nona willis aronowitz
GRITtv: Sex, Hope & Rock'n'roll: Ellen Willis and Pop Critique
"Rock is, among other things, a potent means of expressing the active emotions--anger, aggression, lust, the joy of physical exertion--that feed all freedom movements, and it is no accident that women musicians have been denied access to this powerful musical language." So wrote Ellen Willis in June of 1974, when the acclaimed feminist thinker and cultural critic was working as the Rock, Etc. columnist at the New Yorker. A new book of Willis's rock criticism is out now, titled Out Of The Vinyl Deeps and edited by her daughter, Nona Willis Aronowitz, and this weekend a conference at New York University will celebrate her work as a pop culture thinker and writer. Nona joins Laura in studio with Drexel University professor Devon Powers to discuss Willis's influence and ideas.
Email this pageGRITtv: Feminism, the Super Bowl and the Media
CBS has changed its longstanding policy of not allowing issue ads during the Super Bowl to accept an anti-choice advertisement from Focus on the Family, and women's groups are furious at the double standard: CBS still rejected an ad from a gay dating service. Jehmu Greene and the Women's Media Center are calling for CBS to pull the ad, and other groups have joined the protest. Meanwhile, Nona Willis Aronowitz has a new book, Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism, which aims to find out what kind of feminism women around the country support, and Shelby Knox came from a southern conservative background to become an activist for sex education. We ask them what feminism means now and whether we should be focused on women in the media or other issues.
