Elizabeth Weed

Elizabeth Weed was born in 1940 in Morris Plains, New Jersey, to Marguerite and Edgar Weed.{{cite web |title=Elizabeth Weed, Staff |url=https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/pembroke-oral-histories/speakers/elizabeth-weed-staff |website=The Pembroke Center Oral History Project |publisher=Brown University |access-date=27 January 2021}} She studied French literature at Drew University, graduating in 1962, and then went to Brown University for her master's (1966) and doctorate (1973) in French Studies.

From 1973 to 1977, Weed was an assistant professor at Wheaton College, and then returned to Brown as director of the Sarah Doyle Women's Center, a position she held from 1977 to 1981.{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=2017|title=Elizabeth Weed CV|url=https://www.brown.edu/research/pembroke-center/sites/brown.edu.research.pembroke-center/files/uploads/Weed%20CV%202017.pdf|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210201161131/https://www.brown.edu/research/pembroke-center/sites/brown.edu.research.pembroke-center/files/uploads/Weed%20CV%202017.pdf|archive-date=February 1, 2021|access-date=January 26, 2021|website=Brown University}} In 1981,{{Cite web|last=Raab|first=Barbara|date=2015|title=Interview with Elizabeth Weed|url=https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/pembroke-oral-histories/sites/brown.edu.initiatives.pembroke-oral-histories/files/transcripts/Elizabeth%20Weed_transcript.pdf|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210208162055/https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/pembroke-oral-histories/sites/brown.edu.initiatives.pembroke-oral-histories/files/transcripts/Elizabeth%20Weed_transcript.pdf|archive-date=2021-02-08|access-date=|website=Brown University}} she was a cofounder of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, where she eventually became director (2000 to 2010). Discussing the founding of the Pembroke Center and its impact on her own intellectual trajectory, the founding director, historian Joan Wallach Scott, said Weed's dexterity with theory was an important corrective to Scott's historical training: "I continue to think of Elizabeth Weed as my mentor. Her training is in literature. She is one of the most theoretically sophisticated people I know, and she is very good at pointing out the theoretical implications of what you are doing. She is the person I always go to for advice and for critical reading."{{Cite journal|last=Watson|first=Janell|date=2011-11-01|title=Psychoanalysis, Secularism, and Sexuality: An Interview with Joan Wallach Scott|url=https://doi.org/10.1215/00265667-1422598|journal=The Minnesota Review|volume=2011|issue=77|pages=101–110|doi=10.1215/00265667-1422598|s2cid=144183050|issn=0026-5667|via=Project MUSE|url-access=subscription}}

As of 2014, Weed was retired from teaching.

In 1989, Weed cofounded differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies with Naomi Schor.{{Cite news|last=Martin|first=Douglass|date=December 16, 2001|title=Naomi Schor, Literary Critic and Theorist, Is Dead at 58|work=The New York Times|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/16/obituaries/16SCHO.html|url-status=live|access-date=|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160913102436/http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/16/obituaries/16SCHO.html|archive-date=September 13, 2016}}Hauptman, Robert. "Magazines – Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies." Library Journal, vol. 117, no. 8, 1992, p. 124 {{ProQuest|}} She published several edited collections that grew out of special editions of the journal, often collaborating with Schor until Schor's death in 2001. Their 1994 collection More Gender Trouble: Feminism Meets Queer Theory collected essays by scholars in dialogue with one another across the two domains but within the book: in it "Judith Butler refers to the work of Biddy Martin; Martin refers to Gayle Rubin's writings; Butler interviews Rubin; Trevor Hope and Rosi Braidotti engage in a three-article conversation with one another based on Hope's critique of an earlier piece of Braidotti's writing; and Elizabeth Grosz and Teresa de Lauretis engage in a similar discussion of Grosz's review/commentary on de Lauretis' [recent work]." In the journal Atlantis, Valda Leighteizer said it might be a "tough slog" for those not already versed in the conversation the collection extends, but "For those who are excited by discussion, who enjoy a passionate roll around with semantics and semiotics, the text is marvelous – a furthering – an adventure in discourse!"

In 2011, with Judith Butler, Weed published an edited collection (also originally a special issues of differences) on the 25th anniversary of Joan Wallach Scott's essay, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis".{{Cite journal|last=Nachescu|first=Voichita|date=2013-12-06|title=Gender, Revisited|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/528568|journal=WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly|language=en|volume=41|issue=3|pages=290–293|doi=10.1353/wsq.2013.0090|s2cid=201760279|issn=1934-1520|access-date=2021-01-30|archive-date=2018-06-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180603052217/http://muse.jhu.edu/article/528568|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}} Reviews found the collection offered "fresh analyses of the state of gender studies and the dynamic theories of 'sexual difference' as proposed, tested and critiqued by Joan Scott." Writing in Comparative Literature Studies, Geoffrey Berne highlights the collection's discussions of how Scott's "scholarship relates to the impasse of history/literature", while Stephanie Clare's review for Symposium notes its engagement with Scott's recurrent questions of the historical contingency of gender as well as the paradox that gender may be constructed but feminism's claims rely on a stable conception of gender.

While at Brown Weed met Christina Crosby, a graduate student in the late '70s and early '80s, who became Weed's partner for 17 years.{{cite news|last1=Seelye|first1=Katharine Q.|date=27 January 2021|title=Christina Crosby, 67, Dies; Feminist Scholar Wrote of Becoming Disabled|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/christina-crosby-dead.html|url-status=live|access-date=27 January 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210127003910/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/christina-crosby-dead.html|archive-date=27 January 2021}}

• {{Cite book|editor-last=Weed|editor-first=Elizabeth|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e0YukJIOqLMC&q=Elizabeth+weed&pg=PP5|title=Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics|date=1989|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-63521-9|language=en}}Weeks, Kathi. "Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics." Women & Politics. 1992, Vol. 12 Issue 3, pp. 73-75.
• {{Cite book|editor-last=Schor|editor-first=Naomi|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hNMPAQAAMAAJ&q=Elizabeth+weed+The+essential+difference|title=The Essential Difference|editor-last2=Weed|editor-first2=Elizabeth|date=1994|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=978-0-253-35093-0|language=en}}{{cite journal |last1=Jagger |first1=Gill |title=The Essential Difference |journal=Women's Philosophy Review |date=1 November 1996 |pages=28–29 |issue=15|doi=10.5840/wpr19961522 |url=https://www.pdcnet.org/wpr/content/wpr_1996_0015_0028_0029 |access-date=29 January 2021|url-access=subscription }}
• {{cite book |editor-last1=Schor |editor-first1=Naomi |editor2-last=Weed |editor2-first=Elizabeth |title=More Gender Trouble: Feminism Meets Queer Theory |date=1994 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-30015-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9jGDMgAACAAJ |access-date=27 January 2021 |language=en}}{{Cite journal|last=Payne|first=W. Douglas|date=1999|editor-last=|editor-first=|editor2-last=|editor2-first=|editor3-last=|editor3-first=|editor4-last=|editor4-first=|editor5-last=|editor5-first=|title=Resisting Normalization: Queer Theory in an Interval|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25112463|journal=College Literature|volume=26|issue=2|pages=200–209|jstor=25112463|issn=0093-3139}}Robson, Ruthann. "Theories of Women." Lambda Book Report. February 1998, Vol. 6 Issue 7, p8.Plymire, Darcy. "Book Reviews." NWSA Journal. Summer98, Vol. 10 Issue 2, p143.Leighteizer, Valda. [https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/download/1709/1484 "Feminism Meets Queer Theory. Elizabeth Weed; Naomi Schor. eds."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180513145456/http://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/download/1709/1484 |date=2018-05-13 }} Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice 23.1 (1998).
• {{Cite book|editor-last=Butler|editor-first=Judith|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KTb9d7vZhA0C&q=Elizabeth+weed&pg=PP1|title=The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism|editor-last2=Weed|editor-first2=Elizabeth|date=2011|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=978-0-253-22324-1|language=en}}{{Cite journal|last=Clare|first=Stephanie|date=2014-01-01|title=A Review of "The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism"|url=https://doi.org/10.1080/00397709.2014.876856|journal=Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures|volume=68|issue=1|pages=54–56|doi=10.1080/00397709.2014.876856|s2cid=142773911|issn=0039-7709|url-access=subscription}}{{Cite journal|last=Quataert|first=Jean H.|date=2012|title=Review of The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism. (Twenty-first Century Studies, number 4.); The Fantasy of Feminist History. (Next Wave Provocations.)|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23426560|journal=The American Historical Review|volume=117|issue=5|pages=1539–1542|doi=10.1093/ahr/117.5.1539|jstor=23426560|issn=0002-8762|url-access=subscription}}{{Cite journal|last=Berney|first=Geoffrey|date=2014-07-03|title=The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism ed. by Judith Butler and Elizabeth Weed (review)|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/548829|journal=Comparative Literature Studies|language=en|volume=51|issue=2|pages=344–347|doi=10.5325/complitstudies.51.2.0344|issn=1528-4212|url-access=subscription}}{{Cite journal|last=Nachescu|first=Voichita|date=2013|editor-last=|editor-first=|editor2-last=|editor2-first=|editor3-last=|editor3-first=|title=Gender, Revisited|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23611529|journal=Women's Studies Quarterly|volume=41|issue=3/4|pages=290–293|jstor=23611529|issn=0732-1562}}
• Weed, Elizabeth, ed. (2013). Essential Readings in US Feminist Theory. Nanjing University Press (in Chinese).

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Category:1940 births

Category:Living people

Category:People from Morris Plains, New Jersey

Category:Feminists

Category:Brown University faculty

Category:Brown University alumni

Category:Wheaton College (Massachusetts) faculty