Publications

Books

simondebeauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman

This pioneering study of Simone de Beauvoir was first published in 1993. The 2nd edition, with a long new introductory chapter, was published in 2008, to mark the centenary of the birth of Simone de Beauvoir. A paperback edition is now available. To buy the book, click here.

henrikibsen

Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy

Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism received the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for the best book in Comparative Literature in 2007. Read A. S. Byatt’s review in The Guardian here.To buy the book, click here.

sexgender

Sex, Gender and the Body: The Student Edition of “What Is a Woman”?

Published in 2005, this book contains  the two lead essays of What Is a Woman? And Other Essays (1999). In this book, Toril Moi draws on ordinary language philosophy to show that Simone de Beauvoir’s feminism suggests solutions to problems in contemporary feminist theory. The first essay, “What Is a Woman? Sex, Gender and the Body” analyses contemporary feminist theories based on the sex/gender distinction. The second essay, “‘I Am a Woman’: The Personal and the Philosophical” investigates the place of the personal in theoretical writing.  To buy the book, click here.

About me

Toril Moi is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies, and Professor of English, and Theater Studies at Duke University. She is Director of the Center for Philosophy, Arts, and Literature at Duke.

In spring 2009, she was a Fellow at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France.

2014-11-07 15.14.44
Roskilde, Denmark, November 2014. (Photography Ida Irene Bergstrøm)

Toril Moi grew up in the countryside in the south-west of Norway, and was educated at the University of Bergen. From 1979 to 1989 she lived mostly in Oxford, UK, and since 1989 she has been a resident of North Carolina.

As an academic, she writes on feminism, literary theory, ordinary language philosophy and literature. Her first book, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (1985) has been translated into fifteen languages. Her 1994 book Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman has been translated into five languages, and a new 2nd edition was published in 2008. Her book Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism won the MLA’s award for best book in comparative literary studies for 2007. Her most recent book on feminist theory is Sex, Gender and the Body: The Student Edition of What Is a Woman (2005).

In Norway, Toril Moi also writes widely for newspapers and magazines.