The Political Interests of Gender

This anthology of essays was the first collection I published with my friend and colleague, Anna G. Jónasdóttir. It grew out of a panel on theories of gender and power held in Göteborg, Sweden in 1986. Anna had co-organized the session with another colleague from Sweden, Gun Hedlund. Both Anna and Gun were still doctoral students at the time. The panel included an international group of scholars, who got together for five days of intensive discussion, exploring how power affects relationships between and among women and men in different social and cultural settings.

But something else grew out of that panel—the beginning of a friendship between Anna and me that has already lasted twenty-five years. Despite the geographical distance between us, we continue to talk, and to meet face-to -ace from time to time, sharing not only our thoughts about politics, but also our personal stories.

Two decades after the publication of what we affectionately called our “Green Book,” (for obvious reasons!), Anna and I assembled another collection of essays: The Political Interests of Gender Revisited.  We called it Green Book II. Although, as you can see, its cover is blue. (You can read a review here.)

The next year,  Anna retired from the University. Another friend, Gunnel Karlsson and I invited Anna’s colleagues to contribute to what academics call a festschrift—a German word for a book that honors the work of a scholar. We titled the book Gender and the Interests of Love, and the essay I wrote was "Anna och jag: Friendship, Work, and Love":

Sometimes an idea gets you writing and you discover you've written yourself into a new world.