{"id":488,"date":"2020-04-08T18:42:39","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T22:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/?p=488"},"modified":"2020-04-08T18:42:39","modified_gmt":"2020-04-08T22:42:39","slug":"the-once-only-19th-amendment-centennial-course-a-2020-blog-the-rise-of-the-renewed-womens-movement-and-its-coalition-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/2020\/04\/08\/the-once-only-19th-amendment-centennial-course-a-2020-blog-the-rise-of-the-renewed-womens-movement-and-its-coalition-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Once & Only 19th Amendment Centennial Course: A 2020 Blog: The Rise of the Renewed Women\u2019s Movement and Its Coalition Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Week 11\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our students know very little about the reinvigoration of the women\u2019s movement that began in the 1960s and 1970s \u2013 they know almost as little as they do about the suffrage movement, and their stereotypes and misconceptions of it are equally dominant. For older faculty it is crucial to remember that our juniors and seniors were born around 2000 and may have come to political consciousness after the election of Barack Obama. Their parents<\/em> may have been born around the time the women\u2019s liberation movement was rising, but they won\u2019t remember it. The notion of a \u201cthird wave\u201d is often attributed to Rebecca Walker\u2019s work in the very early 1990s \u2013 our students weren\u2019t yet born then either, although some of their mothers may have felt themselves part of that. But in any case, to teach our students about the 1960s\/70s re-rise of the women\u2019s movement is to teach them ancient history.<\/p>\n

I began this class by retracing our work from early in the semester on social movement theory, emphasizing yet again the importance of social movements as coalitions and networks, and the significance of that framework for understanding the rise of social movements, their historical patterns, and the threats to their survival and success. Just as NWSA was not \u201cthe suffrage movement,\u201d no single organization \u2013 not NOW or any other \u2013 was \u201cthe women\u2019s movement.\u201d And just as the suffrage movement encompassed many different organizations and networks the revolved around different issues and priorities, different styles and tactics, and different social groups, so, even more, did and does the contemporary women\u2019s movement.<\/p>\n

The student preparation for this week was reading Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women\u2019s Movement<\/em> (2014), by Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry. I like assigning this book because it focuses on three different 20th<\/sup> century time periods in feminist movement history: before the rise of the \u201cWomen\u2019s Liberation Movement,\u201d the 1960s\/1970s phase, and the \u201cthird wave.\u201d When I have used this before students are often surprised at how much activism there was between 1920 and the Women\u2019s Liberation Movement. They are fascinated by the \u201cyounger\u201d phase, although that one, as I emphasized above, is now old to them.<\/p>\n

I begin with problematizing the idea of \u201cwaves.\u201d I have never liked or used this terminology in reference to the history of feminist movements, because I believe it oversimplifies and is very misguiding. The first \u201cwave\u201d lasted an extraordinarily long time, involved generations of women, and was much more diverse as a period in feminist history than the wave idea allows for. The second \u201cwave,\u201d as it is generally told, skips over 40 years of rich history. But that \u201cwave,\u201d also is more complicated as a period of feminism than its use often credits.\u00a0 As my students have learned it, there is a sort of homogenizing effect, where there is little difference between the Feminine Mystique<\/em> and the women that inspired and the Redstockings, and feminist organizations of African American women or lesbians are virtually inconceivable given the stereotypes they have received. And the \u201cthird wave,\u201d apparently suddenly invented more fluid sexuality and intersectionality.<\/p>\n

Before we had a full discussion, I screened She\u2019s Beautiful When She\u2019s Angry<\/em> (2014,\u00a0 https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt3319508\/<\/a>), an excellent documentary available through amazon.com . It runs about 1.5 hours, which is perfect for my 3 hour, 45 minute class. The documentary offers an amazingly comprehensive look into the rise of the 1960s\/70s women\u2019s movement, and for all the prominent figures who were still alive at the time of filming, those women narrated and talked about the segments in which they were featured. When I have shown it to classes before, they find it a revelation, especially with respect to what a broad coalition the movement was.<\/p>\n

After it finished I used the breakout rooms feature of zoom to give them a bit of time to discuss among themselves in small rooms what they found most interesting or surprising as they thought about their reading and the documentary, or they could talk about what was similar and what was different between the coalition politics of women\u2019s movements in the 19th<\/sup> century and the end of the 20th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

We only began the discussion \u2013 and will continue it next week, but the race politics segments fascinated them, as did the story of Jane. They were also struck by the theme of the education within the movement \u2013 explicitly, for example, by the Boston Women\u2019s Health Book Collective, but also in the myriad other ways feminists studied, learned and educated themselves, including through consciousness-raising groups, founding periodicals, and through their other action plans.<\/p>\n

More next week.<\/p>\n

The entire blog post on the course can be found here:\u00a0http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/politics-education-gardening-stuff-pegs\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The syllabus can be found here:\u00a0http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/teaching\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Week 11\u00a0 Our students know very little about the reinvigoration of the women\u2019s movement that began in the 1960s and 1970s \u2013 they know almost as little as they do about the suffrage movement, and their stereotypes and misconceptions of it are equally dominant. For older faculty it is crucial to remember that our juniors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5832,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,8,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5832"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/vsapiro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}