Kristine Stiles frames this formidable volume of correspondence by stating that Carolee Schneemann ‘worked out the abstract, linear, and analytical dimension of thought in a text in order to communicate actual experience through her performing body’ (p. lix). In most of her letters, Schneemann theorizes her work as she also articulates the drive behind the Happenings, Fluxus and kinetic theatre movements. Stiles divides Schneemann's correspondence into a biography in letters made up of four periods. The first (1956–68) covers her marriage with composer James Tenney. Here, the young painter writes of her appreciation of a peaceful domestic life, as well as her frustration with the difficulties women artists face. Her epistolary relationship with lifelong friend filmmaker Stan Brakhage is particularly illuminated by her outrage at his frequent sexist transgressions. During this same period, Schneemann moves from painting to performance art, as she describes the conception and realization of kinetic theatre pieces like the foundational Meat Joy (1964). Detailing others’ experimental performances provides context for the 1960s art scene, as with a letter describing the police action that shut down Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman's 1967 performance of Opera Sextronique.

The second section (1969–75) begins after her break-up with Tenney, detailing a period of wandering in London, while in the third section (1976–86) Schneemann chronicles creating The Men Cooperate (1976); ABC – We Print Anything – In the Cards (1976), and the book More than Meat Joy (1979), among others. Mostly ignored by the art world, she was not ignored by younger artists: an El Paso filmmaker sends word of the censorship of her film Fuses; artist Barbara Smith asks Schneemann for advice on how to finish her book; other artists write to thank her for her visionary work. Schneemann sends thoughtful replies to all. In her striking response to Dick Higgins's suggestion that she find a young surrogate for her own performance pieces, Schneemann contemplates midlife, asking, ‘why should sexual age be so narrow? . . . I only have one chance to be middle-aged, right? So why not see what that tells?’ (p. 327).

In the fourth section (1987–99), Schneemann corrects critics’ articulations of her legacy, calling them out for trivializing her role in the Happenings movement, and for characterizing her as someone who ‘hung out with the [Fluxus] boys’. Notably, she chides Amelia Jones for her characterization of the elegantly ravelled material Schneemann pulled from her own vagina in Interior Scroll as ‘wads of paper’ (pp. 418–21). Correspondence Course is a valuable archive of the thought behind Schneemann's oeuvre, and a reminder of her importance to subsequent generations of body artists. The extensive photo-documentation of her work in More than Meat Joy, including a concise performance chronology, is a useful companion to this collection of letters.