Associate Professor and Chair Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies; English
Astrid Henry teaches courses on feminist theory, sexuality studies, LGBTQ studies and queer theory, critical whiteness studies, pop culture, feminist memoirs, and third-wave feminism.
Henry is the author of Not My Mother's Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism (Indiana University Press, 2004), a book which analyzes third-wave feminism and provides a theoretical framework for understanding contemporary generational conflicts as they have developed between feminism's third and second waves in the U.S. over the last two decades. Particular chapters focus on: the emergence of feminism's third wave in the 1990s and its critique of second-wave feminism; the generational relationship between feminism's second and first waves; the role of sexuality in the third wave's assertion of generational difference; queer feminism and its relationship to 1970s lesbian feminism; and the central role of feminists of color, particularly black feminists, in the development of third-wave feminism. Excerpts from Not My Mother's Sister have been reprinted in The Women's Movement Today: an Encyclopedia of Third-Wave Feminism (2006), Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics (2005; 2010), and the Chronicle of Higher Education (2004).
Henry's articles on third-wave feminism and generational relationships within U.S. feminism appear in the journals Women's Studies Quarterly and PMLA, as well as in the anthologies Fashion Talks: Undressing the Power of Style (2012), And Finally We Meet: Intersections and Intersectionality Among Feminist Activists, Academics and Students (2012), Different Wavelengths (2005), Reading “Sex and the City” (2003), Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century (2003), and Mothers and Daughters: Connection, Empowerment and Transformation (2000). Her recent projects include an essay on Scandinavian “new feminism,” a chapter on “Waves” for a forthcoming collection exploring critical genealogies in the field of Women’s Studies, and articles that address the televisual representation of feminism’s history on CBS’s Cold Case and AMC’s Mad Men. Her current book project is a study of memoirs by U.S. feminists since the 1970s.
Henry received her Ph.D. from the interdisciplinary Modern Studies Concentration of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's English Department. She received an M.A. from the New School for Social Research and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. Since 2006, Henry has served on the Governing Council of the National Women’s Studies Association, and she currently holds the position of Secretary of the Association.
