Phillipa Kafka is currently Professor Emerita at Kean University, Union, New Jersey, and the former Director of its Women's Studies Program. An active participant in the Second-Wave feminist movement, she was also a pioneer in multi-ethnic studies.

She has published essays, reviews, poetry, and four full-length works of feminist literary criticism: The Great White Way: African-American Women Writers and American Success Mythology (Garland, 1993); (Un)Doing the Missionary Position: Gender Asymmetry in Contemporary Asian American Women's Writings (Greenwood, 1997); (Out)Classed Women: Contemporary Chicana Writers on Inequitable Gendered Power Relations (Greenwood, 2000); and "Saddling LaGringa": Gatekeeping in Contemporary Latina Writers (Greenwood, 2000). Most recently, she edited a collection of memoirs and essays, Lost on the Map ofthe World: Jewish-American Women's Quest for Home, 1890-Present (Peter Lang, 2001).