March 4, 2005: Volume 63, Number 9

Faculty talk considers feminist thinkers, society

Lori Marso, associate professor of political science and director of women's and gender studies, will deliver a faculty colloquium on "Feminist Thinkers and the Demands of Femininity" on Monday, March 7, at 4:30 p.m. in Hale House.

Her talk, from the title of her forthcoming book, will explore whether and how feminist intellectuals are able to live out their feminist dreams and aspirations. Marso has researched the works and lives of Germaine de Staël, Mary Wollstonecraft, Emma Goldman, Simone de Beauvoir and contemporary feminists to study the contradictions between the cultural, material, and political demands of femininity and the goals and desires of the intellectuals themselves.

"These women's lives sometimes clashed with their theories," she said. "What they wanted for themselves as women was complicated and difficult to achieve, but at every moment in writing theory and in living politics they were redefining the meanings of being a woman in ways that were at odds with what a 'woman' was supposed to be."

"Each woman talks about how difficult it is to live out feminist ideals in societies that were openly condemning of it," she said. "What I find in contemporary accounts is that these material and political forces of masculinity and femininity continue to undermine our best efforts to live our lives in freer and more diverse ways."

Her work draws on contemporary writings including two recent popular books, Reading Lolita in Tehran by Iranian writer Azar Nafisi, and The Country Under My Skin by Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli.

Marso, who joined the College in 1997, published her first book, based on her Ph.D. dissertation, (Un)Manly Citizens: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's and Germaine de Staël's Subversive Women (Johns Hopkins University Press) in 1999. Her other forthcoming book is an edited volume (with Patricia Moynagh), Simone de Beauvoir's Political Thinking (University of Illinois Press). She is at work on another edited volume, "W Stands for Women:" Feminist Thinkers Take on the Bush Administration.

Marso earned her bachelor's degree in political science from the University of South Dakota, her master's in political theory from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in politics from New York University. Her partner, Thomas Lobe, is a research professor of political science at the College.

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