In New Hampshire, she wrote her first major work of feminist eco-criticism, "The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters" (1975). While the book got positive reviews and pioneered the field of feminist ecocriticism, Kolodny was denied promotion and tenure in the English Department at the University of New Hampshire. (Richter 1387) Active in the student movements while in Berkeley, she continued to advocate for the right to establish a program in women’s studies. She later sued the University of New Hampshire charging sex discrimination and anti-Semitism. She settled with the "largest financial award in history in a case of this kind". She used this money to establish the Legal Fund of the Task Force on Discrimination for the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), an organization she had helped found, and served as director of the task force from 1980 to 1985. The Task Force is now renamed Feminists Against Academic Discrimination within the NWSA.