Feminist writer for The Nation

Mike Alberti Staff Writer

Katha Pollitt, the popular and award-winning feminist columnist for The Nation, will speak at Vassar on Tuesday, April 15. The lecture is entitled “Living and Writing Feminism: A Conversation with Political Columnist Katha Pollitt” and will be held in the Students’ Building at 4 p.m. Pollitt, whose column, “Subject to Debate,” has been called by The Washington Post “the best place to go for original thinking on the left,” is also the two-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary.

“She’s one of the premier feminist columnists, one of the few women in the country who’s read every week,” said Sociology Professor and Director of the Women’s Studies Program Diane Harriford “she’s complicated, because she also writes poetry along with her essays, and we wanted to see what she had to say.”

Harriford said that it is Pollitt’s depth and range as a writer and thinker that make her an exciting and important speaker for Vassar. In addition to her column and her poetry, Pollitt has a new memoir coming out, which she will read from at the lecture.

Political Science Professor Molly Shanley added, “Pollitt has been writing on public issues and particularly public issues affecting women for a long time, so she has a great depth of knowledge. She’s an astute commentator on current events...both iconoclastic and witty.”

Marni Grossman ’08, a women’s studies major, said that she is excited about Pollitt’s lecture because “she manages to make things that are horribly, terribly bad, funny. She makes feminism palatable for everyone. She’s angry and she’s right, but she injects humor into her writings, which makes it possible to not cry yourself to sleep every night at the state of our world.”

Pollitt is also bound to address the election. She has come out as a supporter of Senator Barack Obama, a controversial move in the world of feminist writers. “In women’s studies, we try to have speakers come who...appeal to a wide audience,” said Harriford, “and we thought that there wasn’t enough real conversation about the election as it relates to women and race.”

Harriford also hopes that the event will provide students with an opportunity to look beyond the College. She said, “This is a way to bring some current events into the bubble, because she’s a columnist that writes with intellectual range and depth. All of her work is informed by her deep well of knowledge. She doesn’t write stuff off the top of her head or to just inflame.”

The event is sponsored by the Women’s Studies, Africana Studies, Sociology, American Studies and Media Studies Departments, as well as the Dean of Faculty’s Office.