Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy received her Ph.D. in social anthropology from Cambridge University, England in 1972 based on her research about the Waunan of the Chocó province, Colombia. Kennedy was a founding member of Women's Studies at SUNY, Buffalo where she taught for twenty-eight years.
She is author of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of A Lesbian Community, which received the Jesse Barnard Award for the best book on women in the field of Sociology in 1994, the Ruth Benedict Award for the best book on a gay/lesbian theme in Anthropology in 1994, and a Lambda Literary Award in 1993.
She has also written about the development of women's studies as a field, including the book Feminist Scholarship: Kindling in the Groves of Academe, with Ellen DuBois, et al. Her research/teaching interests include: lesbian and gay history, 20th century sexuality, comparative studies of sexual communities, development of the field of women's studies, feminist pedagogy, feminist research methods, ethnography and oral history.
