Johanna Brenner is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 feminist and sociologist whose writing and thought is in the socialist-feminist

Socialist feminism

Socialist feminism is a branch of feminism that focuses upon both the public and private spheres of a woman's life and argues that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women's oppression...

 vein.

A graduate of Reed College

Reed College

Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...

 (B.A., 1964) and the University of California, Los Angeles

University of California, Los Angeles

The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

 (M.A., 1970; Ph.D., 1979), she spent four years as a telephone installation technician worker in the 1970s. In 1981 she began teaching in the sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 department at Portland State University

Portland State University

Portland State University is a public state urban university located in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1946, it has the largest overall enrollment of any university in the state of Oregon, including undergraduate and graduate students. It is also the only public university in...

 in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

, where she served from 1982 to 2005 as coordinator of its women's studies

Women's studies

Women's studies, also known as feminist studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field which explores politics, society and history from an intersectional, multicultural women's perspective...

 program. She is now emeritus professor.

Brenner has contributed to New Left Review

New Left Review

New Left Review is a 160-page journal, published every two months from London, devoted to world politics, economy and culture. Often compared to the French-language Les Temps modernes, it is associated with Verso Books , and regularly features the essays of authorities on contemporary social...

, Monthly Review

Monthly Review

Monthly Review is an independent Marxist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.-History:The publication was founded by Harvard University economics instructor Paul Sweezy, who became the first editor...

, and other periodicals.

Mike Davis

Mike Davis (scholar)

Mike Davis is an American Marxist social commentator, urban theorist, historian, and political activist. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California.-Life:...

has said, "Johanna Brenner writes with a clarity of purpose that arises out of a lifetime of participation in the struggles of working-class women."

Writings

• "The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: US Feminism Today," New Left Review, 1993
• "On Gender and Class in U.S. Labor History," Monthly Review, 1999
• Women and the Politics of Class (Monthly Review Press, 2000)
• Rethinking the Political: Women, Resistance, and the State, ed. with Barbara Laslett and Yasmin Arat (University of Chicago Press, 1995)