Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Ph.D.

Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy received her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Cambridge University, England in 1972 based on her research about the Waunan of the Chocó province, Colombia. Kennedy was a founding member of Women's Studies at SUNY, Buffalo where she taught for twenty-eight years. She is author of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of A Lesbian Community (Routledge, 1993), which received the Jesse Barnard Award for the best book on women in the field of Sociology in 1994, the Ruth Benedict Award for the best book on a gay/lesbian theme in Anthropology in 1994, and a Lambda Literary Award in 1993. She has also written about the development of women's studies as a field, including the book Feminist Scholarship: Kindling in the Groves of Academe (University of Illinois Press 1983) (with Ellen DuBois et al). Her research/teaching interests include: lesbian and gay history, 20th century sexuality, comparative studies of sexual communities, development of the field of women's studies, feminist pedagogy, feminist research methods, ethnography and oral history.