A Feminist Won Over by Philip Roth

photo credit: Star Ledger

The Star Ledger, 3/17/2013

I have been teaching some of Roth’s fiction since the 1990s in the English department at Rutgers University-Newark. Like many feminists, I kept my distance in the post-”Portnoy” years. But his autobiography, “The Facts,” moved me as he talked about his early years and his parents, calling himself “her Philip,” “his Roth.” On a summer vacation, I took along “The Counterlife” and was stunned by its language and its humor. Then came “American Pastoral” and I was hooked.  READ MORE

See Fran Bartkowski talk about the work and legacy of Phillip Roth on Fios News 1

Mutts Like Us . . .

Columbia University Press Blog, 12/11/2008

This still young century—maybe only now just beginning—calls us all into relations of obligation and care. This is our object lesson, among others, whether to follow our curiosity and desire—to kiss, or to be led by our lesser selves toward animosity, what we sometimes like to cordon off as animality. Only by letting our human-animal borders become more porous can we let the future materialize out of our mixed pasts...  READ MORE