Thursday, March 27

2:00

• Tour and Reception at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library

3 James Street, Cambridge, MA4:00

• Boston University Conference Registration Began

Stone Lobby, George Sherman Union (GSU)
775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA5:00

• Reception

GSU Metcalf Ballroom7:30

• An evening of films of and about the era

GSU Metcalf Ballroom
Jennifer Lee, “Feminist: Stories from Women’s Liberation.”
Mary Dore, “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry.” (excerpts)
Joan Braderman, “Heretics.” (shorter version)7:30

• “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf”

TheatreLab@855, College of Fine Arts
855 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA

Friday, March 28

8:00

Registration and Coffee

9:00

• Opening Plenary (Session 1)

GSU Metcalf Ballroom
Deborah Belle, Welcome
“Anything You Want To Be,” a short film by Liane Brandon
Marge Piercy – “The War on Women is Part of a Larger War”
Sara Evans, Keynote Address – “Clearing Away the Myths to See the Revolution”
Click here for the video10:30

Coffee Break

11:00

Session 2

Click Here To See Session 2 Panels

Historians discuss our historical narratives about the women’s liberation movement
GSU Conference Auditorium
Nancy Cott (chair), Rosalyn Baxandall, Dionne Espinoza, Sara Evans, Astrid Henry, Ruth Rosen, Robyn Spencer

• The Problems that Had No Names
• A full accounting: Thoughts on Black women’s history and the sixties movements
• Was Decentralization of the Movement on Balance Strength on Balance A Strength or Weakness
• Click here for the video

How to Defang a Movement: Replacing the Political with the Personal
GSU Metcalf Ballroom
Kathie Sarachild (moderator), Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kathy Scarbrough, Carol Hanisch

• The Descent from Radical Feminism to Post-Modernism
• Women’s Liberation is Based on Sex not Gender
• Telltale Words: Depoliticizing the Women’s Liberation Movement
• Click here for the video

12:30

Lunch

1:30

• ‘Still Ain’t Satisfied!’ – Liberation Songs of Women’s Music

Conference Auditorium, George Sherman Union
with Marcia Deihl and Deborah Silverstein2:00

Session 3

Click Here To See Session 3 Panels

From the Lowell “Mill Girls” to Lean In: The Long Dance of Feminism and Capitalism
GSU Conference Auditorium
Susan Faludi

• Introduced by Marilyn Halter

“Free to Be a Child”: Non-sexist Child rearing, Popular Culture, & the Women’s Liberation Movement
GSU East Balcony
Lori Rotskoff, Laura Lovett, Carole Hart

• Click here for the video

Tools of the Movement: Democracy, Community, and Consciousness Raising
Photonics 906
Leslie Brody (chair), Jane Mansbridge, Pernille Ipsen, Janet Freedman, Judith Parker & Deborah Mahlstedt

• The Cambridge Women’s Center: Reflections on the Women’s Movement as a Core Stronghold for Participatory Democracy
• “The power of community was liberating”: Experiences of Liberation at the first Femo-Camp in Denmark in 1971
• A New Era of Consciousness-Raising
• Process is Political: Current Conceptions of Feminist Process in Women’s Studies and Gender Studies Programs

Religion, Spirituality, and Women’s Liberation
School of Theology (STH) B19
Dean Mary Elizabeth Moore (chair), Mary Anne Case, Robyn Stein DeLuca, Xochitl Alvizo, Elizabeth Chloe Erdmann

• The Women’s Liberation Movement through Vatican Eyes
• The enduring legacy of second wave Jewish feminist theology
• Radical Feminist Theologies and the Emerging Church
• Raise it up: A goddess pilgrimage as a sustainable method for keeping feminist sparks flying without burning out

The Unfinished Business of Sex Equality: New Scholarship in the Legal History of Women’s Workplace Rights
College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) B12
Katherine Turk, Deborah Dinner, Mary Ziegler, Serena Mayeri (commentator)

• Explaining Women’s Work: Sex Equality Law and the Comparable Worth Movement in the Postwar Office
• Equal by What Measure? Antidiscrimination, Protective Laws, and Labor Feminism
• The Unfinished Business of Choice: Legal History, Abortion, and Workplace Equality

Revisiting 70’s Feminist Theory
CAS 222
Lisa Disch, Judith Grant, Lori Marso, Kathi Weeks

• Christine Delphy’s Deconstructivist Maternalism: An Overlooked “French Feminism”
• Levi-Strauss and Structuralism in Second Wave Feminist Theory: Simone de Beauvoir, Gayle Rubin, and Juliet Mitchell
• Rereading the Second Sex: Simone de Beauvoir and Feminism Today
• The Vanishing Dialectic: Shulamith Firestone and the Future of the Feminist 1970s
• Click here for the video

Women’s Activism in Chicago: How the ideas of the women’s movement framed struggles in hospitals, the workplace and schools
CAS 315
Mardge Cohen, Diane Horwitz, Christine George

• Challenging de facto segregation in childbirth and expanding abortion services in Chicago hospitals
• Women’s Health in the Women’s Liberation Movement
• The Women’s Liberation Movement: Manifestations at the Workplace
• The Returning Women’s Program
• What did feminism offer to working class women at a community college?
• Promoting women’s power and leadership in trade unions

Women’s Liberation’s Revolutionary Potential
CAS 326
Diane Balser (chair), Judy Gumbo Albert, Roberta Salper, Sue Katz

• “Say you want a Revolution?”: The Revolutionary Basis of the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s and early 1970s.
• “Tits Above the Fold”: Women at the Berkeley Barb, 1969
• The Radical Beginning: Women’s Studies: The Women’s Liberation Movement and the New Left
• Women’s Liberation Explosion at BU: Going from one to many collectives in 1969-70
• Click here for the video

3:20

Coffee Break

3:40

Session 4

Click Here To See Session 4 Panels

Women’s Liberation in Action: Theory, Practice and Organization
GSU Conference Auditorium
Heather Tobis Booth, Demita Frazier, Amy Kesselman, Chris Riddiough, Vivian Rothstein, Naomi Weisstein (in absentia)

• The Liberation School for Women: A Project of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union
• Some Civil Rights and Student Movement Origins to Women’s Liberation
• Black feminist theory and practice in Boston, Massachusetts
• Women vs. Connecticut: Building a movement; sustaining a vision
• Strategy and Action in the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union: The Example of the Lesbian Group
• Building a Pluralist, Inviting Women’s Liberation Organization
• Reaching Out to Teenagers with Revolutionary Feminist Music: The Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band 1970-1973.
• Click here for the video

Childhood and Adolescence
GSU East Balcony
Lori Rotskoff (chair), Clare Ploucha, Kera Lovell, Lauren Savit, Isobelle Barrett Meyering

• Women’s History for Children
• Girls are Equal Too: High School Activism and the Second Wave Women’s Movement
• Sisters by Heart: How the Seeds of Women’s Liberation Blossomed at All-Girls’ Overnight Camps
• “Down with childhood”: Shulamith Firestone and the Feminist Project of Women’s and Children’s Liberation—A View from Australia

Love, Sex, Marriage, and Motherhood
Photonics 906
Marilyn Safir (chair), Jodie N. Mader, Robin K. Payne, Rebecca Chalker, Sarah Crook

• “Is this all?”: The Rebellion and Madness of a 1960s Housewife
• Is there love after liberation?: The Problem of Romantic Love and the World of Ms. In the 1970s
• The Pleasure Revolution: Feminists Critique Freud, Write Sex Advice Books and Subversive Novels, Found Their Own Magazine, Popularize Masturbation, Demand Respect for Lesbians, Open Their Own Sex Shops, Do Their Own Sex Surveys, Rehabilitate the Clitoris, Insert “Sex” Into Therapy, Explore BDSM, Make “Cunt” Art, Create Their Own Porn, and, in the Process, Reinvent Sex for Women and Their Partners
• Of Anger and Tenderness: Understandings of how the Women’s Liberation Movement Challenged Psychiatry and Changed Motherhood in Britain

Feminist Filmmaking
STH B20
Maria San Filippo (chair), Linda Dittmar, Kristen Fallica, Maya Montañez Smukler

• Silver, Pink and Purple Screen: Renegade Cinema and Feminist Academia
• Cinematic Consciousness-Raising: 1970s Feminist Media Activism and Women Make Movies
• Directing Hollywood: The American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women

International Influences
STH B22
Shahla Haeri (chair), Pnina Lahav, Sara Mameni, Laura X

• Golda Meir and the US Women’s Liberation Movement
• The Problem-Solving Nuts: U.S. Feminism and the Iranian Revolution
• Russian socialist influences on IWD resurrection which started our International Women’s History Archive

Pushing Their Limits: Toward an Expanded Understanding of the Women’s Movement
STH 113
Jeannette Estruth, Lana Povitz, Amanda Ricci

• South Bay Area’s United Farmworkers, Environmental Justice
• Hunger Doesn’t Take A Vacation: United Bronx Parents, Free Summer Meals, and a Women’s Movement for Everyone
• Haitian women in Montreal

The Translation of Women’s Liberation into Law and Feminist Legal Theory and Practice
CAS B12
Linda McClain, Khiara Bridges, Aziza Ahmed, Elizabeth Schneider

• How should we measure the success or failure of the women’s liberation movement in bringing about concrete changes in law and policy? How has feminist legal analysis developed in concrete areas (such as violence against women, reproductive rights, family and marriage law, work/family policy, and race and the law) that were critical to the movement and its demands for law reform?
• Click here for the video

Capturing the Moment: Photography of the Women’s Movement
CAS 211
Ellen Shub (chair), Joanne Donovan, Diana Mara Henry, Jo Freeman

• Sharing women photographer’s images of movement activists engaged in the cultural, health and political issues of the time

Women Revolt: Publishing Feminists, Publishing Feminisms
CAS 222
Agatha Beins, Jennifer Gilley, Tessa Jordan, Julie R. Enszer

• Rethinking Lesbian Separatism
• Sisterhood is Powerful, Inc.
• Canada’s First National Feminist Magazine
• Feminist Periodicals and the Locations of Feminism

The Legacy and Lessons of Working-Class Feminism: Brooklyn’s National Congress of Neighborhood Women
CAS 226
Tamar Carroll, Christine Noschese, Susana Arellano

• Recovering the contributions of working-class women and women of color to women’s liberation
• Filmmaker to Organizer and Back: A Personal Documentary History of Working-class Women’s Activism, 1973-1980.
• Making grassroots women’s leadership and activism visible/Inspiring the next generation

5:00

• Reception and Exhibition Opening

Geena Davis: Actor and Advocate
GSU Conference Auditorium
From Geena Davis’ personal archive at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center6:00

• The Bette Davis Foundation Awards Ceremony

GSU Metcalf ballroom7:30

• Films about Women’s Liberation in Boston/Cambridge

GSU Metcalf Ballroom
Susan Rivo and the 888 Women’s History Project, “Left on Pearl.”
Catherine Russo, “A Moment in Her Story.”

Saturday, March 29

8:30

Coffee

9:30

Session 5

Click Here To See Session 5 Panels

Tools of Radical Feminist Analyzing, Organizing and Mobilizing: “Consciousness-Raising” and “History for Activist Use”
GSU Metcalf Ballroom
Annie Tummino, Carol Giardina, Kathie Sarachild, Marisa Figueiredo

• Speakouts, Sit-Ins and Flashmobs: Winning the Morning-After-Pill Over-the-Counter for all Women Based on Radical Feminist Lessons Old and New
• The 1960s Speak to the 1990s, 2000s, and Beyond: the Gainesville, Florida Women’s Liberation Class
• Consciousness-Raising and History for Women’s Liberation Organizing and Activism
• The Freedom Movement As A Learning Process: Rediscovering the Family Wage–not “the Family”–as the Problem and the “Social Wage” as an Important Step toward the Solution
• Click here for the video

Formative Years: The Birth of Our Bodies Ourselves
GSU Conference Auditorium
Joan Ditzion, Paula Doress-Worters, Nancy Miriam Hawley, Jane Pincus, Wendy Sanford

• Panel Notes
• Our Bodies Ourselves: 42 Years of Women’s Health Education and Advocacy
• Click here for the video

Competing Narratives about Sexuality and its Social Construction
Photonics 906
Rebecca Davis, Amy Kesselman, Megan Lieff, Artemis March

• Women’s liberation and the hetero/homosexual binary
• Coming out, coming in, becoming?: Lesbianism and Women’s Liberation in New Haven CT 1969-75
• Identity politics and BDSM: Looking at how the feminist movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s has shaped feminist activism in the BDSM community
• Locating the “Woman-Identified Woman” Argument in a Political Dialectic
• Click here for the video

How Film Told Our Story: Documenting Second-Wave Feminism Through Film
STH B19
A roundtable discussion with the filmmakers
Rochelle Ruthchild (chair), Libby Bouvier, Joan Braderman, Liane Brandon, Jennifer Lee, Susie Rivo, Catherine Russo, Judith Smith

• Click here for the video

The Importance of Early Feminist Spaces from the Perspectives of their Founders
STH B20
Daphne Spain, Gilda Bruckman, Carol Downer, Simone Wallace

International Experiences
STH B22
Lisa Levenstein (chair), Jean Chapman, Jocelyn Olcott

• Taking Global Feminism Online: The Beijing Women’s Conference of 1995
• The women’s liberation movement in India: the face-off with patriarchy
• International women’s year and the roots of NGOization

Liberation and Identity
STH 113
Anne Blaschke (chair), Joyce Antler, Betty Luther Hillman, Elizabeth More

• Opportunities and limitations of 1970s women’s liberation for multiracial athletes
• Uncovering a legacy of activism and social change: women’s liberation and Jewish identity
• “The clothes I wear help me to know my own power”: Dress, hair, and self-presentation in feminist activism of the 1960s and 1970s
• Sex Role Socialization and the Intellectual History of Feminism

Oral History of Cell 16, Female Liberation
CAS B12
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Dana Densmore, Breanne Fahs

• Excerpt from “Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years 1960-1975”
• Agency and Gender in Cell 16 Feminist Theory
• Decision making and leadership in Cell 16 and the Women’s Liberation Movement
• Outcasts and Outlaws: Cell 16, Valerie Solanas, and the Histories of Radical Feminism

Las Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana (Women of the Chicana Caucus)
CAS 211
Linda Garcia Merchant, Rhea Mojica Hammer, Martha Cotera

Challenges and Alliances Across Boundaries of Race, Sexuality, and Class
CAS 313
Robyn Spencer (chair), Andrew Pope, Patricia Ulbrich, Christopher Ramsey, Chelsea Del Rio

• “Our Incompleted Heritage”: Southern Radical Feminism in New Orleans, 1968-1985
• Bridge Builders: Black Women in the Pittsburgh Women’s Movement
• Southwest Women Working Together: Liberation, Integration, and Leadership on the Southwest Side of Chicago, 1968-1978
• Looking to Lesbian Feminism: Opening Historical Narratives and Fostering Activist Alliances
• Click here for the video

Sexual Violence and Feminist Therapy
CAS 522
Mary Koss (chair), Judith Lewis Herman, Laura X, Ellen Sweet, Sarah Pearlman

• Uncovering the Incest Secret
• Making Marital and Date Rape a Crime: : Repealing Men’s Entitlement to Women
• Date Rape: Naming, Publicizing, and Fighting a Pandemic
• Feminist Therapy as Political Activism: The Liberation Years

10:50

Coffee Break

11:10

Session 6

Click Here To See Session 6 Panels

Comparing City Organizations: Different Approaches to Bringing Women Together
GSU Metcalf Ballroom
Linda Gordon (chair), Vivian Rothstein (Chicago), Tess Ewing (Boston Bread and Roses), Demita Frazier (Boston Combahee River Collective), Amy Kesselman (New Haven), Ros Baxandall (New York), Deborah Gerson (Bay Area)

• If we organize, we can change the world—Some lessons from the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union
• Bread and Roses
• The New Haven Liberation Movement
• New York City, the Press Capitol

Reproduction and Abortion
GSU Conference Auditorium
Pauline Bart, Robyn L. Rosen, Kelly O’Donnell

• Abortion: Jane–They Did It Themselves
• “When ‘the rest of the world joined up”: Planned Parenthood and the Politics of Reproduction in the Heyday of Women’s Liberation”
• “Liberate yourself from your gynecologist”: Barbara Seaman, feminism, and consumer health activism, 1957-1977”
• Click here for the video

Women’s Liberation in the Halls of Congress: Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Patsy Mink
Photonics 906
Barbara Winslow (chair and commentator), Zinga Fraser, Judy Wu, Leandra Zarnow

• Race, Gender and Rebellion: Shirley Chisholm and the Women’s Liberation (Movement)
• Nurturing America’s Children: Patsy Takemoto Mink and Local/Global Models for Comprehensive Childcare
• “We Just Have to Push and Push and Push”: Bella Abzug and the Campaign for Women’s Liberation within Electoral Politics”
• Ziegler, Choice at Work, Employment Discrimination and the Lost Potential of Choice

Women’s Liberation Movement à la Québec: Revisiting narratives of the second wave feminist movement in Quebec
STH B19
Geneviève Pagé, Marie-Andrée Bergeron, Eve-Marie Lampron

• The seeds of an intersectional analysis: Québécoise deboutte! And the theorization of multiple oppressions
• The Québec feminist movement through 20 years of textual activism: The cases of Québécoises deboutte!, Les têtes de pioche and La Vie en rose
• From Canon to Bullets: The use of (some) Women’s Liberation classic texts in Quebec’s prostitution/sex work battle
• Click here for the video

Art and Literature
STH B20
Pat Hills (chair), Barbara Gottfried (discussant), William Simmons, Roxanne Samer, Jane Grovijahn

• Judy Chicago’s Song of Songs: Toward a New Queer Feminism
• Receiving Seventies Science Fiction Feminisms
• Coming hungry for the stories that have been lost: feasting on the holy in the writings of Joan Nestle, Adrienne Rich, Cherrie Moraga and Audre Lorde

Sharing stories through mobile technology to combat street harassment
STH B22
Britni de la Cretaz, Kate Ziegler (Hollaback!Boston)

• How we’ve used technology to bring the consciousness-raising groups of the ’60s and ’70s into the present day.
• We share our vision for a world without street harassment and offer community-based solutions to make all public space safe for everyone.

Student Activism and Perceptions Then and Now
STH 113
Sasha Goodfriend, Sarah Merriman, Sandra Gotovac, Amanda Robinson

• Throwing Bricks & Secret Meetings: Harnessing Diversity of Tactics and Reassessing Frameworks to defeat a Goliath
• The legacy of the women’s liberation movement: University student perceptions of present day feminism

The Personal, the Market, and the State
CAS B12
Hester Eisenstein, Zoe Newman, Eileen Boris, Leigh Dodson, Judy Gumbo Albert

• “Lean in” While Holding up “Half the Sky”: On the Marketing of Neo-Liberal Feminism”
• Bugged
• The personal is epistemological?
• Wages for housework reconsidered
• The surveillance state—What else is new?
• Click here for the video

Chicana Activism
CAS 211
Maria Cotera, Martha Cotera, Rose Marie Roybal

• The Chicana Caucus of the NWPC: Small Group Organizing/Spaces of Empowerment
• Liberating the feminist archive: The Chicana por mi raza digital oral history project

Organize! Women in 1960s Social Justice Movements Claim Women’s Rights
CAS 313
Dorothy Burlage (chair), Dorie Ladner, Mary King, Heather Tobis Booth

• Freedom Is A Constant Struggle: The Journey of a Black Mississippi Woman
• Sex and Caste: Advocacy for Women’s Rights Accelerates from within the Civil Rights Movement
• We Can Change the World if we Organize: Some Lessons For (and Origins of) the Women’s Movement from the Civil Rights Movement
• Click here for the video

Women’s Liberation in Movement: Received, Reworked, Revised (Germany, Italy, France)
CAS 522
Tobe Levin (moderator), Halina Bendkowski, Liana Borghi, Judith Ezekiel, Claire Moses

• US Influence on the WLM in Germany
• Lesbian Feminism in Italy and the US and beyond
• The Women’s Liberation Movement in the USA and France: Trans-Atlantic Sisterhood and (Mis)appropriation
• The Double-Crossing of French Feminism

12:30

Lunch

1:30

• ‘Feminist Songs to Stir the Blood(s)!’

Conference Auditorium, George Sherman Union
with Kristen Lems2:00

Session 7

Click Here To See Session 7 Panels

Revolutionary Women in the Underground and Beyond
GSU Metcalf Ballroom
Victoria Hesford (chair), Choonib Lee, Mary Phillips, Sarah Seidman

• Revolutionary Chic: Women in the Weather Underground Organization
• Ericka Huggins: A Catalyst in the Evolution of Gender Politics in the Black Panther Party
• The Cuban Revolution and Angela Davis’s Radical Feminism.
• Click here for the video

The Radical Roots of the National Women’s Political Caucus
GSU Conference Auditorium
Susan Smith Richardson (chair), Karen Engle, Sissy Farenthold, Ruth Mojica Hammer

• Click here for the video

A Revolution of Poets
Photonics 906
Louise Bernikow, Marge Piercy, Kate Rushin, Alta

• Poets in our movement articulated a radical consciousness shared across time and space, race and class, and their work lives on. Our session situates them in history and celebrates as many as possible.
• Click here for the video

Hope, Change, and Feminist Activism in the American South from the 1960s through the 1990s
STH B19
Hannah Dudley-Shotwell, Jessica Wilkerson, Joey Fink, Melissa Estes Blair (discussant)

• Self-help in a Feminist Women’s Health Center, Post-Roe v. Wade
• To stay here you’re going to have to fight like hell: Grassroots Feminism in the Appalachian South
• HOPE Works: From the 1970s Women’s Movement to a Woman-Centered Public Health and Anti-Poverty Project in Eastern North Carolina in the 1990s
• Click here for the video

Second Wave Organizations and Their Offspring (The Cambridge Women’s Center)
CAS B12
Rochelle Ruthchild, Libby Bouvier, Judy Norris, Janet Yassen, Soul Brown, Gina Scaramella

• Click here for the video

Lesbian/Feminism in Atlanta, Georgia (1970-1994)
CAS 211
Vicki Gabriner, Sally Gabb

Expanding and Redefining the Traditional Women’s Liberation Narrative
CAS 313
Rosalyn Baxandall, Judy Wu, Premilla Nadesen, Barbara Winslow

• Hidden from History: The New York Day Care Struggles 1967-1979
• Hypervisibility and Invisibility: Asian/American Women, Radical Orientalism, and the Revisioning of Global Feminism
• Women’s Liberation and Welfare Rights: The Feminist Vision of Johnnie Tillmon
• From “The Woman Question” to Women’s Liberation: The Socialist Origins of the Seattle Women’s Liberation Movement
• Click here for the video

Women, Psychology and the Women’s Liberation Movement: Transforming Psychology, Transforming Society
CAS 522
Joan Chrisler (chair), Irene Hanson Frieze, Leonore Tiefer, Maureen C. McHugh, Suzanna M. Rose

• Building Sisterhood
• The story of the Association for Women in Psychology (AWP), 1969-2014
• Feminist Psychology: Transforming Science, Transforming Society
• Changing Women’s Lives: Teaching Activism in Psychology of Women
• Click here for the video

3:20

Coffee Break

3:40

• Session 8 (Closing Plenary)

Keynote Address
GSU Metcalf Ballroom
Linda Gordon: Feminism Unfinished
Introduced by Judith E. Smith
Closing Songs
Led by Marcia Deihl, Kristen Lems, and Deborah Silverstein
Click here for the video7:30

• Films of the Era: Programmed by Julia Reichert and Ariel Dougherty

GSU Conference Auditorium
Making Movement through Motion Pictures