True Confessions: Feminist Professors Tell Stories Out of School

True Confessions: Feminist Professors Tell Stories Out of School presents personal narratives from women academics who shaped feminist scholarship in the late 20th century. The collection features essays from professors who navigated both their professional roles and their feminist ideologies during a transformative period in academia. The contributors share experiences from their careers spanning the 1970s through the 1990s, documenting their struggles and successes in male-dominated institutions. Their stories cover topics like workplace discrimination, balancing family life with academic pursuits, and building women's studies programs from the ground up. Editor Susan Gubar brings together voices that represent different disciplines, universities, and approaches to feminist theory and activism. The format allows each contributor to tell her story in her own way, resulting in a mix of writing styles and perspectives. These collected narratives form a vital historical record while exploring universal themes of identity, power, and institutional change. The book stands as both a document of feminist history and a meditation on the intersection of personal and political transformation in academic life.

Readers found this collection offers candid insights into challenges faced by female academics in the 1970s-90s. Reviews note the essays provide personal accounts of navigating gender discrimination, balancing family life, and building careers in male-dominated institutions. Likes: - Raw honesty about professional struggles - Diverse range of experiences and writing styles - Historical documentation of feminist movement in academia - Personal narratives that complement academic theory Dislikes: - Some essays seen as self-indulgent or bitter in tone - Limited perspectives (mostly white, middle-class professors) - Uneven quality between contributions - Focus on complaints rather than solutions Ratings: Goodreads: 3.8/5 (32 ratings) Amazon: 4.2/5 (8 reviews) Notable reader comment: "These stories helped me understand what the previous generation went through to make my academic career possible" - Goodreads reviewer The book has limited online reviews, likely due to its academic nature and 1998 publication date.

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📚 Susan Gubar co-authored "The Madwoman in the Attic" (1979), which became one of the most influential works of feminist literary criticism and changed how Victorian literature is studied. 🎓 The book features 27 prominent feminist scholars sharing personal stories about their experiences in academia, revealing both professional and personal struggles they faced as women in higher education. ✍️ Many of the contributors were pioneers who established Women's Studies programs at major universities during the 1970s and 1980s, when such programs were often met with significant institutional resistance. 🏆 Susan Gubar received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2012 for her contributions to feminist literary criticism and scholarship. 📖 The confessional format of the book was groundbreaking for academic writing at the time, as it deliberately broke from traditional scholarly discourse to embrace personal narrative as a valid form of academic expression.