_Beauvoir in Time_ situates _The Second Sex_ in the historical contexts of its writing and later international receptions, showing the continued, though paradoxical, value of her views on sexuality, race, class, and politics for feminists today.

The importance of Hegel to the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir, both to her early philosophical texts and to The Second Sex, is usually discussed in terms of the master-slave dialectic and a Kojève-influenced reading, which some see her as sharing with Sartre, others persuasively describe as divergent from and corrective to Sartre's. Altman shows that Hegel's influence on Beauvoir's work is also wider, both in terms of what she takes on board and what she works through and rejects, and (...) that her reading of Hegel is crucially inflected by two additional circumstances that Sartre did not entirely share: the experience of her first serious study of Hegel as a noncombatant in Paris during the German occupation and her earlier direct exposure to an eccentric, idealist reading of Hegel as developed by the group Philosophies in connection with surrealism and the artistic avant-garde. Altman also explores the afterlife of Hegel's influence on Beauvoir on second-wave feminism in the United States and Europe, and suggests continuing relevance to feminist theory today. (shrink)

As the International Simone de Beauvoir Society celebrates the relaunch of Simone de Beauvoir Studies, the author looks back with gratitude to longtime editor Yolanda Patterson and reviews what the journal’s thirty-year history has to tell us about Beauvoir scholarship, past, present, and future. Topics discussed include the history of the Society; engagements with Beauvoir from the perspectives of literary criticism, philosophy, and the social sciences; and controversies over Beauvoir’s character, her response to the Occupation, her relationship to Sartre, and (...) her legacy for feminism. (shrink)

This chapter praises the 2010 translation of _The Second Sex_, driven by criticism of H.M. Parshley’s original translation by writers like Toril Moi, which was received with mixed reviews, reigniting the old controversy over the success of the English translation of Beauvoir’s message. In her review, Meryl Altman defends not only the choice of translators, but also the integrity of their work. In fact, Altman observes, Borde and Malovany-Chevallier’s lack of “professional stakes” in the translation prevented them from adding words (...) here and there to generate a “more opinionated” translation. Rather, she claims, Borde and Malovany-Chevallier remain neutral and resist the temptation of modernizing Beauvoir by importing anachronisms that would have obscured the meaning of Beauvoir’s key philosophical insights. Ultimately, Altman argues that the new translation succeeds at refreshing sections of the text, restoring the many authors that Beauvoir cites, and rekindling an interest in Beauvoir and feminism. (shrink)

This article takes up the specifically literary qualities of Beauvoir's writing, in her fiction and her essays, situating her in literary history and exploring some important influences. I argue that Beauvoir's feminism emerged in her literary works well before it could be articulated in her philosophical and political writing, and that what emerged was a feminism attentive to women's lived embodiment, and intimately conscious of the contradictions of class.