Pilardi, Jo-Ann 1941-

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PILARDI, Jo-Ann 1941-

PERSONAL: Born 1941. Education: Duquesne University, B.A.; Pennsylvania State University, M.Phil.; Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Towson University, 8000 York Rd., Towson, MD 21252-0001; fax: 410-830-4398 and 410-830-3753.

CAREER: Author and educator. Towson University, Towson, MD, professor of philosophy and women's studies and director of women's studies program.

WRITINGS:

Simon de Beauvoir Writing the Self: Philosophy Becomes Autobiography, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1999.

SIDELIGHTS: Author and educator Jo-Ann Pilardi serves as Professor of philosophy and women's studies at Towson University in Maryland. Her varied research interests include feminist philosophy; existentialism; postmodernism and deconstruction; social and political philosophy; race, class, and gender studies; and the life and work of French feminist Simone de Beauvoir, the last on whom she focuses her book, Simone de Beauvoir Writing the Self: Philosophy Becomes Autobiography.

Pilardi's goal in Simone de Beauvoir Writing the Self is not to provide a biography or simple critique of the author's writing. Instead, she attempts to examine Beauvoir's theory of self as she presented it in her works, analyzing essays, Beauvoir's influential work The Second Self, and subsequent autobiographical writings. Ursula Tidd, in a review for Hypatia, called Pilardi's book "a welcome contribution to Simone de Beauvoir studies and, more particularly, to critical studies of Beauvoir's autobiographical project." The critic went on to label Simone de Beauvoir Writing the Self "an ambitions project for it seeks to interrelate two substantial areas of Beauvoir's corpus and invites us to see how she developed her philosophical thinking through the representation of her singular life." Biography contributor Barbara Klaw remarked that Pilardi's book will be "of appeal to those with little background in philosophy or in Beauvoir studies, as well as to a seasoned scholar," and concluded that it "stands out as a worthy text which could easily be used in philosophy or literature courses . . . It is a very understandable and valuable addition to current Beauvoirian scholarship."