I am a graduate assistant for a book-writing venture conducted by
the Duke Women's Studies Program (specifically its director, Jean
O'Barr and another professor who is now at Arizona State University,
Eugenia Delamotte) by virtue of an endowment by Women's Studies and
Duke University alums. The project is an anthalogy of texts with
appropriate supporting introductory material concerned with the
"legacies of feminist thought" (which may end up being the title).
We have a contract with Routledge Press and the expected publication
date is late 1996.
The inspiration for the book comes from years of teaching a
graduate-level course on the history of feminist thought, with
materials that always seemed, to the instructors, to be inadequate
because of their focus on white, Western, upper-class women who
lived mostly in the last several hundred years. This project seeks
to broaden the base of information from which we can teach by making
available excerpts about *all* women's thought and experiences
throughout the ages.
By "legacies" we do not intend to suggest that specifically
"feminist" thinking has occurred at all times and in all geographic
regions (the parameters of the sources we seek), but that women
have, at all times and in all geographic regions, reflected
critically, either in word or in deed, on their lives and position
qua women. If you will, that women have *always* engaged in what we
might call a proto-feminist kind of thinking or acting in their
lives.
We are finding it difficult to locate appropriate sources by African
women before the colonial period--and even those from the early
colonial period are scanty. We are hopding that some of the readers
of this list might know of books or articles (1st-person accounts
are best) that would be suitable for this anthology.
If you have any suggestions, or need further information, please
contact me privately, as I am not subscribed to this list. And
*thank you* in advance for your help!