About the Book
This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched.
Women’s Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism situates late 20th-century feminisms within a global framework of women’s activism. Its chapters, written by leading international scholars, demonstrate how issues of heterogeneity, transnationalism, and intersectionality have transformed understandings of historical feminism.
It is no longer possible to imagine that feminism has ever fostered an unproblematic sisterhood among women blind to race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality and citizenship status. The chapters in this collection modify the "wave" metaphor in some cases and in others re-periodize it. By studying individual movements, they collectively address several themes that advance our understandings of the history of feminism, such as the rejection of "hegemonic" feminism by marginalized feminist groups, transnational linkages among women’s organizations, transnational flows of ideas and transnational migration. By analyzing practical activism, the chapters in this volume produce new ways of theorizing feminism and new historical perspectives about the activist locations from which feminist politics emerged.
Including histories of feminisms in the United States, Canada, South Africa, India, France, Russia, Japan, Korea, Poland and Chile, Women’s Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism provides a truly global re-appraisal of women’s movements in the late 20th century.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.
Table of Contents:
Introduction Barbara Molony (Santa Clara University, USA) and Jennifer Nelson (University of Redlands, USA)
I. Redefining Feminism
1. Hunger Doesn’t Take a Vacation: The Food Activism of United Bronx Parents (Lana Povitz, New York University, USA)
2. ‘Sex-Ins, College Style’: Black Feminism and Sexual Politics in the Student YWCA, 1968-1980 (April Haynes, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
3. Contemporary Feminisms and Controversies about the Principle of Secularity in France: A Model of Emancipation (Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz, Free University of Brussels, Belgium)
4. SEWA’s Feminism (Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
5. Feminist Dissidents in the ‘Motherland of Women’s Liberation: Shattering Soviet Myths and Memory (Rochelle Ruthchild, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, USA)
II. Reconsidering “Second Wave” Feminist Genealogies
6. On the ‘F’ Word as Insult and on Feminism as Political Practice: Women’s Mobilization for Rights in Chile (Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney, University of Arizona, USA)
7. Beyond the ‘Development’ Paradigm: State Socialist Women’s Activism, Transnationalism and the ‘Long Sixties’ (Magdalena Grabowska, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)
8. ‘Making a Point by Choice’: Maternal Imperialism, Second Wave Feminism, and Transnational Epistemologies (Priya Jha, University of Redlands, USA)
9. Shared History and the Responsibility for Justice: The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Seung-kyung Kim, Indiana University-Bloomington, USA and Na Young Lee, Chung-Ang University, South Korea)
III. Transnational Feminist Linkages
10. Mapping the Edges of Environmental Suburbia: Gender, Action, and the City in Late-Century California (Jeannette Alden Estruth, New York University, USA)
11. The Politics and Possibilities of ‘Difference’ in Dalit Feminist Activism (Purvi Mehta, Colorado College, USA)
12. One Thousand Wednesdays: Transnational Activism from Seoul to Glendale (Vera Mackie, University of Wollongong, Australia)
13. Contesting the Nation(s): Haitian and Mohawk Women’s Activism in Montreal (Amanda Ricci, McGill University, Canada)
14. If Not Feminism, Then What? Women’s Work in the African National Congress in Exile (Rachel Sandwell, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)
Index
About the Author :
Barbara Molony is Professor of History at Santa Clara University, USA. She is co-author of Gender in Modern East Asia (2016) and co-editor of Asia's New Mothers: Crafting Gender Roles and Childcare Networks in East and Southeast Asian Societies (2008) and Gendering Modern Japanese History (2005).
Jennifer Nelson is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Redlands, USA. She is the author of More than Medicine: A History of the Feminist Women's Health Movement (2015) and Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement (2003).
Review :
Makes an important contribution to the developing field, particularly in reconfiguring the history of women’s activism away from western and white Eurocentric dominance. The book has a very wide reach, with fourteen chapters devoted to the histories of marginalised women across the globe, all of whom committed themselves to activism which benefited their communities in many different ways.
This volume succeeds admirably in rethinking the chronological and geographical scope, and the political textures, of "second wave" feminism around the world. Essays ranging from black college students in the YWCA redefining sexuality, to Soviet-era dissidents producing underground art and journals, to First Nation activists demanding sovereignty reveal early manifestations of what scholars later termed transnationalism and intersectionality. Each study is carefully grounded in time and place while contributing to a broad picture of global grass-roots activism.
This collection completely transforms our understanding of feminism by providing new frames through which to view its evolution as a global phenomenon. The book shows feminism’s complex interactions with other major social trends and includes vibrant debate about the challenges posed by intersectional and transnational feminisms. Women’s Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism brings together leading researchers in the field and is a vital resource for every reader seeking fresh perspectives on this significant force for social change in our times.
This innovative collection of essays will be of great value to scholars, teachers and students of History and Women’s Studies. Taken together, the case studies suggest the value of widening our definition of the temporal and spatial scope of ‘second wave’ feminism, the importance of bringing together intersectional and transnational frames of analysis, and the value of starting from the local in studying the global history of women’s activism.
Molony and Nelson have compiled a wide-ranging set of essays that offer fresh approaches to the study of transnational feminism and women’s activism in the twentieth century. This volume covers a broad terrain, from Puerto Rican women’s campaigns to ensure children’s access to nutritious food in New York City schools to self-employed women’s labor organizing in India. The essays in this book reveal the complexity and vitality of transnational feminism and also prompt readers to interrogate familiar categories of analysis in women’s history.
