Katie Roiphe
Encyclopedia
Katie Roiphe is an American author and journalist. She is best known as the author of the non-fiction examination The Morning After: Fear, Sex and Feminism
(1994). She is also the author of Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End (1997), and the 2007 study of writers and marriage, Uncommon Arrangements. Her 2001 novel Still She Haunts Me is an empathetic imagining of the relationship between Charles Dodgson (known as Lewis Carroll
) and Alice Liddell
, the real-life model for Dodgson's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
.
, daughter of noted feminist Anne Roiphe
. She attended the all-female Brearley School
, received a B.A.
from Harvard University
in 1990, and received a Ph.D.
in English Literature from Princeton University
in 1996.
, women are at least partly responsible for their actions. "One of the questions used to define rape was: 'Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?' The phrasing raises the issue of agency. Why aren't college women responsible for their own intake of alcohol or drugs? A man may give her drugs, but she herself decides to take them. If we assume that women are not all helpless and naive, then they should be responsible for their choice to drink or take drugs. "If a woman's 'judgment is impaired' and she has sex, it isn't always the man's fault; it isn't necessarily always rape."
In a 1995 interview, Camille Paglia
described her as "the first intellectual of her generation." Paglia has since revised her opinion of Roiphe: "When Katie Roiphe came up in the mid-’90s, I thought she was going to be the intellectual of her generation, but she just withdrew after the huge flap about her first book, The Morning After. She drifted off into writing memoirs and talking about her personal life, and now has come back with some book on marriage. She didn't step up and that position is still vacant, so we now have absent two generations of young intellectuals in America."
Writing for The New Yorker
, Katha Pollitt
delivered a scathing review of The Morning After, writing, "It is a careless and irresponsible performance, poorly argued and full of misrepresentations, slapdash research, and gossip. She may be, as she implies, the rare grad student who has actually read "Clarissa
", but when it comes to rape
and harassment
she has not done her homework." But, the controversial book wasn't without its positive reviews. Declaring it a "Book of the Times", The New York Times said "it is courageous of Ms. Roiphe to speak out against the herd ideas that campus life typically encourages." Likewise, The Washington Post Book World described the book as "clearheaded, wry, disturbing," saying
"Katie Roiphe writes from the trenches of gender warfare."
, Harper's
, Slate
, The Washington Post
, Dissent
, and The New York Times
. She has continued to serve as a sort of cultural lightning rod, for a persistent discomfort about a woman's proper role: In her 2007 review of the novel Slummy Mummy, Roiphe attracted criticism by posing the question, "But ladies, let's be honest, is it that hard? Aren't there some things on earth that are harder [than being a mother]?" More recently, she had an essay featured in the anthology Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers. In her essay, entitled "Elect Sister Frigidaire", Roiphe writes that Hillary Clinton is “in many ways the feminist dream incarnate, the opportunity made flesh, the words we whisper to little girls: ‘You can be president. You can do anything you want.’” Reviewing the book for The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani
noted that some of Roiphe's observations were in "stark contrast" to what Kakutani considered some of the "antifeminist" pieces in the collection.
Roiphe's most recent book is Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939 (2007). Donna Seaman, in the trade publication Booklist
, gave the book a starred review, writing, "Roiphe, inspired aesthetically and philosophically by the writings and lives of these social and artistic pioneers, offers sophisticated psychological, sexual, and social analysis, fashioning uncommonly affecting portraits of uncommon men and women." In The New York Times, the editor and critic Tina Brown
called it "the perfect bedside book for an age like our own, when everything is known and nothing is understood." In The New York Observer, Alexandra Jacobs conceded "Katie haters will be sorry to hear that it’s very absorbing. The author has done something constructive, for a change, with her contempt for the contemporary age’s lily-livered female psyche..." Roiphe responded to some of her critics in an essay in Slate
including Gawker.
.
The Morning After (book)
The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism was the first of author and journalist Katie Roiphe's books. It was published simultaneously in the United States by Back Bay Books and in Canada by Little, Brown and Company in 1993. It was reprinted in 1994, while Roiphe was still a candidate for her...
(1994). She is also the author of Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End (1997), and the 2007 study of writers and marriage, Uncommon Arrangements. Her 2001 novel Still She Haunts Me is an empathetic imagining of the relationship between Charles Dodgson (known as Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
) and Alice Liddell
Alice Liddell
Alice Pleasance Liddell , known for most of her adult life by her married name, Alice Hargreaves, inspired the children's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, whose protagonist Alice is said to be named after her.-Biography:...
, the real-life model for Dodgson's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
.
Background and education
Roiphe grew up in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, daughter of noted feminist Anne Roiphe
Anne Roiphe
Anne Roiphe is an American writer and journalist. She is best-known as a first-generation feminist, and author of the novel Up The Sandbox , which was filmed as a starring vehicle for Barbra Streisand in 1972. In 1996, Salon called the book "a feminist classic."-Background and education:Roiphe...
. She attended the all-female Brearley School
Brearley School
The Brearley School is an all-girls private school in New York City, New York, United States. It is located on the Upper East Side of the Manhattan borough of New York City. The school is divided into the Lower School , Middle School and Upper School...
, received a B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1990, and received a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in English Literature from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1996.
The Morning After
Roiphe's first book, The Morning After, argued that in many incidences of supposed campus date rapeDate rape
"Date rape", often referred to as acquaintance rape, is an assault or attempted assault usually committed by a new acquaintance involving sexual intercourse without mutual consent....
, women are at least partly responsible for their actions. "One of the questions used to define rape was: 'Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?' The phrasing raises the issue of agency. Why aren't college women responsible for their own intake of alcohol or drugs? A man may give her drugs, but she herself decides to take them. If we assume that women are not all helpless and naive, then they should be responsible for their choice to drink or take drugs. "If a woman's 'judgment is impaired' and she has sex, it isn't always the man's fault; it isn't necessarily always rape."
In a 1995 interview, Camille Paglia
Camille Paglia
Camille Anna Paglia , is an American author, teacher, and social critic. Paglia, a self-described dissident feminist, has been a Professor at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 1984...
described her as "the first intellectual of her generation." Paglia has since revised her opinion of Roiphe: "When Katie Roiphe came up in the mid-’90s, I thought she was going to be the intellectual of her generation, but she just withdrew after the huge flap about her first book, The Morning After. She drifted off into writing memoirs and talking about her personal life, and now has come back with some book on marriage. She didn't step up and that position is still vacant, so we now have absent two generations of young intellectuals in America."
Writing for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, Katha Pollitt
Katha Pollitt
Katha Pollitt is an American feminist poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry...
delivered a scathing review of The Morning After, writing, "It is a careless and irresponsible performance, poorly argued and full of misrepresentations, slapdash research, and gossip. She may be, as she implies, the rare grad student who has actually read "Clarissa
Clarissa
Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson, published in 1748. It tells the tragic story of a heroine whose quest for virtue is continually thwarted by her family, and is the longest real novelA completed work that has been released by a publisher in...
", but when it comes to rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
and harassment
Harassment
Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour intended to disturb or upset, and it is characteristically repetitive. In the legal sense, it is intentional behaviour which is found threatening or disturbing...
she has not done her homework." But, the controversial book wasn't without its positive reviews. Declaring it a "Book of the Times", The New York Times said "it is courageous of Ms. Roiphe to speak out against the herd ideas that campus life typically encourages." Likewise, The Washington Post Book World described the book as "clearheaded, wry, disturbing," saying
"Katie Roiphe writes from the trenches of gender warfare."
Cultural criticism
Roiphe's second book was 1997's Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End. She also began to contribute reviews and essays to VogueVogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
, Harper's
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
, Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, Dissent
Dissent (magazine)
Dissent is a quarterly magazine focusing on politics and culture edited by Michael Walzer and Michael Kazin. The magazine is published for the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc by the University of Pennsylvania Press....
, and The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
. She has continued to serve as a sort of cultural lightning rod, for a persistent discomfort about a woman's proper role: In her 2007 review of the novel Slummy Mummy, Roiphe attracted criticism by posing the question, "But ladies, let's be honest, is it that hard? Aren't there some things on earth that are harder [than being a mother]?" More recently, she had an essay featured in the anthology Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers. In her essay, entitled "Elect Sister Frigidaire", Roiphe writes that Hillary Clinton is “in many ways the feminist dream incarnate, the opportunity made flesh, the words we whisper to little girls: ‘You can be president. You can do anything you want.’” Reviewing the book for The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani
is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times and is considered by many to be a leading literary critic in the United States.-Life and career:...
noted that some of Roiphe's observations were in "stark contrast" to what Kakutani considered some of the "antifeminist" pieces in the collection.
Roiphe's most recent book is Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939 (2007). Donna Seaman, in the trade publication Booklist
Booklist
Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online...
, gave the book a starred review, writing, "Roiphe, inspired aesthetically and philosophically by the writings and lives of these social and artistic pioneers, offers sophisticated psychological, sexual, and social analysis, fashioning uncommonly affecting portraits of uncommon men and women." In The New York Times, the editor and critic Tina Brown
Tina Brown
Tina Brown, Lady Evans, CBE , is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of The Diana Chronicles, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005 after emigrating in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair...
called it "the perfect bedside book for an age like our own, when everything is known and nothing is understood." In The New York Observer, Alexandra Jacobs conceded "Katie haters will be sorry to hear that it’s very absorbing. The author has done something constructive, for a change, with her contempt for the contemporary age’s lily-livered female psyche..." Roiphe responded to some of her critics in an essay in Slate
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...
including Gawker.
Academic work
Roiphe teaches in the Department of Journalism as an Assistant Professor and is the Assistant Director of the Cultural Criticism and Reporting Program at New York UniversityNew York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
.
Books
- The Morning After: Fear, Sex and FeminismThe Morning After (book)The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism was the first of author and journalist Katie Roiphe's books. It was published simultaneously in the United States by Back Bay Books and in Canada by Little, Brown and Company in 1993. It was reprinted in 1994, while Roiphe was still a candidate for her...
(1994) - Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End (1997)
- Still She Haunts Me (2001)
- Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939 (2007)
See also
- FeminismFeminismFeminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
- Rape on college campuses
- Take Back the NightTake Back the NightTake Back the Night is an internationally held march and rally intended as a protest and direct action against rape and other forms of sexual violence...
- VictimologyVictimologyVictimology is the scientific study of victimization, including the relationships between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system — that is, the police and courts, and corrections officials — and the connections between victims and other social groups...
External links
- http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2361889.htm Transcript of interview with Ramona KovalRamona KovalRamona Koval is an Australian broadcaster, writer and journalist.Her parents were Yiddish-speaking survivors of the Holocaust who arrived in Melbourne from Poland in 1950....
, The Book ShowThe Book ShowThe Book Show is an Australian ABC radio program for the discussion of everything relating to the written word. It is broadcast live around Australia on Radio National with a daily weekday morning show which is then replayed nightly and also has a Sunday evening show. The show is hosted by Ramona...
, ABC Radio National. - Katie Roiphe on Susan Sontag and her son's memoir, Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir. The New York Times Book Review, Feb. 3, 2008.
- Roiphe reviews Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, by Janet Malcolm. The New York Times Book Review, September 23, 2007.
- Roiphe reviews The Mistress's Daughter, by A.M. Homes. The New York Times Book Review, April 3, 2007.
- Date rape piece by Roiphe, adapted from The Morning After
- Roiphe critiques a feminist supporter of Clinton and Schwarzenegger
- Roiphe op-ed piece on the "Bush mandate" and its threat to abortion rights
- Salon article critical of Katie Roiphe
- Not Just Bad Sex, by Katha PollittKatha PollittKatha Pollitt is an American feminist poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry...
— critical review of The Morning After - New York Times Review of Uncommon Arrangements
- Is Maureen Dowd Necessary?, Slate, 2 November 2005 — Roiphe critiques Dowd's Are Men Necessary
- The Bat Segundo Show #129 (2007) — record of critical interviewer questioning Roiphe. (podcast)