Selected from Catharine R. Stimpson's storied career as a public intellectual, these essays distill the ideas and values that enable individuals and societies to thrive.

Stimpson is a legend in the fields of women and gender studies, a pioneer of 20th-century feminist thought and activism, and founding editor of the most prestigious journal in the field of women's studies, Signs. This essay collection brings together new work alongside published articles and public lectures, all of which provide crucial insights about the most pressing issues of our time, including civil rights, academic freedom, and gender politics.

In her opening essay, Stimpson reflects on the fear of being a monster – primarily, but not only, as a monster of gender rebellion – and on the ways that embracing her monstrosity has become an abiding strength. This strength fuels her writing about the health of democratic societies and the essential role that literature and culture play in creating a healthy society. Why do societies thrive with the freedoms of both thought and speech? What is a good education and does it need diversity? Why are feminist insights into sex and gender so vital?

As a scholar, an activist, and a self-described “skeptical Utopianist,” Stimpson takes a long view of the issues and problems that continue to shape our modern world. On Being a Monster explores these complicated issues in accessible prose, marked by clarity, wit, compassion – and a surprising optimism.

Catharine R. "Kate" Stimpson is Professor and Dean Emerita at New York University, USA. She is the author of Where the Meanings Are: Feminism and Cultural Spaces (1988), and her essays have appeared in Ms., American Scholar, PMLA, Chronicle of Higher Education, LA Review of Books, Transatlantic Review, Nation, New York Times Book Review, Critical Inquiry, and Boundary 2, among scores of other publications. She was founding editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and founding director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women, and she has served as President of the Modern Language Association (1990) and Director of the MacArthur Fellows Program (1993 to 1997).

Deborah Williams is Clinical Professor of Liberal Studies, New York University, USA. Her book publications include Not in Sisterhood: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Zona Gale, and the Politics of Female Authorship (2001), The Necessity of Young Adult Fiction (2023), and Oxford History of the Novel in English Volume Eight: US Literature Since 1940 (2024; with Cyrus RK Patell). Her essays have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The Paris Review, Brevity, Lit Hub, and The Common.