Gail Lewis | |
---|---|
Born | 1951 (age 72–73) London, England |
Nationality | British |
Occupation(s) | Psychotherapist, researcher |
Academic background | |
Education | London School of Economics University of Sussex |
Alma mater | Open University |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Psychoanalysis |
Institutions | Birkbeck College Open University Lancaster University |
Main interests | black feminism;subjectivity;intersectionality |
Gail Lewis (born 1951) [1] is a British writer,psychotherapist,researcher,and activist. She is visiting senior fellow in the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics, [2] and Reader Emerita of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College. [3] She trained as a psychodynamic psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic. [2]
Lewis's work is rooted in black feminist and anti-racist struggle,and a socialist,anti-imperialist politics. She was a co-founder of the Organisation for Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD), [4] [5] and she was a member of the Brixton Black Women's Group. [6] She was a founding collective editorial member of the Feminist Review . [7] Lewis was interviewed for the oral history project "Sisterhood and After:The Women's Liberation",archived at the British Library,a project that interviewed "feminists who were at the forefront of the Women's Liberation Movement in the 1970s and 80s". [8]
Lewis was born and raised in London;her mother was white and her father was from British Guiana. [1] Her 2009 article "Birthing Racial Difference:conversations with my mother and others" uses autobiographical references and reflections on psychoanalysis and sociology to "explore how 'race' has operated as structuring principle in Britain since the end of the Second World War",and "mixed-race,mother-child relations". [1] [9]
Lewis studied Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE),followed by an MPhil in Development Studies at the University of Sussex. [10] She passed her PhD in Social Policy with the Open University,and taught in the Open University Social Sciences Faculty between 1995 and 2004 and 2007 to 2013. [10]
Lewis was Reader in Psychosocial Studies in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College until 2019,having joined the department in 2013 and served as Assistant Dean between 2015 and 2017. [3] She was Head of Department of the Institute of Women's Studies at Lancaster University. [12]
She has been a visiting Scholar at Clark University,Massachusetts,USA. [2]
Lewis frequently contributes to feminist discussions and events:she interviewed Hortense Spillers for the ICA in 2018. [12] [13]
Lewis has held many roles within academic publishing,including:
In 1998,Lewis assisted the legal team (led by solicitors Dieghton and Guedalla) representing Duwaynne Brooks (friend of Stephen Lawrence) in the MacPherson Inquiry into the Murder of Stephen Lawrence. With Professor S. Hall and Dr. E. McLaughlin,Lewis co-authored a submission on racial stereotyping. [3] [14]
Lewis gave evidence in 2000 to the "Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain",published as The Parekh Report. Lewis identified the importance of gender to the future of multi-ethnic Britain and the role of social policy in social inclusion. [3]
Writing for the Guardian for a 2014 International Women's Day piece (which included feminist activists Robin Morgan,Charlotte Raven,Amrit Wilson,Selma James,and Nawal El Saadawi),Lewis reflected on "intersectionality" and "infighting" in feminism,writing:"The current debates about intersectionality recall,if not repeat,many of the battles fought between black and Asian feminists (along with their white anti-racist compañeras) and white feminists who felt the struggle was being diverted by the call to pay attention to the inseparability of misogyny,racism,homophobia and class. While there remains much to do to expand an intersectional understanding of the conditions that determine what it means to be a woman and who may be included,without those earlier moments of infighting,feminism today would be all the poorer." [15]
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts,while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other social divisions such as in race,class,and sexual orientation. The ideology and movement emerged in the 1960s.
Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study,while examining social and cultural constructs of gender;systems of privilege and oppression;and the relationships between power and gender as they intersect with other identities and social locations such as race,sexual orientation,socio-economic class,and disability.
Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades,ending with the feminist sex wars in the early 1980s and being replaced by third-wave feminism in the early 1990s. It occurred throughout the Western world and aimed to increase women's equality by building on the feminist gains of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world,which effected great change throughout the world. The WLM branch of radical feminism,based in contemporary philosophy,comprised women of racially and culturally diverse backgrounds who proposed that economic,psychological,and social freedom were necessary for women to progress from being second-class citizens in their societies.
Sisterhood Is Powerful:An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement is a 1970 anthology of feminist writings edited by Robin Morgan,a feminist poet and founding member of New York Radical Women. It is one of the first widely available anthologies of second-wave feminism. It is both a consciousness-raising analysis and a call-to-action. Sisterhood Is Global:The International Women's Movement Anthology (1984) is the follow-up to Sisterhood Is Powerful. After Sisterhood Is Global came its follow-up,Sisterhood Is Forever:The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium (2003).
Signs:Journal of Women in Culture and Society is a peer-reviewed feminist academic journal. It was established in 1975 by Jean W. Sacks,Head of the Journals Division,with Catharine R. Stimpson as its first editor in Chief,and is published quarterly by the University of Chicago Press. Signs publishes essays examining the lives of women,men,and non-binary people around the globe from both historical and contemporary perspectives,as well as theoretical and critical articles addressing processes of gendering,sexualization,and racialization.
Amina Mama is a Nigerian-British writer,feminist and academic. Her main areas of focus have been post-colonial,militarist and gender issues. She has lived in Africa,Europe and North America,and worked to build relationships between feminist intellectuals across the globe.
Barbara Smith is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in Black feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s,she has been active as a scholar,activist,critic,lecturer,author,and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities for 25 years. Smith's essays,reviews,articles,short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications,including The New York Times Book Review,The Black Scholar,Ms.,Gay Community News,The Guardian,The Village Voice,Conditions and The Nation. She has a twin sister,Beverly Smith,who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.
Spare Rib was a second-wave feminist magazine,founded in 1972 in the United Kingdom,that emerged from the counter culture of the late 1960s as a consequence of meetings involving,among others,Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe. Spare Rib is now recognised as an iconic magazine,which shaped debate about feminism in the UK,and as such it was digitised by the British Library in 2015. The magazine contained new writing and creative contributions that challenged stereotypes and supported collective solutions. It was published between 1972 and 1993. The title derives from the Biblical reference to Eve,the first woman,created from Adam's rib.
Gail Dines is professor emerita of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College in Boston,Massachusetts.
Nawal Elsaadawi was an Egyptian feminist writer,activist and physician. She wrote numerous books on the subject of women in Islam,focusing on the practice of female genital mutilation in her society. She was described as "the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World",and as "Egypt's most radical woman".
Susan James is a British professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College London. She has previously taught at the University of Connecticut and the University of Cambridge. She is well known for her work on the history of seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy.
Joni Lovenduski,is Professor Emerita of Politics at Birkbeck,University of London.
Katy Deepwell is a feminist art critic and academic,based in London. She is the founder and editor of n.paradoxa:international feminist art journal,published 1998-2017,in 40 volumes by KT press. She founded KT press as a feminist not-for-profit publishing company to publish the journal and books on feminist art. KT press has published 8 e-books,supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. In Feb 2017,Katy Deepwell wrote and published a MOOC on feminism and contemporary art at. In May 2020,a second advanced course on feminist art manifestos was added to the site. The model for both MOOCs is FemTechNet’s DOCC:Distributed Open Collaborative Course.
The Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) was an activist organisation for British Black and Asian women established in 1978,with founder members including Stella Dadzie,Olive Morris,and Gail Lewis. It has been called "a watershed in the history of Black women's rights activism".
Stella Dadzie is a British educationalist,activist,writer and historian. She is best known for her involvement in the UK's Black Women's Movement,being a founding member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) in the 1970s,and co-authoring with Suzanne Scafe and Beverley Bryan in 1985 the book The Heart of the Race:Black Women's Lives in Britain. In 2020,Verso published a new book by Dadzie,A Kick in the Belly:Women,Slavery &Resistance.
Diana Mary Leonard,AcSS,known while married as Diana Leonard Barker,was a British sociologist,social anthropologist,academic,and feminist activist. From 1998 to 2007,she was Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Education,London,after which she was Emeritus Professor of the Sociology of Education and Gender department there.
Sasha Roseneil is a group analyst and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Roseneil became the ninth vice chancellor of the University of Sussex in August 2022.
Lola Olufemi is a British writer. She is an organiser with the London Feminist Library,and her writing has been published in many national and international magazines and newspapers. She is the author of Experiments in Imagining Otherwise and Feminism,Interrupted:Disrupting Power,and the co-editor of A FLY Girl's Guide to University:Being a Woman of Colour at Cambridge and Other Institutions of Power and Elitism.
Gerlin Bean is a Jamaican community worker who was active in the radical feminist and Black nationalist movements in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s. Trained as a nurse,she became a dedicated community activist and social worker,involved in the founding of the Black Women's Action Committee of the Black Unity and Freedom Party,the women's section of the Black Liberation Front,the Brixton Black Women's Group,and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD). Bean's work and activism focused on eliminating discriminatory policies for people of colour,women,and people with disabilities. She fought for equal educational opportunity,fair wages,adequate housing,and programmes that supported families,such as counselling services,child care,and health care.