LEE, Janet 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954. Education: University of Stirling, Scotland, B.A., 1976; Washington State University, M.A., 1982, Ph.D., 1985.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Women's Studies Program, Gilkey Hall 200, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-6208. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Minnesota State University, Mankato, assistant professor, 1986-89, associate professor of women's studies, 1989-91, department chair, 1989-91; Oregon State University, Corvallis, associate professor and director, women's studies, 1991-2001, professor, 2002—.

MEMBER:

National Women's Studies Association, Sociologists for Women in Society, National Organization for Women, Pacific Sociological Association, Phi Kappa Phi.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Woman of Achievement award, Oregon State University, 1993; Researcher of the Year, Oregon State University, 1999; Faculty Excellence Award, College of Liberal Arts, Oregon State University, 2002.

WRITINGS:

(With Jennifer Sasser-Coen) Blood Stories: Menarche and the Politics of the Female Body in Contemporary U.S. Society, Routledge (New York, NY), 1996.

Comrades and Partners: The Shared Lives of Grace Hutchins and Anna Rochester, Rowman & Little-field (Lanham, MD), 2000.

(Editor, with Susan M. Shaw) Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Mayfield (Mountain View, CA), 2001, 2nd edition, McGraw Hill (New York, NY), 2004.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

War Girls: The Legend of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (F.A.N.Y.) in the First World War, for Manchester University Press (Manchester, England).

SIDELIGHTS:

A longtime professor of women's studies, Janet Lee has written extensively on the various stigmas that have been attached to the female body, including negative attitudes toward menstruation. In Blood Stories: Menarche and the Politics of the Female Body in Contemporary U.S. Society, Lee and her coauthor, Jennifer Sasser-Coen, draw on accounts from more than 100 women to address the cultural issues surrounding menarche, the onset of menstruation in puberty, and the political implications of these attitudes. In addition to her work on body issues and female sexuality, Lee has written extensively on the relationship between feminism and social justice, and the radical potential of social work. In Comrades and Partners: The Shared Lives of Grace Hutchins and Anna Rochester, Lee brings to life two women, born in the late 1800s to prominent families, whose interest in social justice gradually took them from traditional social work and missionary activity through Christian socialism and finally to the Communist Party, while forming a lesbian relationship that put them at odds with those from both the political right and left. "Despite the incipient tension between their ideological commitment and their lifestyle, each found the Party a comfortable intellectual home, and, as Janet Lee reveals in this creatively conceived biography, each used it as the staging ground for a series of remarkable achievements," explained Alice Kessler-Harris in Labour/Le Travail. Some reviewers faulted Lee for raising issues without fully exploring them and for intrusive asides about the biographical process itself. Nonetheless, critics maintained that the volume was a worthwhile addition to the field. "Rochester and Hutchinson's story is so fascinating … that despite its many pitfalls, this account is worth reading," concluded a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Labour/Le Travail, spring, 2003, Alice Kessler-Harris, review of Comrades and Partners: The Shared Lives of Grace Hutchins and Anna Rochester, p. 313.

Publishers Weekly, December 6, 1999, review of Comrades and Partners, p. 63.