Renate Simson

{{Short description|American author, feminist and African American literature critic}}

{{Notability|academics|date=February 2017}}

Renate "Rennie" Marie Simson (March 13, 1934 – February 19, 2017){{cite web|url=https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/renate-simson-obituary?pid=184195756|title=Renate M. Simson|date=21 February 2017 |publisher=Legacy|accessdate=21 July 2019}} was an American author and professor of African-American literature and writing. Her work has been influential in African American literature and identity studies. She wrote an essay on Black women's sexuality and identity, The Afro-American Female: The Historical Context of the Construction of Sexual Identity.{{cite book|title=The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory|author=Nicholson, L.J.|date=1997|volume=1|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9780415917612|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EcgSDuc2bWQC&pg=PA178|page=178|accessdate=2017-01-25}}{{cite book|title=Toward a Feminist Theory of the State|author=MacKinnon, C.A.|date=1989|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=9780674896468|url=https://archive.org/details/towardfeministth0000mack|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/towardfeministth0000mack/page/282 282]|accessdate=2017-01-25}}Hames-Garcia, Michael [https://books.google.com/books?id=sSbcqNyYPYEC&dq=rennie+simson&pg=PA207 “Can Queer Theory be critical?”], New Critical theory: essays on liberation; accessed February 27, 2017.

Her work posited that victimized black women often avoided intimacy altogether which affected their sexual identity causing them to become self-reliant.{{cite book|title=Changing Woman: A History of Racial Ethnic Women in Modern America|author=Anderson, K.|date=1997|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780198022138|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EW5IWiDfNksC&pg=PA172|page=172|accessdate=2017-01-25}}

She worked as the English department at SUNY Morrisville for several years. She published more than 30 articles and chapters and presented at over 50 conferences throughout in the United States and Austria.{{cite web|url=http://as-cascade.syr.edu/profiles/pages/simson-renate.html|publisher=as-cascade.syr.edu|title=faculty profiles redirect|accessdate=2017-01-25}} She pioneered a study abroad program focusing on the Austrian African Diaspora in Austria with the University of Graz.Simson Renate and Holly, "The African diaspora and Austria", The Department of African American Studies Newsletter 2007–2008, p. 20. She was department chair of the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University.{{cite news |last1=Burke |first1=Michael |title=Syracuse University professor in the African American Studies department dies |url=http://dailyorange.com/2017/02/syracuse-university-professor-in-the-african-american-studies-department-dies/ |access-date=24 September 2021 |work=The Daily Orange |date=22 February 2017}}