Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1945–2018)
Author of The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology
About the Author
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz was born Melanie Kaye in Brooklyn, New York on September 9, 1945. She received a bachelor's degree from City College of New York and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She went on to teach the university's first women's studies show more class. She also taught urban studies, race theory, public policy, Jewish studies, and gender and queer studies at Hamilton College, Goddard College, and Norwich University. She wrote several books including My Jewish Face and Other Stories; The Issue Is Power: Essays on Women, Jews, Violence, and Resistance; and The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism. She and Irena Klepfisz edited The Tribe of Dina, an anthology of Jewish women's writings. She edited and published the lesbian literary and art journal Sinister Wisdom in the 1980s and was the first director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice in the early 1990s. She died of Parkinson's disease on July 10, 2018 at the age of 72. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: NYT
Works by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
Kaye, Melanie Archive 1 copy
Associated Works
Women on Women 3: A New Anthology of American Lesbian Fiction (1996) — Contributor — 112 copies, 2 reviews
Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003) — Contributor — 84 copies, 1 review
Sinister Wisdom 36: Surviving Psychiatric Assault & Creating Emotional Well-Being in Our Communities (1988) — Editor — 14 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1945-09-09
- Date of death
- 2018-07-09
- Gender
- female
- Education
- City College of New York
University of California, Berkeley (PhD|Comparative Literature) - Occupations
- poet
essayist
activist - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Place of death
- New York, New York, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- New York, USA
Members
Reviews
An extraordinarily powerful work in two domains: feminism, and Jewish studies (though to a large extent these are dealt with separately, as the book is primarily a series of essays). Kaye/Kantrowitz is part of a robust tradition of Jewish lesbian feminists who were active in the 1980s and 1990s, and on antisemitism in particular her account of how prevailing paradigms of oppression to not adequately encompass the Jewish case -- failing to reckon with how *power* (perceived and actual) show more intersects with antisemitic domination -- remains unrivaled decades later. But her discussion of violence in women's spaces -- both in negative cases (i.e., domestic violence among lesbian couples) and positive cases (the use of violence against abusive men) also remains bracing. An underrated classic. show less
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 13
- Also by
- 27
- Members
- 378
- Popularity
- #63,850
- Rating
- 3.6
- Reviews
- 1
- ISBNs
- 12