Diversifying the Discourse

The Florence Howe Award for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship, created in 1974, has played a major role in establishing the legitimacy and visibility of feminist inquiry. The early award-winning essays are available in the MLA volume Courage and Tools. This volume presents the seventeen essays that won the award for the years 1990-2004, an era that witnessed a diversification of the objects of feminist study and critical approaches. Essays treat authors ranging from well-known writers such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bront , Gwendolyn Brooks, Doris Lessing, and Virginia Woolf to less familiar writers such as the Magreb author Assia Djebar, the Spanish poet Concha M ndez, the Native American writer Zitkala-Sa, and the Palestinian novelists Liana Badr and Sahar Khalifeh. Essayists explore their topics through a multiplicity of perspectives, including race and ethnicity studies, cultural studies, psychoanalysis and film theory, nationhood and nationalism, and discourses of aging. Each award winner has written a short afterword, reflecting on her essay and her critical practice.The volume includes a foreword by Florence Howe, cofounder of the Feminist Press, and an afterword by Annette Kolodny, an early recipient of the Florence Howe award.