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Cheris Kramarae is a scholar in the area of women's studies and communication, with her research primarily focusing on gender, language and communication, technology, and education. She is mostly known for her contributions to muted group theory, as well as A Feminist Dictionary , in which she was a co-author. [1]
Karmarae received a B.S. from South Dakota State University, an M.A. from Ohio University and, in 1975, a Ph.D. in communication and social linguistics from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is currently a visiting professor at the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon, as well as a professor emerita in communication and gender studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Upon completing her doctorate, Kramarae accepted a position in 1978 at the University of Illinois Urbana as an associate professor, teaching speech communication through 1985. In 1988, she moved on to the University of Oregon, where she was the acting director for the Center for the Study of Women in Society.
From 1991 to 1996, Kramarae was at the University of Illinois, where she was the co-founder and co-organizer of the Women, Information Technology & Scholarship (WITS) Center for Advanced Study. She was also the director of the Women's Studies program at the University of Illinois, beginning in 1993, as well as Jubilee Professor or Liberal Arts & Social Sciences at the University of Illinois.
She is currently a visiting professor for the Center for the Study of Women in Society, at the University of Oregon, where she has been since 1996. [2]
She worked as the International Dean at the Women's University in Germany. [3]
Kramarae's research has been primarily focused on gender, language, communication, technology, and education. Her research focuses on taking a look at women experience in higher education. With her research, she has published many books and articles on the concepts of women communication via technology, and how that can differ between genders. Kramarae is mostly known though, for her contributions to muted group theory, as well as A Feminist Dictionary.
Kramarae is most widely known for her contributions to muted group theory (MTG). This theory looks at power and how different groups use it. This theory begins with the premise that language is culture-based, and since men are seen to have more power than women, men have been seen to have power over language, resulting with a male-biased language. [4] MTG breaks down into three assumptions:
Upon this definition of MGT, Kramarae made the widely accepted claim that language is a tool made by men and used by a dominant culture to marginalize other groups and to deter them from full participation in their given societies. [5]
Kramarae is also well known for co-authoring A Feminist Dictionary. This is an alternative dictionary compiled by Kramarae, Ann Russo, and Paula Treichler. This dictionary includes over 2,500 separate words and definitions from a feminist perspective. This book has since been reprinted as Amazons, Bluestockings and Crones: A Feminist Dictionary.
In 1977, became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). [6] WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.
Teresa de Lauretis is an Italian author and Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her areas of interest include semiotics, psychoanalysis, film theory, literary theory, feminism, women's studies, lesbian- and queer studies. She has also written on science fiction. Fluent in English and Italian, she writes in both languages. Additionally, her work has been translated into sixteen other languages.
Liberal feminism, also called mainstream feminism, is a main branch of feminism defined by its focus on achieving gender equality through political and legal reform within the framework of liberal democracy. As the oldest of the "Big Three" schools of feminist thought, liberal feminism has its roots in 19th century first-wave feminism that focused particularly on women's suffrage and access to education, and that was associated with 19th century liberalism and progressivism. Liberal feminism "works within the structure of mainstream society to integrate women into that structure." Liberal feminism places great emphasis on the public world, especially laws, political institutions, education and working life, and considers the denial of equal legal and political rights as the main obstacle to equality. Liberal feminism is inclusive and socially progressive, while broadly supporting existing institutions of power in liberal democratic societies, and is associated with centrism and reformism. Liberal feminism "tends to be adopted by 'mainstream' women who do not disagree with the current social structure." Liberal feminism actively supports men's involvement in feminism and both women and men have always been active participants in the movement; progressive men had an important role alongside women in the struggle for equal political rights since the movement was launched in the 19th century.
Sandra G. Harding is an American philosopher of feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology, and philosophy of science. She directed the UCLA Center for the Study of Women from 1996 to 2000, and co-edited Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society from 2000 to 2005. She is currently a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education and Gender Studies at UCLA and a Distinguished Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. In 2013 she was awarded the John Desmond Bernal Prize by the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S).
Muted group theory (MGT), created by Edwin Ardener and Shirley Ardener in 1975, is a communication theory that focuses on how marginalized groups are muted and excluded via the use of language. The main idea of MGT is that "Language serves its creators better than those in other groups who have to learn to use the language as best they can."
Dale Spender is an Australian feminist scholar, teacher, writer and consultant. In 1983, Dale Spender was co-founder of and editorial advisor to Pandora Press, the first of the feminist imprints devoted solely to non-fiction. She was the Series Editor of Penguin's Australian Women's Library from 1987. Dr Spender's work is "a major contribution to the recovery of women writers and theorists and to the documentation of the continuity of feminist activism and thought". In the 1996 Australia Day Honours, Dale Spender was awarded Member of the Order of Australia 'for service to the community as a writer and researcher in the field of equality of opportunity and equal status for women'.
Marianne A. Ferber was an American feminist economist and the author of many books and articles on the subject of women's work, the family, and the construction of gender. She held a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Barrie Thorne is a Professor of Sociology and of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Sandra Lee Bartky was a professor of philosophy and gender studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her main research areas were feminism and phenomenology. Her notable contributions to the field of feminist philosophy include the article, "The Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness". Sandra Lee Bartky died on October 17, 2016 at her home in Saugatuck, Michigan at age 81.
Evelyn Seiko Nakano Glenn is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to her teaching and research responsibilities, she served as Founding Director of the University's Center for Race and Gender (CRG), a leading U.S. academic center for the study of intersectionality among gender, race and class social groups and institutions. In June 2008, Glenn was elected President of the 15,000-member American Sociological Association. She served as President-elect during the 2008–2009 academic year, assumed her presidency at the annual ASA national convention in San Francisco in August 2009, served as President of the Association during the 2009–2010 year, and continued to serve on the ASA Governing Council as Past-president until August 2011. Her Presidential Address, given at the 2010 meetings in Atlanta, was entitled "Constructing Citizenship: Exclusion, Subordination, and Resistance", and was printed as the lead article in the American Sociological Review.
Jessie Shirley Bernard was an American sociologist and noted feminist scholar. She was a persistent forerunner of feminist thought in American sociology and her life's work is characterized as extraordinarily productive spanning several intellectual and political eras. Bernard studied and wrote about women's lives since the late 1930s and her contributions to social sciences and feminist theory regarding women, sex, marriage, and the interaction with the family and community are well noted. She has garnered numerous honors in her career and has several awards named after her, such as the Jessie Bernard Award. Jessie Bernard was a prolific writer, having published 15 sole-authored books, 9 co-authored books, over 75 journal articles, and over 40 book chapters. The final chapter of her book American Community Behavior is heavily based on Raphael Lemkin's work and is considered one of the earliest sociological studies of genocide.
Co-cultural communication theory was built upon the frameworks of muted group theory and standpoint theory. The cornerstone of co-cultural communication theory is muted group theory as proposed in the mid 1970s by Shirley and Edwin Ardener. The Ardeners were cultural anthropologists who made the observation that most other cultural anthropologists practicing ethnography in the field were talking only to the leaders of the cultures, who were by and large adult males. The researchers would then use this data to represent the culture as a whole, leaving out the perspectives of women, children and other groups made voiceless by the cultural hierarchy. The Ardeners maintained that groups which function at the top of the society hierarchy determine to a great extent the dominant communication system of the entire society. Ardener's 1975 muted group theory also posited that dominant group members formulate a "communication system that support their perception of the world and conceptualized it as the appropriate language for the rest of society".
Andrea Lee Press is an American-born sociologist and media studies scholar. She is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Media Studies and Sociology at the University of Virginia.
Joan Elise Robinson Acker was an American sociologist, researcher, writer and educator. She joined the University of Oregon faculty in 1967. Acker is considered one of the leading analysts regarding gender and class within the second wave of feminism.
A Feminist Dictionary, published in its second edition as Amazons, Bluestockings, and Crones: A Feminist Dictionary, is an alternative dictionary compiled by Cheris Kramarae, Ann Russo, and Paula A. Tredichler. The dictionary was first published by Pandora Press in 1985. It has over 2500 words and definitions from a feminist perspective, with the intent of “forcing us to consider who assembles the dictionaries usually consulted and to ask how the words have been chosen." The dictionary can be described as a "sort of a cross between the OED and the Whole Earth Catalog," which uses speeches, graffiti, and quotes from famous women, as its sources.
Karma R. Chávez is a rhetorical critic who utilizes textual and field-based methods and studies the rhetorical practices of people marginalized within existing power structures. She has published numerous scholarly articles and books, including Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities, as well as co-founding the Queer Migration Research Network. She works with social justice organizations and her scholarship is informed by queer of color theory, women of color feminism, poststructuralism, and cultural studies.
The Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS) at the University of Oregon in the United States supports feminist research, teaching, activism and creativity. Established in 1973, it is a non-profit partnership between the Associated Students of the University of Oregon Women's Center and the University. According to the Handbook of Gender, Work, and Organization, CSWS is "a major feminist center for scholarship on gender and women".
V. Spike Peterson is a professor of international relations in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, and affiliated faculty in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, the Institute for LGBT Studies, International Studies, Human Rights Practice Program, and the Center for Latin American Studies. Her cross-disciplinary research and teaching are focused on international relations theory, gender and politics, global political economy, and contemporary social theory. Her recent publications examine the sex/gender and racial dynamics of global inequalities and insecurities and develop critical histories of ancient and modern state formation and Anglo-European imperialism in relation to marriage, migration, citizenship and nationalism. Peterson is "considered to be among the most internationally important senior scholars currently working at the intersections of International Relations, Feminist and Queer Theory, and of International Political Economy."
Lana F. Rakow is a professor emerita of communication at the University of North Dakota and author of Gender on the Line: Women, the Telephone, and Community Life (1992). In 2000, she was identified as a top woman scholar in journalism and mass communication, and her research results were reported by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication on the Status of Women. She also has numerous other published works that are primarily in the fields of communication and feminist theory.
Julia T. Wood is a professor of Communication Studies and Humanities, with a focus on personal relationships, intimate partner violence, feminist theory, and the intersections of gender, communication, and culture. She has written or edited over 20 books and 70 articles on these topics.
Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP) is an American nonprofit publishing organization that was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1972. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media. WIFP operates as both a national and international feminist network.
