Diana E. H. Russell
| Diana Russell | |
|---|---|
| Born | Diana Elizabeth Hamilton Russell 6 November 1938 Cape Town, South Africa |
| Occupation | Feminist, author, activist |
| Period | 1973–present |
| Literary movement | Women's rights, human rights, anti-apartheid |
| Website | |
| dianarussell |
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Diana E. H. Russell (born 6 November 1938) is a feminist writer and activist. Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, she moved to England in 1957, and then to the United States in 1961. For the past 25 years she has been engaged in research on sexual violence against women and girls. She has written numerous books and articles on rape (including marital rape), femicide, incest, misogynist murders of women, and pornography. For The Secret Trauma, she was co-recipient of the 1986 C. Wright Mills Award. She was also the recipient of the 2001 Humanist Heroine Award from the American Humanist Association.
She was an organizer of the First International Tribunal on Crimes against Women, in Brussels in March 1976.
Diana E.H. Russell was born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, the fourth of six children, to a South African father and a British mother. After completing her Bachelors from the University of Cape Town, at the age of 19, Russell left for Britain.
In Britain, she enrolled in a Post Graduate Diploma in Social Science and Administration at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 1961, she passed the Diploma with Distinction and also received the prize for the best student in the program. She moved to the United States, in 1963 where she had been accepted into an interdisciplinary PhD program at Harvard University. Her research focused on sociology and the study of revolution.
Russell's research focus probably stems from her own involvement in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. In 1963, Russell had joined the Liberal Party of South Africa that had been founded by Alan Paton, the author of Cry the Beloved Country. While participating in a peaceful protest in Cape Town, Russell was arrested with other party members. She came to the conclusion that non-violent strategies were futile against the brutal violence and repression of the white Afrikaner police state. Thereafter, she joined the African Resistance Movement (ARM), an underground revolutionary movement fighting apartheid in South Africa. The principal strategy of the ARM was to bomb and sabotage government property, and though Russell was only a peripheral member of the ARM, she still risked a 10-year incarceration if caught.
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