Synopses & Reviews
Carolyn G. Heilbrun is renowned as a provocative feminist criticof the culture and (as Amanda Cross) a writer of witty detective novels. In CarolynG. Heilbrun: Feminist in a Tenured Position, Susan Kress provides a compellingintellectual biography, tracing the evolution of Heilbrun's thought and career inthe context of the major debates and transformations of the contemporary women'smovement. Kress tells the story of a woman determined to expand the boundaries offemale selfhood, weighs the risks of the life Heilbrun staked out for herself, andevaluates her pioneering contributions to the ongoing feministconversation.
Drawing on extensive interviews withCarolyn Heilbrun, her colleagues, and her friends, Kress illuminates her subject'svarious public identities: as Columbia student and professor struggling against theinfluence of Lionel Trilling, as author of such widely read books as Writing aWoman's Life and Death in a Tenured Position, as president of the Modern LanguageAssociation, as biographer of Gloria Steinem, and as one of the most controversialand influential of late-twentieth-centuryfeminists.
Thenew epilogue, written especially for this paperback edition, focuses on the lastphase of Carolyn Heilbrun's intellectual journey. Uncovering clues buried inHeilbrun's work, Kress offers startling insights into Heilbrun's suicide, revealingan even more complex, more poignant portrait of Carolyn Heilbrun.