Feminist Imaginaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Alexandra Kollontai

This is a two year project proposing to examine, in the first year: 1) the fictional and non-fictional works ofCharlotte Stetson Perkins Gilman (USA, 1860-1935) and Aleksandra Kollontai (in English translation;Soviet Russia, 1972-1952). In the second year, I will study and analyze 2) a compilation of Englishlanguage readings and reception of these two authors in the making of an ongoing Anglo-American feministcanon. Gilman and Kollontai are contemporaries whose writings, fictional and non-fictional, areoccasionally listed together. They were feminists and public intellectuals in the late 19c and the first twodecades of the twentieth century, Gilman a socialist feminist in the US and Kollontai a communist feministin revolutionary Russia. Both are seen as eventually sidelined if not forgotten in their radical writings andexperimental lives, the one in US women’s movement for the vote, the other in labor republic politics. Bothwere activist-writers who wrote speeches, articles, pamphlets, and fiction to propagate their thought inmovement. Finally, both imagined and advocated public kitchens and alternative sex arrangements towardthe liberation of women from invisible material and immaterial labor. This study proposes to read these twofeminist authors together with a focus on how their fictions contribute to and complicate their feminist proseanalytic. In the second year, I will track the studies of Gilman and Kollontai in the English language, with aview to understanding their different placement yet corresponding if not co-constructive importance in ashifting canon of Anglo-American feminist thought.