Re-Reading the Feminist Sixties

February 7, 2014

9:30am-5:30pm

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, 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.

9:30-10 Introductory Remarks, Eileen Boris, Feminist Studies, UCSB

10-12 Work

Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, Chair Chicano Studies, UCSB

Katherine Turk, History, UT Dallas: “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, College of Liberal Studies, Cal State Los Angeles: “Forging a Distant Coalition: Black and Chicana Welfare Rights Organizing in Los Angeles”

Melissa Fisher, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University: “Wall Street Women and the Changing Politics of Sixties Feminism”

12-1 Lunch

1-3 Social Movements

France Winddance Twine, Chair Sociology, UCSB : “'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 Studies and the Center for Black Studies Research, UCSB: “Asian American Feminism: Re-reading the Long 60s”

Nan Boyd, Women and Gender Studies, San Francisco State: “What's Love Got to Do with It?: New Feminisms and Queer Histories”

3:30-5:30 Politics

Pei-te Lien, Chair

Political Science, UCSB

Leandra Zarnow, Center for US Studies, University of Toronto: “Towards Feminism in Politics: Bella Abzug's Journey from Oppositional Grassroots Activism to a Power Position in Washington”

Barbara Winslow, Education and Women’s Studies, Brooklyn College: “'This is Fighting Shirley Chisholm:' Pioneering Urban Liberalism, Feminism and Black Liberation”

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

This event is sponsored by: the Center for Research on Women and Social Justice,/Hull Chair, Feminist Studies, Center for Black Studies Research, Vice-Chancellor for Diversity, the IHC, Deans’ Conference Fund, Departments of History, Sociology, Chicana/o Studies, and the Great Society at 50 Series