Changing Minds

In Changing Minds: Women and the Political Essay, 19602000, Ann Jurei documents the work of five paradigm-shifting essayists who transformed American thought about urgent political issues. Rachel Carson linked science and art to explain how pesticides threatened the Earths ecosystems. Hannah Arendt redefined evil for a secular age after Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem. Susan Sontags interest in the intersection of politics and aesthetics led her to examine the ethics of looking at photographs of suffering. Joan Didion became a political essayist when she questioned how rhetoric and sentimental narratives corrupted democratic ideals. Patricia J. Williams continues to write about living under a justice system that has attempted to neutralize race, gender, and the meaning of history. These writers reacted to the stressors of the late twentieth century and in response reshaped the essay for their own purposes in profound ways. With this volume, Jurei begins to correct the longstanding dearth of scholarly studies on the importance of women and their political essaysworks that continue to be relevant more than two decades into the twenty-first century.