Re-Reading the Feminist Sixties

Re-Reading the Feminist Sixties

Friday, February 7 / 9:30 AM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

Fifty years after Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark bill that added sex to anti-discrimination law, this conference looks to feminism during a decade that began with liberal reform and exploded into calls for fundamental changes in work, politics, family, and social life. Conference panels will focus on work, social movements (with a focus on economic racial, and sexual justice), and politics, as seen in the activism of pioneer women in Congress: Patsy Mink, Bella Abzug, and Shirley Chisholm. Distinguished speakers will explore topics ranging from Chicana experiences of welfare and low-wage work; gender, class, and labor as they impacted women working in 1960s Wall Street; the Communist legacy for Black Feminism; and the intersections and divergences between the Asian American and feminist movements.

Speakers will include: Melissa Fisher, Leandra Zarnow, Katherine Turk, Barbara Winslow, Judy Wu, Eric McDuffe, Alejandra Marchevsky, Nan Boyd, and Diane Fujino.

9:30-10    Introductory Remarks, Eileen Boris

10-12        Work
Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, Chair

Katherine Turk, “Into the Troubled Waters of Sex Discrimination”:The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Rights Claims, and the Origins of State-Enforced Sex Equality, 1965-1972”

Alejandra Marchevesky, “Forging a Distant Coalition: Black and Chicana Welfare Rights Organizing in Los Angeles”

Melissa Fisher, “Wall Street Women and the Changing Politics of Sixties Feminism”

12-1        Lunch

1-3        Social Movements
France Winddance Twine, Chair

Erik McDuffie, “’I was walking a path… already established by my mother’: The Old Left and the Origins of 1960s and 70s Black Feminism”

Diane Fujino, “Asian American Feminism:  Re-reading the Long 60s”

Nan Boyd, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?: New Feminisms and  Queer Histories”

3:30-5:30     Politics
Pei-te Lien, Chair

Leandra Zarnow, “Towards Feminism in Politics: Bella Abzug’s  Journey from Oppositional Grassroots Activism to a Power Position in Washington”

Barbara Winslow, “’This is Fighting Shirley Chisholm:’ Pioneering Urban  Liberalism, Feminism and Black Liberation”

Judy Wu, “Feminist Legislative Activism:  Patsy Mink and the Women’s Educational Equity Act”

 

Sponsored by the Center for Research on Women and Social Justice/Hull Chair, Feminist Studies, the Center for Black Studies Research, Vice-Chancellor for Diversity, the Deans’ Conference Fund, the Dept.  of History, the Dept. of Sociology, the Dept. of Chicana/o Studies, and the IHC.
Website: http://www.femst.ucsb.edu/projects/crwsj