Fifty-One Key Feminist Thinker

The feminist thinkers in this collection are the designated "fifty-one key feminist thinkers," historical and contemporary, and also the authors of the entries. Collected here are fifty-one key thinkers and fifty-one authors, recognizing that women are fifty-one percent of the population. There are actually one hundred and two thinkers collected in these pages, as each author is a feminist thinker, too: scholars, writers, poets, and activists, well-established and emerging, old and young and in-between. These feminists speak the languages of art, politics, literature, education, classics, gender studies, film, queer theory, global affairs, political theory, science fiction, African American studies, sociology, American studies, geography, history, philosophy, poetry, and psychoanalysis. Speaking in all these diverse tongues, conversations made possible by feminist thinking are introduced and engaged.

Key figures include:

• Simone de Beauvoir
• Doris Lessing
• Toni Morrison
• Cindy Sherman
• Octavia Butler
• Marina Warner
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Chantal Akerman
• Betty Friedan
• Audre Lorde
• Margaret Fuller
• Sappho
• Adrienne Rich

Each entry is supported by a list of the thinker’s major works, along with further reading suggestions. An ideal resource for students and academics alike, this text will appeal to all those interested in the fields of gender studies, women’s studies and women’s history and politics.

Lori Marso is Professor of Political Science and former director of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Union College in Schenectady, New York USA. She has published widely in feminist and political theory. Recent books include Feminist Thinkers and the Demands of Femininity (Routledge, 2006); a forthcoming co-edited volume, Gender, Power, and Politics in the Films of Lars von Trier (Oxford, 2016); and a new book on Simone de Beauvoir to be published by Duke University Press, Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter.