WKathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood trauma, sexuality and rebellion. She was influenced by the Black Mountain School poets, William S. Burroughs, David Antin, Carolee Schneeman, Eleanor Antin, French critical theory, mysticism, and pornography, as well as classic literature.
WSylviane Agacinski-Jospin is a French philosopher, feminist, author, professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), and wife of Lionel Jospin, former Prime Minister of France. Her theoretical articulation of parity inspired the French law which requires every political party to fill 50 percent of all candidacies in every seat with women.
WGloria Evangelina Anzaldúa was an American scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. She loosely based her best-known book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, on her life growing up on the Mexico–Texas border and incorporated her lifelong experiences of social and cultural marginalization into her work. She also developed theories about the marginal, in-between, and mixed cultures that develop along borders, including on the concepts of Nepantla, Coyoxaulqui imperative, new tribalism, and spiritual activism.
WMargaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, and two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.
WRosi Braidotti is a contemporary philosopher and feminist theoretician.
WGiannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, dramatist, and scholar. Her notable works include Empire of Dreams (1988), Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) and United States of Banana (2011).
WWendy L. Brown is an American political theorist. She is the UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Previously, she was Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science and a core faculty member in The Program for Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.
WJudith Pamela Butler is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. In 1993, Butler began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, where they have served, beginning in 1998, as the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory. They are also the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School.
WOctavia Estelle Butler was an American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
WHélène Cixous is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. Cixous is best known for her article "The Laugh of the Medusa", which established her as one of the early thinkers in post-structural feminism. She founded the first centre of feminist studies at a European university at the Centre universitaire de Vincennes of the University of Paris.
WCatherine Clément is a French philosopher, novelist, feminist, and literary critic, born in Boulogne-Billancourt. She received a degree in philosophy from the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, and studied under its faculty Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan, working in the fields of anthropology and psychoanalysis. A member of the school of French feminism and écriture féminine, she has published books with Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva.
WPatricia Hill Collins is an American academic specializing in race, class, and gender. She is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and a past President of the American Sociological Association. Collins was the 100th president of the ASA and the first African-American woman to hold this position.
WAngela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and is a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She is the author of over ten books on class, feminism, race, and the US prison system.
WEli Erlick is an American activist, writer, and director of the organization Trans Student Educational Resources.
WCarol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work on ethical community and ethical relationships.
WMarina Ann Hantzis, known professionally as Sasha Grey, is an American actress, model, writer, musician, and former pornographic actress. Grey began her acting career in the pornographic film industry, winning 15 awards for her work between 2007 and 2010, including the AVN Award for Female Performer of the Year in 2008.
WJack Halberstam, also known as Judith Halberstam, is a tenured Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University. Prior to this appointment in 2017, Halberstam was a Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature and the Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California (USC). Halberstam was the Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC. Halberstam is a gender and queer theorist and author.
WDonna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States. She is a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies, described in the early 1990s as a "feminist and postmodernist". Haraway is the author of numerous foundational books and essays that bring together questions of science and feminism, such as "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" (1985) and "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective" (1988). Additionally, for her contributions to the intersection of information technology and feminist theory, Haraway is widely cited in works related to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Her Situated Knowledges and Cyborg Manifesto publications in particular, have sparked discussion within the HCI community regarding framing the positionality from which research and systems are designed. She is also a leading scholar in contemporary ecofeminism, associated with post-humanism and new materialism movements. Her work criticizes anthropocentrism, emphasizes the self-organizing powers of nonhuman processes, and explores dissonant relations between those processes and cultural practices, rethinking sources of ethics. Haraway criticizes the Anthropocene because it generalizes us as a species. However, she also recognizes the importance of it recognizing humans as key agents. Haraway prefers the term Capitalocene which defines capitalism's relentless imperatives to expand itself and grow, but she does not like the theme of irreversible destruction in both the Anthropocene and Capitalocene.
WNancy C. M. Hartsock (1943–2015) was a professor of Political Science and Women Studies at the University of Washington from 1984 to 2009.
WGloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist. The name "bell hooks" is borrowed from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.
WJuana Fernández Morales de Ibarbourou, also known as Juana de América, was a Uruguayan poet and one of the most popular poets of Spanish America. Her poetry, the earliest of which is often highly erotic, is notable for her identification of her feelings with nature around her. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.
WJean Kilbourne is an American public speaker, writer, filmmaker and activist who is known for her work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. She is also credited with introducing the idea of educating about media literacy as a way to prevent problems she viewed as originating from mass media advertising campaigns. She also lectures about the topic, and her documentaries based on these lectures are viewed around the world.
WMichael Scott Kimmel is an American retired sociologist specializing in gender studies. He was Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University in New York and is the founder and editor of the academic journal Men and Masculinities. Kimmel is a spokesman of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) and a longtime feminist. In 2013, he founded the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University, where he is Executive Director. In 2018 he was publicly accused of sexual harassment. He filed for retirement before any charges from a Title IX investigation could be laid.
WMaxine Hong Kingston is an American novelist. She is a Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese Americans.
WWerner Josef Krieglstein is an American scholar, director and actor. Krieglstein is the founder of a neo-Nietzschean philosophical school called Transcendental Perspectivism. Krieglstein's "philosophy of compassion" has been the subject of symposium lectures at many prominent conferences including the UNESCO section of the World Congress of Philosophy conference in Seoul Korea, the ISAIL "Fields of Conflict-Fields of Wisdom": 4th International Congress in Wuerzburg, Germany, the meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Washington D.C., and the ISUD Fourth World Conference of the International Society for Universal Dialogue, among many others.
WJulia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a professor emerita at the University Paris Diderot. The author of more than 30 books, including Powers of Horror, Tales of Love, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, Proust and the Sense of Time, and the trilogy Female Genius, she has been awarded Commander of the Legion of Honor, Commander of the Order of Merit, the Holberg International Memorial Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Vision 97 Foundation Prize, awarded by the Havel Foundation.
WTeresa de Lauretis is an Italian author and Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her areas of interest include semiotics, psychoanalysis, film theory, literary theory, feminism, women's studies, lesbian- and queer studies. She has also written on science fiction. Fluent in English and Italian, she writes in both languages. Additionally, her work has been translated into sixteen other languages.
WAnna Livia was a lesbian feminist author and linguist, well known for her fiction and non-fiction regarding sexuality. From 1999 until shortly before the time of her death she was a member of staff at University of California, Berkeley.
WPatricia McFadden is a radical African feminist, sociologist, writer, educator, and publisher from eSwatini. She is also an activist and scholar who worked in the anti-apartheid movement for more than 20 years. McFadden has worked in the African and global women’s movements as well. As a writer, she has been the target of political persecution. She has worked as editor of the Southern African Feminist Review and African Feminist Perspectives. She currently teaches, and advocates internationally for women's issues. McFadden has served as a professor at Cornell University, Spelman College, Syracuse University and Smith College in the United States. She also works as a "feminist consultant", supporting women in creating institutionally sustainable feminist spaces within Southern Africa.
WToril Moi is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies and Professor of English, Philosophy and Theatre Studies at Duke University. Moi is also the Director of the Center for Philosophy, Arts, and Literature at Duke. As an undergraduate, she attended University of Bergen, where she studied in the Literature Department. Previously she held positions as a lecturer in French at the University of Oxford and as Director of the Center for Feminist Research at the University of Bergen, Norway. She lived in Oxford, United Kingdom from 1979 to 1989. Moi lives in North Carolina. She works on feminist theory and women's writing; on the intersections of literature, philosophy and aesthetics; and is fundamentally concerned with "finding ways of reading literature with philosophy and philosophy with literature without reducing the one to the other."
WNina Karin Monsen is a Norwegian moral philosopher and author. She has written several books, both non-fiction and fiction, and has been active in Norwegian public debate since the early 1970s.
WChloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist, essayist, book editor and college professor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she gained worldwide recognition when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
WLaura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She previously taught at Bulmershe College, the London College of Printing, the University of East Anglia, and the British Film Institute.
WCraig Owens (1950–1990) was an American post-modernist art critic, gay activist and feminist.
WGriselda Frances Sinclair Pollock is an art historian and cultural analyst of international, postcolonial feminist studies in the visual arts and visual culture. Based in the United Kingdom, she is known for her theoretical and methodological innovation, combined with readings of historical and contemporary art, film and cultural theory. Since 1977, Pollock has been one of the most influential scholars of modern, avant-garde art, postmodern art, and contemporary art. She is a major influence in feminist theory, feminist art history and gender studies.
WDiane Marie Rodríguez Zambrano is a Ecuadorian activist and politician who focuses on human rights and LGBT rights in Ecuador. Elected in 2017, she is currently a member of the National Assembly of Ecuador and the transgender-chair of the "Silueta X Association" and representative of "Observatory LGBTI of Ecuador". In 2009 she created a legal precedent in favor of the transgender population, to sue the Civil Registry to change her birth name to her present name. In 2017, she was elected as the first trans member of the National Assembly of Ecuador, and the second LGBT after Sandra Alvarez Monsalve who was elected as Alternate Assemblymember in 2009.
WGayle S. Rubin is an American cultural anthropologist best known as an activist and theorist of sex and gender politics. She has written on a range of subjects including feminism, sadomasochism, prostitution, pedophilia, pornography and lesbian literature, as well as anthropological studies and histories of sexual subcultures, especially focused in urban contexts. Her 1984 essay "Thinking Sex" is widely regarded as a founding text of gay and lesbian studies, sexuality studies, and queer theory. She is an associate professor of anthropology and women's studies at the University of Michigan.
WZainab Salbi is an Iraqi American women's rights activist, writer, and public speaker. She is the Founder of Women for Women International, author of several books, and host of Through Her Eyes with Yahoo News and #Me Too, Now What? original series on PBS.
WAriel Salleh is an Australian sociologist who writes on humanity-nature relations, political ecology, social change movements, and ecofeminism.
WNaomi Schor was an American literary critic and theorist. A pioneer of feminist theory for her generation, she is regarded as one of the foremost scholars of French literature and critical theory of her time. Naomi's younger sister is the artist and writer Mira Schor.
WElisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is a Romanian-born German, Roman Catholic feminist theologian, who is currently the Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.
WSusan O'Neal Stryker is an American professor, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality. She is Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, former director of the Institute for LGBT Studies, and founder of the Transgender Studies Initiative at the University of Arizona, and is currently on leave while holding an appointment as Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women's Leadership at Mills College. Stryker also serves on the Advisory Council of METI. A transgender woman, she is the author of several books about LGBT history and culture.
WMattilda Bernstein Sycamore is an American author and activist. She is the author of two memoirs and three novels, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies.
WTrinh T. Minh-ha is a Vietnamese filmmaker, writer, literary theorist, composer, and professor. She has been making films for over thirty years and may be best known for her films Reassemblage, made in 1982, and Surname Viet Given Name Nam, made in 1985. She has received several awards and grants, including the American Film Institute's National Independent Filmmaker Maya Deren Award, and Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. Her films have been the subject of twenty retrospectives.
WMonique Wittig was a French author, philosopher and feminist theorist who wrote about overcoming socially enforced gender roles and who coined the phrase "heterosexual contract". She published her first novel, L'Opoponax, in 1964. Her second novel, Les Guérillères (1969), was a landmark in lesbian feminism.
WNaomi Rebekah Wolf is an American feminist author and journalist.