Additional Info:
Wise Women is a collection of autobiographical essays by important and renowned teachers at mid-life. The essays, which are deeply personal, will focus on how these women negotiate the psychological, physical, and social changes brought on by menopause and how the aging process affects their lives as professionals, feminists, writers, mentors, and instructors in the academy. The book addresses such questions as the following: What challenges are left for the feminists who came of age during the women's movement and now have achieved academic success? How do women teachers experience their aging selves in the classroom? and What legacy will mid-life women leave their younger women colleagues? All of these questions, as well as many others, are covered in this insightful and groundbreaking work. (From the Publisher)

Table Of Content:
Preface
Introduction

Part I Body & Time
ch. 1. Teaching Where I Was Taught: Coming Home (Mary Gordon)
ch. 2. Game Plans (Mimi Schwartz)
ch. 3. "Pregnant with [Myself], at Last": Images of Midlife/A Journal Entry (Jan Zlotnik Schmidt)
ch. 4. "Saturating Language with Love": Variations on a Dream (Marlene A. Schiwy)
ch. 5. The Time of Our Lives: The Public Life of Teaching (Patricia C. Phillips)

Part II Ripening & Rootedness
ch. 6. Reverie (Jane Tompkins)
ch. 7. Goodbye, Ms. Chips (Julia Alvarez)
ch. 8. But Tell Me, Do You Like Teaching? (Patricia Hampl)
ch. 9. Me, Myself, Menopause, and I (Dona Lee Davis)
ch. 10. Reflections on Teaching (and Life in General) Once You've Become a Grandmother (Jean Bethke Elshtain)
ch. 11. Mud Ponies (Diane Glancy)
ch. 12. Unsettled Weather (Gail B. Griffin)

Part III Feisty & Girls
ch. 13. Academic Witchery: Snakes and Snails and Scholarly Tales (Dean Falk)
ch. 14. Choice Points and Courage (Diane F. Halpern)
ch. 15. I Can't Hear ... I Can't See ... I Can't Remember Anything (Lynne Taetzsch)
ch. 16. Memories of a "First Woman" (Tikva Simone Frymer)
ch. 17. Rant for Old Teachers (Paula Gunn Allen)

Part IV Teaching in Time
ch. 18. A Teaching Life (Christa L. Walck)
ch. 19. Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart (Gayle Pemberton)
ch. 20. Ecstasy: Teaching and Learning without Limits (Bell Hooks)
ch. 21. Re-viewing Our Professional Lives: Talking (and Listening) for a Living (Margaret Matlin)
ch. 22. On Statutes and Dogs, Poems and "Regs," and Life inside the Classroom (Judy Scales-Trent)
ch. 23. Exploring Critical Feminist Pedagogy: Revelations and Confessions about Teaching at Midlife (Esther Ngan-ling Chow)

Part V Community & Generativity
ch. 24. Themes That Link through Time (Sue V. Rosser)
ch. 25. Naming, Sharing, Speaking: Teaching in Midlife (Jean F. O'Barr)
ch. 26. "Thinking Back through [My] Mother": Reclaiming Anger, Advocacy, and Pleasure in Teaching (Judith A. Dorney)
ch. 27. Charis = Light = Grace (Phyllis R. Freeman)

Notes and References
Selected Bibliography
Contributors
Acknowledgments