Annette Kolodny was an American feminist literary critic and activist, held the position of College of Humanities Professor Emerita of American Literature and Culture at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
18 Facts About Annette Kolodny
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Annette Kolodny's first teaching position at Yale University was cut short as she left after a year to move to Canada with her husband, whose draft board appeal for conscientious objector status for the duration of the Vietnam War was rejected.
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Annette Kolodny settled with the "largest financial award in history in a case of this kind".
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Annette Kolodny used this money to establish the Legal Fund of the Task Force on Discrimination for the National Women's Studies Association, an organization she had helped found, and served as director of the task force from 1980 to 1985.
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Annette Kolodny taught at several universities, including the University of Maryland and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before being named Dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
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Annette Kolodny was a Professor Emerita of Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
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Annette Kolodny's books won many awards both in the United States and abroad.
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Annette Kolodny retired from the University of Arizona in July 2007 and has continued an active professional life as a consultant in higher education policy issues and as a scholar of American literature and culture.
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Annette Kolodny died on September 11,2019, in Tucson, Arizona.
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Annette Kolodny is well known for two essays published in 1980: "Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism" and "A Map for Re-Reading: Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts".
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In 2007, Annette Kolodny published a long-lost masterpiece of Native American literature, Joseph Nicolar's The Life and Traditions of the Red Man, originally published in 1893.
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In 2012, Annette Kolodny published In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery.
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Annette Kolodny emphasizes Social constructionism in this essay, although she herself never uses the term.
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In "Dancing Through the Minefield", Annette Kolodny applies this theory to the literary canon, those works of literature that are considered appropriate for study.
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Finally, Annette Kolodny "strives to undo the unconsciousness of the reader identified" in the second part of her theory:.
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Annette Kolodny specifically refers to a feminist pluralism, which validates "multiple interpretations of various texts" according to the usefulness of a pluralistic view of a text.
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Annette Kolodny believes that feminism and women's studies should not be confined to books or classrooms.
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The most well-known of these criticisms appeared in a collaborative article Annette Kolodny wrote with Judith Gardiner, Elly Bulkin, and Rena Patterson entitled "An Interchange on Feminist Criticism: On 'Dancing Through the Minefield'", which was published in the journal Feminist Studies in 1983.