ABSTRACT
For the last decade or so, there has been a consensus in the United States that feminism is in trouble. Beginning in the early 1990s, feminist writing both within and beyond academia rang the alarm that feminism was under assault. Yet whereas popular works such as Susan Faludi’s Backlash (1991) located the danger outside feminism, in the cultural and political changes of the Reagan–Bush era, academic feminists constructed a more troubling narrative of an enemy within. Depending on who was offering this diagnosis, the identity of feminism’s adversary might be particular strains of feminism (all had their detractors); the limitations of feminism and “women’s studies” as such; and the trendiness or success of academic feminism. During this time, monographs, essays, special journal issues, and edited volumes expressed concern with the fate of feminism in the American academy. 1
