The philosopher's writings on, and engagement with, twentieth century feminism

By turns surprising and revelatory, this sixth volume in the Beauvoir Series presents newly discovered writings and lectures while providing new translations and contexts for Simone de Beauvoir's more familiar writings. Spanning Beauvoir's career from the 1940s through 1986, the pieces explain the paradoxes in her political and feminist stances, including her famous 1972 announcement of a "conversion to feminism" after decades of activism on behalf of women.

Feminist Writings documents and contextualizes Beauvoir's thinking, writing, public statements, and activities in the services of causes like French divorce law reform and the rights of women in the Iranian Revolution. In addition, the volume provides new insights into Beauvoir's complex thinking and illuminates her historic role in linking the movements for sexual freedom, sexual equality, homosexual rights, and women's rights in France.

| Cover Title Page Copyright Page Contents Foreword to the Beauvoir Series / Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir Acknowledgments Introduction / Margaret A. Simons 1. French Women Writers Introduction by Elizabeth Fallaize Problems for Women's Literature Women of Letters 2. Femininity: The Trap Introduction by Nancy Bauer Femininity: The Trap 3. A Review of The Elementary Structures of Kinship by Claude Lévi-Strauss Introduction by Shannon M. Mussett A Review of The Elementary Structures of Kinship by Claude Lévi-Strauss 4. Short Feminist Texts from the Fifties and Sixties Introduction by Karen Vintges It's About Time Women Put a New Face on Love Preface to Family Planning Preface to The Great Fear of Loving The Condition of Women Preface to The Sexually Responsive Woman What Love Is—and Isn't Love and Politics 5. Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome Introduction by Elizabeth Fallaize Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome 6. The Situation of Women Today Introduction by Debra B. Bergoffen The Situation of Women Today 7. Women and Creativity Introduction by Ursula Tidd Women and Creativity 8. Foreword to History: A Novel Introduction by Margaret A. Simons Foreword to History: A Novel 9. The MLF and the Bobigny Affair Introduction by Sylvie Chaperon The Rebellious Woman—An Interview by Alice Schwartzer Response to Some Women and a Man Abortion and the Poor Beauvoir's Deposition at the Bobigny Trial Preface to Abortion: A Law on Trial. The Bobigny Affair 10. Short Feminists Text from the Seventies and Eighties Introduction by Françoise Picq Everyday Sexism League of Women's Rights Manifesto Preface to Divorce in France Introduction to Women Insist Preface to Through Women's Eyes When All the Women of the World . . . My Point of View: An Outrageous Affair Preface to Stories from the French Women's Liberation Movement The Urgency of an Anti-Sexist Law Press Conference of the International Committee for Women's Rights Foreword to Deception Chronicles: From the Women's Liberation Movement to a Commercial Trademark Women, Ads, and Hate 11. Preface to Mihloud Introduction by Lillian S. Robinson and Julien Murphy Preface to Mihloud Contributors Index | A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2015. — A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2015.
|Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) was a French existentialist philosopher who employed a literary-philosophical method in her works, including Ethics of Ambiguity (1947) and The Second Sex (1949). Margaret A. Simons is Distinguished Research Professor Emerita at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and the author of Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism....