Karen Brodkin, a UCLA professor and one of the co-founders of feminist anthropology, already has a pretty good idea of what retirement will look like for her, come the end of this academic year. And a rocking chair is nowhere in that picture.
Brodkin, who is as passionate a faculty activist as she is a scholar, is officially ending her fulltime faculty career after 22 years spent directing the women's studies program from 1987 to 1993, teaching classes, authoring many books and doing groundbreaking research.
Brodkin helped build a multiracial, multicultural women's studies program that has now grown into a department. Her work ranges widely across several disciplines and covers Marxist and feminist scholarship, sociology, ethnic studies, critical race theory and U.S. labor and women’s history. One of her early books, "Sisters and Wives," is a landmark exploration of how kinship and economic institutions co-construct one another."I've been very privileged to have worked with so many superb grad students, and to have helped many of them create ways to combine their commitment to activism with their love of scholarship," she said.
Studying first at Harvard and then at the University of Michigan as a graduate student, she helped to pioneer the concept of feminist anthropology in the late 60s and early 70s.
"We were all or mainly graduate students at many different schools when we 'invented' it," she recalled. Brodkin took part in the publication of the very first feminist anthropology collections — one edited by graduate students from Harvard and the other edited by a Michigan student.
Among her own books is "My Troubles Are Going to Have Trouble with Me," co-edited with Dorothy Remy, that highlights the North American working-class women's resistance and critical consciousness.
Another, "Caring by the Hour," is a case study on the hospital industry's nonprofessional support staff. It explores women's activism in general and black women's leadership in particular. This work received the Conrad Arensberg Award of the Society for the Anthropology of Work. For years, it was used by health care organizers in the South and Mid Atlantic. Since 1999, Brodkin has focused her research on the diverse forms of grassroots activism in Los Angeles, the micro-politics of the social movement in working-class migrant communities and the new forms of democratic politics that organizers from these communities are developing.
Last year Brodkin released "Making Democracy Matter: Identity and Activism in Los Angeles," a conversation with the rising generation of labor and immigrant rights organizers regarding the political subjectivities and visions of democracy they are creating. Currently under review, "Beating the Odds: Environmental Justice Victory in South Los Angeles," provides an analysis of the 2001 struggle to block construction of a power plant in an already impacted Latina/o working class part of Los Angeles County.
Her love of scholarship has never dampened her passion as a faculty activist. She had a hand in organizing faculty opposition to SP-1 and SP-2, the UC regents' policies enacted in 1995 banning consideration of race and sex in admissions, hiring and contracting. Later, she spoke out against the war in Iraq in a controversial vote in the UCLA Academic Senate.
There's no chance that retirement will slow her down.Brodkin recently got approval to launch a research project initiated by lesbian and gay labor and immigrant rights organizers. And she has others in the planning stage as well. "I think I'm going to be around UCLA for awhile," she commented.
She still plans to make time for her other pastimes -- kayaking with her partner, hiking in California, fishing in Oregon, and making pottery and mosaics. "I got a running start on fun long before retirement," she said.
Her advice for those whom she leaves behind is exemplary of her own life:"Follow your passion and make sure you're committed to something bigger than personal ambitions."
To honor her and the impact she has had on many students and scholars, her colleagues, friends and former students will hold a conference and reception on Oct. 20 in 314 Royce Hall from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The event, titled “Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality: A Cross Generation Examination of Politics, Theory, and Activism,” will be hosted by the UCLA Department of Anthropology and co-sponsored by the Department of Women’s Studies and the Center for the Study of Women. Call Amy Bruinooge at (310) 825-1565 for details.
