scholar, SUNY Potsdam, June 1992

Rockefeller Foundation Humanist in Residence Fellowship, 1991-92,

Center for Research on Women, Duke University-University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Cornell University, Society for the Humanities Fellowship, 1991-92, awarded but not accepted

University at Albany Faculty Research Award Summer 1991

State University of New York Faculty Research Award Summer 1987

American Council of Learned Societies Travel Award Spring 1985

State University of New York Faculty Research Award Summer 1980

Woodrow Wilson Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship 1972-73

NDEA Graduate Fellowship 1969-72

Phi Beta Kappa

CONTACT

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Campus Box 1078
McMillan Hall, Room 210
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130
(314) 935-7479 - office
(314) 935-8678 - fax
Email