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Ellen Jane Willis (December 14, 1941 – November 9, 2006) was an American left-wing political , journalist, activist, feminist, and pop music music critic. A 2014 collection of her essays, The Essential Ellen Willis, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
At the time of her death, she was a professor in the journalism department of New York University and the head of its Center for Cultural Reporting and Criticism. Official page on the site of the Department of Journalism, New York University, accessed July 7, 2007
She was a strong supporter of women's abortion rights, and in the mid-1970s was a founding member of the pro-choice street theater and protest group No More Nice Girls. A self-described anti-authoritarian democratic socialist, she was very critical of what she viewed as social conservatism and authoritarianism on both the political Right-wing and Left-wing. In cultural politics, she was equally opposed to the idea that cultural issues are politically unimportant, as well as to strong forms of identity politics and their manifestation as political correctness.
In several essays and interviews written since the September 11 attacks, she cautiously supported humanitarian intervention and, while opposed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq,Ellen Willis, Ellen Willis Responds , Dissent, Winter 2003. Accessed online July 7, 2007. she criticized certain aspects of the anti-war movement., Radical Society, April 2002, pp. 13–19; copy formerly posted on Willis's NYU faculty site was archived on the Internet Archive, December 23, 2005. Accessed online July 7, 2007. March 27, 2003 broadcast, Doug Henwood's radio archives, Left Business Observer.
Willis wrote a number of essays on anti-Semitism, and was particularly critical of left anti-Semitism. Occasionally she wrote about Judaism itself, penning a particularly notable essay, for Rolling Stone, in 1977, about her brother's spiritual journey as a Baal Teshuva.Ellen Willis, Next Year in Jerusalem, originally published in Rolling Stone, April 1977.
She saw political authoritarianism and sexual repression as closely linked, an idea first advanced by psychologist Wilhelm Reich; much of Willis' writing advances a Reichian or radical Freudian analysis of such phenomena. In 2006 she was working on a book on the importance of radical psychoanalytic thought for current social and political issues.
In addition to her "Rock, etc." column in the New Yorker, she also published criticism on popular music in Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and for liner notes and book anthologies, most notably her essay on the Velvet Underground for the Greil Marcus "desert island disc" anthology Stranded (1979). Her contemporary Richard Goldstein characterized her work as "liberationist" at its heart and said that "Ellen, Emma Goldman, and Abbie Hoffman are part of a lost tradition — radicals of desire."
She was survived by her husband and by her daughter, Nona Willis-Aronowitz, who edited the collection Out of the Vinyl Deeps.
Her papers were deposited in the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, in the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University in 2008.
In 2011, the first collection of Willis's music reviews and essays, Out of the Vinyl Deeps (University of Minnesota Press), was published. Willis "celebrated the seriousness of pleasure and relished the pleasure of thinking seriously," a review in The New York Times said.
On April 30, 2011, a conference at New York University, "Sex, Hope, & Rock 'n' Roll: The Writings of Ellen Willis", celebrated her anthology and pop music criticism.
The Essential Ellen Willis, edited by her daughter, won the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award in the Criticism category.
Willis is featured in the 2014 feminist history documentary She's Beautiful When She's Angry.
Rock criticism
Willis was the first popular music critic for the New Yorker, writing between 1968 and 1975. As such, she was one of the first American popular music critics to write for a national audience. She got the job after having published only one article on popular music, "Dylan" in the underground magazine Cheetah, in 1967.
Personal life
Willis had met her second husband, sociology professor Stanley Aronowitz, in the late 1960s, and they entered a relationship some 10 years later. They shared domestic tasks equally. Willis died of lung cancer on November 9, 2006.
Legacy
Willis was a friend of many contemporary critics, including Robert Christgau, Georgia Christgau, Greil Marcus, and Richard Goldstein. Christgau, Joe Levy, Evelyn McDonnell, Joan Morgan, and Ann Powers have all cited her as an influence on their careers and writing styles. At one point, she and Christgau were lovers.
Bibliography
Books
Essays, reporting and other contributions
External links
Reviews and critiques of Ellen Willis
Interviews
Categories: 1941 Births, 2006 Deaths, 20th-century American Essayists, American Abortion-rights Activists, American Feminist Writers, American Music Critics, American Women Music Critics, American Music Journalists, American Political Writers, American Women Essayists, 20th-century American Women Journalists, 20th-century American Journalists, Barnard College Alumni, Deaths From Lung Cancer In New York, Feminist Studies Scholars, Jewish American Journalists, Jewish American Feminists, Jewish Socialists, New York Radical Women Members, New York University Faculty, Radical Feminists, Redstockings Members, Rolling Stone People, National Book Critics Circle Award Winners, Sex-positive Feminists, American Socialist Feminists, The Nation People, The New Yorker People, The Village Voice People, American Women Writers About Music, Writers From New York City, University Of California, Berkeley Alumni, Second Wave Feminists
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