Bettina Aptheker

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Bettina Aptheker (born September 13, 1944) is an American, lesbian activist, author, feminist, and professor.

Contents

[edit] Childhood

Aptheker was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Fay Philippa Aptheker and Herbert Aptheker, a radical activist and Marxist historian. Her first job as a teenager was in the home of W. E. B. Du Bois, with whom her father was a good friend.

[edit] Education

Aptheker obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a leader in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the 1960s.

She completed her Master's degree at San José State University, where she later taught African-American and Women's Studies.

In the early 1980s Aptheker completed her graduate studies in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

[edit] Family

Aptheker has been with Kate Miller, her life partner, since October 1979. They have three children (both from previous marriages), and Aptheker is a grandmother. Prior to this partnership, during her undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, Aptheker was married to fellow student and Communist Jack Kurzweil.[1] In her 2006 memoir, Intimate Politics, she claims that she was sexually molested by her father from the age of 4 to the age of 13. However, her charges are based on recovered memory and dissociation[2] and so have been called into doubt. [3] [4] For example, Mark Rosenzweig writes "the truth about Herbert and Bettina is inaccessible to us."[5] She also tells about their highly emotional reconciliation several years before his death. In addition, she claims that her father's celebrations of black resistance were attempts "to compensate for his deep shame about the way, he believed, the Jews had acted during the Holocaust" (for which she has been criticized as "possibly antisemitic"[3]).

[edit] References

  1. ^ Dr. Jack Kurzweil
  2. ^ Aptheker, Bettina (2006-10-15). My Father the Icon, My Father the Molester. Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2006-10-30. Retrieved on 2008-01-17.
  3. ^ a b Doubts expressed about his daughter's story (2006-10-30). Retrieved on 2008-01-17.
  4. ^ Pseudoscientific Accusation in L.A. Times (2006-10-17). Retrieved on 2008-01-17.
  5. ^ RE: Herbert and Bettina Aptheker (2006-10-30). Retrieved on 2008-01-17.

[edit] Career

Aptheker has been teaching in the University of California at Santa Cruz Feminist Studies department since 1980. While she teaches many classes, her "Introduction to Feminisms" course, which emphasizes the multiplicity of feminism and women's experiences, is one of the most popular on campus. What started as a 35 person seminar is now an overflowing lecture course. The course is so popular that in the fall of 2002 the entire course was filmed, with the eventual goal of making the videos accessible to the public.

During the 1970s, Aptheker was actively involved in the trial of Angela Davis, a long-time friend and fellow Marxist.

Aptheker is included in conservative writer David Horowitz's 2006 book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America due to her being a known communist and for changing the name of the "Women's Studies" department to the "Feminist Studies" department.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Aptheker, Bettina (1976). The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801485975. 
  • Aptheker, Bettina and Aptheker, Herbert (1979). The Unfolding Drama: Studies in U.S. History. International Publishers. ISBN 0717805018. 
  • Aptheker, Bettina (1982). Woman's Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex and Class in American History. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 0870233653. 
  • Aptheker, Bettina (1989). Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness and the Meaning of Daily Life. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 087023658X. 
  • Aptheker, Bettina (2006). Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel. Seal Press. ISBN 158005160X. 

[edit] External links

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