Annette Kolodny

Annette Kolodny is a feminist literary critic and activist, and currently holds the position of College of Humanities Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Kolodny’s first two books were The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (1975) and The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860 (1984); both of these texts deal with environmental concerns and the historic destruction of the land (Jay 217). Her most recent book, Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century (1998), details the extent to which women and non-white students are still outsiders on American campuses. Kolodny is also well-known for two essays published in 1980: “Dancing Through the Minefield” (Feminist Studies, spring 1980) and “A Map of Reading: Gender and the Interpretation of Texts” (New Literary History, spring 1980). Of these, “Dancing Through the Minefield” is the most well-known, and is sometimes said to be “the most reprinted essay of American feminist literary criticism.” (2143)