No Permanent Waves

by Hewitt, Nancy A.

• ISBN13: 9780813547251
• ISBN10: 0813547253
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-01-29
• Publisher: Rutgers Univ Pr

Summary

No Permanent Wavesboldly enters the ongoing debates over the utility of the wave” metaphor for capturing the complex history of women’s rights by offering fresh perspectives on the diverse movements that comprise U.S. feminism, past and present. Seventeen essays—both original and reprinted—address continuities, conflicts, and transformations among women’s movements in the United States from the early nineteenth century through today. A respected group of contributors from diverse generations and backgrounds argue for new chronologies, more inclusive conceptualizations of feminist agendas and participants, and fuller engagements with contestations around particular issues and practices. Race, class, and sexuality are explored within histories of women’s rights and feminism as well as the cultural and intellectual currents and social and political priorities that marked movements for women’s advancement and liberation. These essays question whether the concept of waves surging and receding can fully capture the complexities of U.S. feminisms and suggest models for reimagining these histories from radio waves to hip-hop.

Author Biography

Nancy A. Hewitt is a professor of history and women's and gender studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her books include Women's Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872; Southern Discomfort: Women's Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s-1920s; and A Companion to American Women's History.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Reframing Narratives/Reclaiming Histories
From Seneca Falls to Suffrage? Reimagining a "Master" Narrative in U.S. Women's History	p. 15
Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism	p. 39
Black Feminisms and Human Agency	p. 61
"We Have a Long, Beautiful History": Chicana Feminist Trajectories and Legacies	p. 77
Unsettling "Third Wave Feminism": Feminist Waves, Intersectionality, and Identity Politics in Retrospect	p. 98
Coming Together/Pulling Apart
Overthrowing the "Monopoly of the Pulpit": Race and the Rights of Church Women in the Nineteenth-Century United States	p. 121
Labor Feminists and President Kennedy's Commission on Women	p. 144
Expanding the Boundaries of the Women's Movement: Black Feminism and the Struggle for Welfare Rights	p. 168
Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Peace Activism and Women's Orientalism	p. 193
Living a Feminist Lifestyle: The Intersection of Theory and Action in a Lesbian Feminist Collective	p. 221
Strange Bedfellows: Building Feminist Coalitions around Sex Work in the 1970s	p. 246
From Sisterhood to Girlie Culture: Closing the Great Divide between Second and Third Wave Cultural Agendas	p. 273
Rethinking Agendas/Relocating Activism
Staking Claims to Independence: Jennie Collins, Aurora Phelps, and the Boston Working Women's League, 1865-1877	p. 305
"I Had Not Seen Women Like That Before": Intergenerational Feminism in New York City's Tenant Movement	p. 329
The Hidden History of Affirmative Action: Working Women's Struggles in the 1970s and the Gender of Class	p. 356
U.S. Feminism-Grrrl Style! Youth (Sub)Cultures and the Technologies of the Third Wave	p. 379
"Under Construction": Identifying Foundations of Hip-Hop Feminism and Exploring Bridges between Black Second Wave and Hip-Hop Feminisms	p. 403
Notes on Contributors	p. 431
Index	p. 435
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