THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Lila Karp

June 7, 1933 – September 15, 2008

“I chose freedom as a woman, and I have been working since 1968 to have freedom for all women.”

Writer, educator, feminist psychotherapist. Author of the novel The Queen is in the Garbage, 1969 and of the essay “Genderless Sexuality: A Male-Female Psychological Exploration of the Future of Sexual Relationships,” published in Woman in the Year 2000, 1974. Joined The Feminists, NYC, 1969. Became a visiting professor at Bryn Mawr College, teaching its first women’s literature course and a course in creative writing for women, 1971. Co-director of The Institute for the Study of Women and Men at the University of Southern California. At the State University of New York at New Paltz, she offered a course on the sociology of women’s literature. At SUNY and at Princeton, where she served as director of the University Women’s Center, fought against entrenched interests to advocate for programs in Women’s Studies, as described in her paper, “Women’s Studies: Fear and Loathing in the Ivy League,” delivered at the National Women’s Studies Association meeting in 1979.