Email: ellen.willis@nyu.edu
Ellen Willis is director of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism concentration in the graduate program. Formerly a columnist and senior editor for The Village Voice, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the first pop music critic for The New Yorker, she has recently appeared in The Nation, The New York Times, Salon, and Dissent, among other publications. She is the author of three books of essays on culture and politics: Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock and Roll; No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays and Don't Think, Smile! Notes on a Decade of Denial. Currently, Professor Willis is writing a book, under contract to University of California Press, on the relevance of radical psychoanalytic thought to contemporary political and social issues.
Selected Writings:
"Escape from Freedom: What's the Matter With Tom Frank (and the Lefties Who Love Him)?", from Situations.
"Lust Horizons: The 'Voice' and the women's movement", Village Voice, 50th Anniversary Special
"Three Elegies for Susan Sontag," New Politics, Summer 2005
"Historical Analysis" (on Eli Zaretsky's "Secrets of the Soul,") Dissent, Winter 2005
"Is There Still a Jewish Question? Why I'm an Anti-Anti-Zionist," Wrestling With Zion, ed. Kushner and Solomon, Grove-Atlantic 2003
"The Mass Psychology of Terrorism," Implicating Empire, ed. Aronowitz and Gautney, Basic Books 2003
On Paul Berman's "Terror and Liberalism" Salon, March 23, 2003
"Why I'm Not For Peace," Radical Society, April 2002 (1.6 MB PDF file)
"Giving Feminism Life." Dissent, Fall 2002
"In My Lonely Room: The Banality of 'Mirroring Evil'." First of the Month, 6/1/02
"Bringing the Holy War Home." The Nation, 12/17/01
"From Democracy to Demagogy: Joan Didion's Political Fictions." Women's Review of Books, November 2001
"Dreaming of War." The Nation, 10/15/01
"The New Talkin' World War III Blues: Bob Dylan's Love and Theft." Salon, 10/8/01
"Our Mobsters, Ourselves: Why 'The Sopranos' is Therapeutic TV." The Nation, 4/2/01
"Freedom from Religion: What's at Stake in Faith-Based Politics." The Nation, 2/19/01
"How Now, Iron Johns: Is There a Masculinity Crisis?" The Nation, 12/13/99
Available Syllabi:
