A feminist activist, writer, visual artist, filmmaker, teacher and human rights advocate, Kate Millett has been described as one of the most influential Americans of the twentieth century.
Dr. Millett began her academic career as an English instructor at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and has held several additional teaching positions over the years. Some of the institutions she has worked for include Tokyo’s Waseda University, Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Sacramento State University, and University of California at Berkeley.
As a political activist, Dr. Millett has long fought for the rights of women, gay liberation, mentally disabled patients, and the elderly. Her first significant contribution came in 1966, when she was named as the first Chair of the Education Committee of the newly formed National Organization for Women (NOW). In 1968, she authored a pioneering report published by NOW, Token Learning: A Study of Women’s Higher Education in America, in which she challenged women’s colleges to provide educational opportunities for women equal to those
being provided to men.
A few years after joining NOW, Dr. Millett authored Sexual Politics (1970), a landmark work in feminist theory that fueled the second-wave of the women’s movement in the U.S. Across her lifetime, she authored numerous articles and books, including Flying (1974), Going to Iran (1981), and the 1990 The Loony Bin Trip (on mental illness).
In 1971, Dr. Millett formed Women’s Liberation Cinema and produced the feminist classic, Three Lives. Between 1963 and 2009, she had several international solo art exhibitions and installations in sculpture, drawing, serigraphs and photography.
She served as the Director of the Millett Center for the Arts, a creative work space that provides artist-in-residence accommodation and studio facilities to women artists from around the world. Dr. Millett founded the Center in 1978, on her own ten acre farm in LaGrange, New York.
She was the recipient of many awards, including The Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts and The New York Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award.
Kate Millett, survived by her spouse Sophie Kier, died September 6, 2017 in Paris.
