Liza Featherstone

American journalist

University of Michigan
Columbia University

Occupations

Journalist
writer
teacher

Years active1992–presentSpouseDoug HenwoodChildren1

Liza Featherstone (born April 21, 1969) is an American journalist and journalism professor who writes frequently on labor and student activism for The Nation and Jacobin.

Early life and education

Featherstone was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in greater Boston. She graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1991 with honors and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2008. Featherstone was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics Journalism at Columbia for 2007–08.^[1]

Career

From 2013 to 2015, Featherstone held the Belle Zeller visiting chair in public policy at Brooklyn College.^[2] She teaches at New York University^[3] and Columbia's School of International Public Affairs.^[4]

Featherstone's writing has appeared in Lingua Franca, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Left Business Observer, Dissent, Sydney Morning Herald, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, In These Times, Ms., Salon.com, Nerve, Us, Nylon, and Rolling Stone.^[3]

Featherstone has also written several books. She is the author of Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation, published by OR Books, a popular history of the focus group that situates it in a political context and examines its relationship to democracy.^[5] Featherstone is also the co-author of Students Against Sweatshops: The Making of a Movement (2002). In 2004, she published Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart, a history of Dukes vs. Wal-Mart, the largest civil rights class-action suit in history.

Personal life

Featherstone lives in Brooklyn and is married to economics journalist Doug Henwood. They have a son.^[6] She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.^[7]

Books

Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart (2002) ISBN 0-465-02315-0
False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Rodham Clinton (2016) ISBN 1784784613
Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation (2017) ISBN 978-1-682191-06-4

References

^ Knight-Bagehot Fellows of 2007 Archived 2012-03-31 at the Wayback Machine
^ Brooklyn College press release on Zeller chair
^ ^a ^b NYU faculty profile
^ Columbia SIPA
^ "OR Books". Retrieved October 25, 2018.
^ Henwood, Doug (September 23, 2011). "Visiting the occupiers of Wall Street". LBO News.
^ @lfeatherz (June 15, 2022). "And while I am a proud DSA member, it was not just the DSA-endorsed members: @Kristin4Harlem, @CharlesBarron12 and @OsseChi also voted down the austerity budget: real socialists with serious grassroots organization behind them" (Tweet) – via Twitter.