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.