Ackerly, Brooke A. 1966(?)-

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Ackerly, Brooke A. 1966(?)-
(Brooke Ann Ackerly)

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1966; daughter of Richard Ackerly (an educator) and Katherine Stevenson; married William Zinke (a business manager), August 19, 1995. Education: Williams College, B.A.; Stanford University, M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Nashville, TN. Office—Political Science Department, Vanderbilt University, Box 1817, Station B, Nashville, TN 37235. E-mail—brooke. [email protected].

CAREER:

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Center for International Studies, former visiting fellow; University of California, Los Angeles, former visiting assistant professor in political science; Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN, assistant professor of political science.

WRITINGS:

Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor, with Maria Stern and Jacqui True) FeministMethodologies for International Relations, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Brooke A. Ackerly is an expert in political theory. Her areas of interest include social criticism, feminist theory, feminist methodologies and methods, cross-cultural human rights theory, and democratic theory, with a particular focus on democratization, human rights, and women's activism. She served as editor, with Maria Stern and Jacqui True, of Feminist Methodologies for International Relations, and is the author of Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism. The latter volume addresses the way in which democratic theorists often fail to acknowledge or deal with the ongoing gender inequality in both democratic and nondemocratic societies. She investigates the ways in which female activists in third-world nations attempt to enact social change. Signs critic Holloway Sparks remarked that "Ackerly's ambitious blending of theory and practical politics will appeal to a broad audience of feminist scholars and students." Sparks concluded that the book is "a rich example of a methodology that derives theory from emancipatory practices and could thus be an exciting addition to graduate scope and method courses." Writing for the NWSA Journal, Joan C. Tronto observed that "Ackerly writes from a liberal tradition that presumes the possibility of democratic politics, but she demonstrates the need for such a tradition to take its own commitment to equality seriously."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

NWSA Journal, summer, 2003, Joan C. Tronto, "Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics and Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism," p. 154.

Signs, winter, 2005, Holloway Sparks, review of Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism, p. 1674.