Joan Scott's work has challenged the foundations of conventional historical practice, including the nature of historical evidence and historical experience. Drawing on a range of philosophical thought, as well as on a rethinking of her own training as a labor historian, she has contributed to the formulation of a field of critical history. Written more than twenty years ago, her now classic article, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," continues to inspire innovative research on women and gender. In her latest work she has been concerned with the ways in which difference poses problems for democratic practice. She has taken up this question in her most recent books: Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man; Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism; and The Politics of the Veil. She is currently extending her work on the veil to examine the relationship between secularism and gender equality. She is also preparing a collection of her essays that deals with the uses of psychoanalysis, particularly fantasy, for historical interpretation. The book will be called The Fantasy of Feminist History.