Ann Snitow, a feminist activist, author, and educator, passed away on August 10, 2019. She was 76 years old.
Over the course of her life, Dr. Snitow was committed to the women’s liberation movement in New York City, where she co-founded a number of feminist groups. She became a founding member of the New York Radical Feminists in 1969; the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse in 1977; No More Nice Girls, a feminist street theatre group, in 1981; the Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce in 1984; and Take Back the Future, a feminist anti-war action group, in 2002.
In addition to her activism, Dr. Snitow was also dedicated to education. In 1972, she co-founded the gender studies program at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She also twice founded gender studies programs at The New School in New York City, where she taught for 30 years.
Dr. Snitow was also the co-editor of various essay collections including Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality (Monthly Review Press, 1983). She also authored a collection of her own essays in The Feminism of Uncertainty (Duke University Press, `2015). Her final book, Visitors (forthcoming in spring 2020), is a memoir of her quarter-century of networking with feminists throughout Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. She submitted the final draft of Vistors just days before her death.
Dr. Snitow was a graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. where she majored in English. She held a Ph.D. in English from the University of London.
Ann Snitow was a powerful and joyful icon of feminist practice, both academically and personally. I was blessed to know her, even if only briefly, and she will always remain an important inspiration for us all.