Bettina Aptheker

Bettina Aptheker (born September 13, 1944) is an American, lesbian activist, author, feminist, and professor.

Childhood

Aptheker was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Fay Philippa Aptheker and Herbert Aptheker, a radical activist and Marxist historian. Her first job as a teenager was in the home of W. E. B. Du Bois, with whom her father was a good friend.

Education

Aptheker obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a leader in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the 1960s.

She completed her Master's degree at San José State University, where she later taught African-American and Women's Studies.

In the early 1980s Aptheker completed her graduate studies in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Family

Aptheker has been with Kate Miller, her life partner, since October 1979. They have three children (both from previous marriages), and Aptheker is a grandmother. Prior to this partnership, during her undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, Aptheker was married to fellow student and Communist Jack Kurzweil. [ [http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/jkurzweil/ Dr. Jack Kurzweil ] ] In her 2006 memoir, "Intimate Politics," she claims that she was sexually molested by her father from the age of 4 to the age of 13. However, her charges are based on recovered memory and dissociationcite web |url=http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-aptheker15oct15,1,2000947.story|title=My Father the Icon, My Father the Molester |accessdate=2008-01-17 |date=2006-10-15 |publisher=Los Angeles Times |archiveurl=http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/14/2006/10/#30855 |archivedate=2006-10-30 | first=Bettina |last=Aptheker] and so have been called into doubt. cite web |url=http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/14/2006/10/#30586 |title=Doubts expressed about his daughter's story |accessdate=2008-01-17 |date=2006-10-30 ] [cite web |url=http://orangecoyote.blogspot.com/2006/10/pseudoscientific-accusation-in-la.html |title=Pseudoscientific Accusation in L.A. Times |accessdate=2008-01-17 |date=2006-10-17 ] For example, Mark Rosenzweig writes "the truth about Herbert and Bettina is inaccessible to us."cite web |url=http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/14/2006/10/#30882 |title=RE: Herbert and Bettina Aptheker |accessdate=2008-01-17 |date=2006-10-30 ] She also tells about their highly emotional reconciliation several years before his death. In addition, she claims that her father's celebrations of black resistance were attempts "to compensate for his deep shame about the way, he believed, the Jews had acted during the Holocaust" (for which she has been criticized as "possibly antisemitic").

Career

Aptheker has been teaching in the University of California at Santa Cruz Feminist Studies department since 1980. While she teaches many classes, her "Introduction to Feminisms" course, which emphasizes the multiplicity of feminism and women's experiences, is one of the most popular on campus. What started as a 35 person seminar is now an overflowing lecture course. The course is so popular that in the fall of 2002 the entire course was filmed, with the eventual goal of making the videos accessible to the public.

During the 1970s, Aptheker was actively involved in the trial of Angela Davis, a long-time friend and fellow Marxist.

Aptheker is included in conservative writer David Horowitz's 2006 book, due to her having been a known Communist and for changing the name of the "Women's Studies" department to the "Feminist Studies" department.

References

Bibliography

*cite book
last = Aptheker
first = Bettina
title =The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis
publisher =Cornell University Press
date =1976
id = ISBN 0801485975
*cite book
author = Aptheker, Bettina and Aptheker, Herbert
title =The Unfolding Drama: Studies in U.S. History
publisher =International Publishers
date =1979
id = ISBN 0717805018
*cite book
last = Aptheker
first = Bettina
title =Woman's Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex and Class in American History
publisher =University of Massachusetts Press
date =1982
id = ISBN 0870233653
*cite book
last = Aptheker
first = Bettina
title =Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness and the Meaning of Daily Life
publisher =University of Massachusetts Press
date =1989
id = ISBN 087023658X
*cite book
last = Aptheker
first = Bettina
title =Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel
publisher =Seal Press
date =2006
id = ISBN 158005160X

External links

* [http://humwww.ucsc.edu/FMST/facAptheker.html UCSC Faculty Profile]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=K8O5MLT_uhYC&dq=intimate+politics+bettina&pg=PP1&ots=4JRJ5e4TCd&sig=e3sCdBH-y2xXQQE5N3SJ_USsI_c&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla%253Aen-US%253Aofficial%26hs%3D3cz%26q%3Dintimate%2Bpolitics%2Bbettina%26btnG%3DSearch&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail Google Books - "Intimate Politics"]
* [http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/04.12.00/women2-0015.html "MetroActive" profile]
* [http://humwww.ucsc.edu/FMST/facAptheker.html UC Santa Cruz Feminist Studies Faculty]
* [http://mobile.thenation.com/docmobile.mhtml?i=20071105&s=phelps Christopher Phelps, "Father of History," "The Nation," 2007]