Disciplining Feminism: From Social Activism to Academic Discourse

“In her analysis of academic feminism, Ellen Messer-Davidow’s interdisciplinary lens has a wide, illuminating range. It spans the feminist history of not only higher education but also judicial, political, and private sectors; it combines fieldwork with a theoretical account of disciplines and an extensive knowledge of feminism’s early organizations. The book moves deftly from ‘the personal’ out to the academic and political, closing with a call for renewed personal-political engagement today. Disciplining Feminims’s tremendous breadth of critical method is its strong achievement. . . . [E]xcellent. . . .”–Jill Rappoport “Iris”

“Disciplining Feminism is the first study to offer a historical account and a theoretically informed explanation of how feminism became eviscerated from its originating political and community roots as it gained legitimacy within the key institutions of academia. It thus untangles three of the most crucial problems facing the academy today. First, it explodes the simpleminded truism that feminism naïvely got coopted by the awards and perks of academic success. Second, it makes clear how the ‘disciplining’ of feminist inquiry made academic feminism vulnerable to the escalating organized attacks from the conservative Right. And, finally, it offers a compelling set of strategies for making social change.”–Annette Kolodny, author of Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century