Elizabeth Weed

Elizabeth Weed (born 1940) is an American feminist scholar, editor and university administrator. She is the cofounder and, from 2000 to 2010, director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, as well as the feminist studies journal differences, cofounded in 1989 with Naomi Schor.

Elizabeth Weed
Born1940 (age 82–83)
Alma materDrew University
Brown University
Occupation(s)Scholar
Editor
University administrator
Known fordifferences
TitleDirector, Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women
Term2000–2010

Early life

Elizabeth Weed was born in 1940 in Morris Plains, New Jersey, to Marguerite and Edgar Weed.[1] She studied French literature at Drew University, graduating in 1962, and then went to Brown University for her master's (1966) and doctorate (1973) in French Studies.[1]

Career

From 1973 to 1977, Weed was an assistant professor at Wheaton College, and then returned to Brown as director of the Sarah Doyle Women's Center,[1] a position she held from 1977 to 1981.[2] In 1981,[3] she was a cofounder of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, where she eventually became director (2000 to 2010).[2] Discussing the founding of the Pembroke Center and its impact on her own intellectual trajectory, the founding director, historian Joan Wallach Scott, said Weed's dexterity with theory was an important corrective to Scott's historical training: "I continue to think of Elizabeth Weed as my mentor. Her training is in literature. She is one of the most theoretically sophisticated people I know, and she is very good at pointing out the theoretical implications of what you are doing. She is the person I always go to for advice and for critical reading."[4]

As of 2014, Weed was retired from teaching.[3]

differences and edited collections

In 1989, Weed cofounded differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies with Naomi Schor.[5][6] She published several edited collections that grew out of special editions of the journal, often collaborating with Schor until Schor's death in 2001. Their 1994 collection More Gender Trouble: Feminism Meets Queer Theory[7][8][9] collected essays by scholars in dialogue with one another across the two domains but within the book: in it "Judith Butler refers to the work of Biddy Martin; Martin refers to Gayle Rubin's writings; Butler interviews Rubin; Trevor Hope and Rosi Braidotti engage in a three-article conversation with one another based on Hope's critique of an earlier piece of Braidotti's writing; and Elizabeth Grosz and Teresa de Lauretis engage in a similar discussion of Grosz's review/commentary on de Lauretis' [recent work].”[10] In the journal Atlantis, Valda Leighteizer said it might be a “tough slog” for those not already versed in the conversation the collection extends, but “For those who are excited by discussion, who enjoy a passionate roll around with semantics and semiotics, the text is marvelous - a furthering - an adventure in discourse!”[10]

In 2011, with Judith Butler, Weed published an edited collection (also originally a special issues of differences) on the 25th anniversary of Joan Wallach Scott's essay, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis”.[11] Reviews found the collection offered “fresh analyses of the state of gender studies and the dynamic theories of ‘sexual difference’ as proposed, tested and critiqued by Joan Scott.”[12][13] Writing in Comparative Literature Studies, Geoffrey Berne highlights the collection’s discussions of how Scott’s "scholarship relates to the impasse of history/literature",[14] while Stephanie Clare's review for Symposium notes its engagement with Scott's recurrent questions of the historical contingency of gender as well as the paradox that gender may be constructed but feminism's claims rely on a stable conception of gender.[15]

Personal life

While at Brown Weed met Christina Crosby, a graduate student in the late '70s and early '80s, who became Weed's partner for 17 years.[16]

Works
  • Weed, Elizabeth, ed. (1989). Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-63521-9.[17]
  • Schor, Naomi; Weed, Elizabeth, eds. (1994). The Essential Difference. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35093-0.[18]
  • Schor, Naomi; Weed, Elizabeth, eds. (1994). More Gender Trouble: Feminism Meets Queer Theory. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-30015-7. Retrieved 27 January 2021.[7][8][9][10]
  • Butler, Judith; Weed, Elizabeth, eds. (2011). The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-22324-1.[15][12][14][13]
  • Weed, Elizabeth, ed. (2013). Essential Readings in US Feminist Theory. Nanjing University Press (in Chinese).

References
  1. "Elizabeth Weed, Staff". The Pembroke Center Oral History Project. Brown University. Retrieved 27 January 2021.
  2. "Elizabeth Weed CV" (PDF). Brown University. 2017. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 1, 2021. Retrieved January 26, 2021.
  3. Raab, Barbara (2015). "Interview with Elizabeth Weed" (PDF). Brown University. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-02-08.
  4. Watson, Janell (2011-11-01). "Psychoanalysis, Secularism, and Sexuality: An Interview with Joan Wallach Scott". The Minnesota Review. 2011 (77): 101–110. doi:10.1215/00265667-1422598. ISSN 0026-5667. S2CID 144183050 – via Project MUSE.
  5. Martin, Douglass (December 16, 2001). "Naomi Schor, Literary Critic and Theorist, Is Dead at 58". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 13, 2016.
  6. Hauptman, Robert. "Magazines--Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies." Library Journal, vol. 117, no. 8, 1992, pp. 124. Via ProQuest.
  7. Payne, W. Douglas (1999). "Resisting Normalization: Queer Theory in an Interval". College Literature. 26 (2): 200–209. ISSN 0093-3139. JSTOR 25112463.
  8. Robson, Ruthann. “Theories of Women.” Lambda Book Report. February 1998, Vol. 6 Issue 7, p8.
  9. Plymire, Darcy. “Book Reviews.” NWSA Journal. Summer98, Vol. 10 Issue 2, p143.
  10. Leighteizer, Valda. "Feminism Meets Queer Theory. Elizabeth Weed; Naomi Schor. eds." Archived 2018-05-13 at the Wayback Machine Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice 23.1 (1998).
  11. Nachescu, Voichita (2013-12-06). "Gender, Revisited". WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly. 41 (3): 290–293. doi:10.1353/wsq.2013.0090. ISSN 1934-1520. S2CID 201760279. Archived from the original on 2018-06-03. Retrieved 2021-01-30.
  12. Quataert, Jean H. (2012). "Review of The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism. (Twenty-first Century Studies, number 4.), , ; The Fantasy of Feminist History. (Next Wave Provocations.)". The American Historical Review. 117 (5): 1539–1542. doi:10.1093/ahr/117.5.1539. ISSN 0002-8762. JSTOR 23426560.
  13. Nachescu, Voichita (2013). "Gender, Revisited". Women's Studies Quarterly. 41 (3/4): 290–293. ISSN 0732-1562. JSTOR 23611529.
  14. Berney, Geoffrey (2014-07-03). "The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism ed. by Judith Butler and Elizabeth Weed (review)". Comparative Literature Studies. 51 (2): 344–347. doi:10.5325/complitstudies.51.2.0344. ISSN 1528-4212.
  15. Clare, Stephanie (2014-01-01). "A Review of "The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism"". Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures. 68 (1): 54–56. doi:10.1080/00397709.2014.876856. ISSN 0039-7709. S2CID 142773911.
  16. Seelye, Katharine Q. (27 January 2021). "Christina Crosby, 67, Dies; Feminist Scholar Wrote of Becoming Disabled". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 27 January 2021. Retrieved 27 January 2021.
  17. Weeks, Kathi. “Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics.” Women & Politics. 1992, Vol. 12 Issue 3, pp. 73-75.
  18. Jagger, Gill (1 November 1996). "The Essential Difference". Women's Philosophy Review (15): 28–29. doi:10.5840/wpr19961522. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
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