Mary Caputi is Professor Emerita of Political Theory at California State University, Long Beach, where she taught political theory, feminist thought, and critical thinking for thirty years. Her scholarship spans feminist political theory, critical theory, American culture, and the politics of power and resistance. Her most recent publication is the Research Handbook on Feminist Political Thought (Edward Elgar, 2024), co-edited with Patricia Moynagh. She is the author of Slow Culture and the American Dream: A Slow and Curvy Philosophy for the 21st Century (Lexington Books, 2022), Feminism and Power: The Need for Critical Theory (Lexington Books, 2013), A Kinder, Gentler America: Melancholia and the Mythical 1950s (University of Minnesota Press, 2005), and Voluptuous Yearnings: A Feminist Theory of the Obscene (Rowman & Littlefield, 1994). With Amirhosein Khandizaji, she co-authored David Riesman and Critical Theory: Autonomy versus Emancipation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Professor Caputi has also co-edited several influential essay collections, including Teaching Marx and Critical Theory in the Twenty-First Century (Brill, 2019, with Bryant Sculos), Jacques Derrida and the Future of the Liberal Arts (Bloomsbury, 2013, with Vincent Del Casino), and Revisiting Marcuse: Critical Reflections and New Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025, with Amirhosein Khandizaji). She served as editor of Politics & Gender from 2016 to 2019 and has taught abroad in Florence and Rome, Italy. She is currently working on a book on American counterculture in the twenty-first century.
