Elizabeth Weed

Elizabeth Weed (born 1940) is an American feminist scholar, editor and university administrator.

Elizabeth Weed was born in 1940 in Morris Plains, New Jersey, to Marguerite and Edgar Weed.

She studied French literature at Drew University, graduating in 1962, and then went to Brown University for her master's (1966) and doctorate (1973) in French Studies.

From 1973 to 1977, Weed was an assistant professor at Wheaton College, and then returned to Brown as director of the Sarah Doyle Women's Center, a position she held from 1977 to 1981.

In 1981, she was a cofounder of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, where she eventually became director (2000 to 2010).

Discussing the founding of the Pembroke Center and its impact on her own intellectual trajectory, the founding director, historian Joan Wallach Scott, said Weed's dexterity with theory was an important corrective to Scott's historical training: "I continue to think of Elizabeth Weed as my mentor. Her training is in literature. She is one of the most theoretically sophisticated people I know, and she is very good at pointing out the theoretical implications of what you are doing. She is the person I always go to for advice and for critical reading."

In 1989, Weed cofounded differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies with Naomi Schor.

Their 1994 collection More Gender Trouble: Feminism Meets Queer Theory collected essays by scholars in dialogue with one another across the two domains but within the book: in it "Judith Butler refers to the work of Biddy Martin; Martin refers to Gayle Rubin's writings; Butler interviews Rubin; Trevor Hope and Rosi Braidotti engage in a three-article conversation with one another based on Hope's critique of an earlier piece of Braidotti's writing; and Elizabeth Grosz and Teresa de Lauretis engage in a similar discussion of Grosz's review/commentary on de Lauretis' [recent work].” In the journal Atlantis, Valda Leighteizer said it might be a “tough slog” for those not already versed in the conversation the collection extends, but “For those who are excited by discussion, who enjoy a passionate roll around with semantics and semiotics, the text is marvelous - a furthering - an adventure in discourse!”

She is the cofounder and, from 2000 to 2010, director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, as well as the feminist studies journal differences, cofounded in 1989 with Naomi Schor.

She published several edited collections that grew out of special editions of the journal, often collaborating with Schor until Schor's death in 2001.

In 2011, with Judith Butler, Weed published an edited collection (also originally a special issues of differences) on the 25th anniversary of Joan Wallach Scott's essay, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis”.

Reviews found the collection offered “fresh analyses of the state of gender studies and the dynamic theories of ‘sexual difference’ as proposed, tested and critiqued by Joan Scott.” Writing in Comparative Literature Studies, Geoffrey Berne highlights the collection’s discussions of how Scott’s "scholarship relates to the impasse of history/literature", while Stephanie Clare's review for Symposium notes its engagement with Scott's recurrent questions of the historical contingency of gender as well as the paradox that gender may be constructed but feminism's claims rely on a stable conception of gender.

While at Brown Weed met Christina Crosby, a graduate student in the late '70s and early '80s, who became Weed's partner for 17 years.

As of 2014, Weed was retired from teaching.