Synopses & Reviews
"The Politics of the Essay is that rare scholarly work that provides both a history of this relatively new field and of its formal characteristics and inspires its readers to want to participate in the making of this history." --Signs
The first in-depth study of the relationship between women and essays. Employing gender, race, class, and national identity as axes of analysis, this volume introduces new perspectives into what has been a largely apolitical discussion of the essay. Includes an original essay by Susan Griffin.
About the Author
RUTH-ELLEN BOETCHER JOERES is Professor of German at the University of Minnesota and editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She is the author of Die Anfänge der deutschen Frauenbewegung: Louise Otto-Peters and co-editor of several volumes, including German Women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Social and Literary History, and Interpreting Women's Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives. ELIZABETH MITTMAN is a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University. She is also the co-editor and co-translator of a forthcoming collection of early German Romantic texts.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Red Shoes
Susan Griffin
An Introductory Essay
Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres and Elizabeth Mittman
Women's Essays: Genre-Crossings
One From Novel to Essay: Gender and Revisionn in Florence Nightingale's "Cassandra"
Katherine V. Snyder
Two The Boundary-Crossing Essays of Carmen Martin Gaite
Constance A. Sullivan
Three Flora Tristan: The Joining of Essay, Journal, Autobiography
Eileen Boyd Sivert
Four Between the Line: One the Essayistic Experiments of Helene Cixous in "The Laugh of the Medusa"
Margaret Brugmann
The Conscious "I": Authority and Ambiguity in Women's Essays
Five Woman Taking Speculation into Her Own Hands
Barbara Sictermann
Six Chrisa Wolf's Signature in and on the Essay: Woman, Science, and Authority
Elizabeth Mittman
Seven Essay, Gender, and Mestizaje: Victoria Ocampo and Gabriela Mistral
Amy Kaminsky
Eight A Voice of One's Own: Implications of Impersonality in the Essay's of Virgina Woolf and Alice Walker
Tuzylive Jita Allan
Women's Essays as Political Intervention
Nine The Passionate Essay: Radical Feminist Essayists
Ruth-Ellen boetcher Joeres
Ten Latin American Women Essayists: "Intruders and Usurpers"
Lourdes Rojas and Nancy Saporta Sternbach
Eleven "A Weaponry of Choice": Black American Women Writers and the Essay
Pamela Klass Mittlefehldt
Twelve Terrorism and the Essay: The Case of Ulrike Meinhof
Arlene A. Teralka
Contributors
Index