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I have been involved in women's studies both at Smith and in the Valley for over 30 years. I taught one of the first courses dealing with gender at the College ("Women and Social Change", 1974-75); have participated in the Women's Studies Committee—now the Committee on the Study of Women and Gender-- since its inception (initially as the Advisory Committee on the Study of Women's Experience); and have served as member and chair of the Five College Women's Studies Committee as well.

My teaching, research and writing have all centered on the nature and structure of political communities, and, in particular, patterns of power and participation within them. My teaching has included courses and seminars in (U.S.) urban politics, political participation, the politics and wealth and poverty, and feminist and democratic theory. My research has focused on the anarchist movement in Spain, and, particularly, the place of the subordination and emancipation of women within the anarchist project; and on women's place in the political arena in the U.S. I have been particularly concerned with the ways minority women are included in, or excluded from, the structures of communal life, the options that leaves to those excluded, and the ways in which those who have been on the margin respond to their marginality. I have come to believe that attention to these issues requires a reconceptualization of both political life and of the categories in which we analyze it.  

The major focus of my work on Spain was the anarchist women's organization, Mujeres Libres. My book, Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women, explores Mujeres Libres' roots in the broader anarchist movement, and examines the unique approach of the movement to issues of political vision and political mobilization. It provided me an opportunity both to explore anarchist perspectives on some critical problems of social change and political strategy, and to address contemporary issues about incorporating diversity into feminist and other political movements.  That book has since been translated into Spanish and Italian, and a French version is in the works. A new edition in English (that includes some new materials first written for the Spanish edition) was released by AK Press in 2005.  

My more recent work has been a further exploration of what I might call "applied feminist theory," and, specifically, constructions of gender and citizenship. I have been examining how feminist theorizing and feminist activism have affected the ways we think about some central political concepts e.g. public and private, autonomy and dependence, participation and democracy and exploring the implications of these changes for public policy and our understandings of what it is to be a citizen.  I am also interested in questions of identity and identity politics: both the continuing power of such claims, and the dangers associated with them, for feminists and in the larger culture. At present, I am at work on a book tentatively titled "Making Democracy Work: (Re)Conceiving Politics Through the Lens of Women's Activism" that will explore these and other themes, using as its focus a case-study of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women (NCNW). The NCNW was founded in Brooklyn, NY in 1974, as an organization dedicated to strengthening the leadership capacities of working-class women in their neighborhoods and, specifically, enabling them better to work together across lines of ethnic/racial differences. The papers of the NCNW are in the Smith Archives, and I have also been involved in bringing members of the organization to the Smith campus.  Finally and related, I am interested in the interconnections of politics, spirituality, and community, particularly in a Jewish context. I have written a number of articles on politics and spirituality, on women in Judaism, on changing family structures in the Jewish community, and on the place of lesbians/gays/bisexuals and the transgendered within the Jewish community.

Finally, I serve as chair of the Northampton Housing Partnership, a city board that advocates for, and educates the community about, affordable housing in Northampton.

Free Women of Spain by Professor Martha Ackelsberg

Chronicling women's struggle within the social revolution that accompanied the Spanish Civil War, Free Women of Spain focuses on the importance of women's communities and gender-specific experiences as the basis for women's entry into public politics. Martha Ackelsberg traces the efforts by Mujeres Libres to create an independent organization of and for working-class women that would empower them to take their places in the revolution and in the new society.

Founded in 1936 by groups of women in Madrid and Barcelona, Mujeres Libres was an organization dedicated to the liberation of women from their "triple-enslavement to ignorance, as women, and as producers". Although the anarcho-syndicalist movement in Spain was committed to overcoming all forms of domination (including that of men over women), the women who founded Mujeres Libres differed from many of their comrades, arguing that women needed special preparation to overcome their subordination and to take their place in the new society.

Strongly rooted in the collectivist and communalist traditions which had developed in Spain, Mujeres Libres was committed to a vision of society in which the self-development of each is connected to the development of all. Ackelsberg argues that anarchist analyses of relations of domination and subordination and the centrality of notions of community can be important resources for contemporary feminists. She also suggests that an examination of the problems that Mujeres Libres confronted can provide lessons for contemporary feminists struggling to create communities that respect diversity.