2011 Agatha Beins ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

283 Pages·2011·7.67 MB·English

©2011

Agatha Beins

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Free Our Sisters, Free Ourselves: Locating U.S. Feminism through Feminist Periodicals, 1970-
1983
by
Agatha Beins
A Dissertation submitted to the
Graduate School-New Brunswick
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Program in Women’s and Gender Studies
written under the direction of
Nancy Hewitt
and approved by
________________________
________________________
________________________
________________________
New Brunswick, New Jersey
May 2011
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Free Our Sisters, Free Ourselves: Locating U.S. Feminism through Feminist Periodicals, 1970-
1983
By Agatha Beins

Dissertation Director:
Nancy Hewitt

In 1968 the first feminist periodicals associated with the second wave of U.S. feminism
appeared in the United States, and by 1973 over five hundred different feminist newsletters,
newspapers, and literary journals had been published. Although these periodicals often had erratic
publication schedules and rarely ran more than a few years, their proliferation during this time
period shows that publishing was vital to the women’s liberation movement. Not only did
periodicals create a space for women to describe experiences, develop theories, debate politics,
and exchange ideas, they also connected women through their circulation, producing an imagined
community of feminists at local and global scales.
Free Our Sisters, Free Ourselves: Locating U.S. Feminism through Feminist Periodicals,
1970-1983 examines the U.S. feminist movement through the production and consumption of
feminist newsletters and newspapers. Focusing on periodicals published in five cities (New
Orleans, Louisiana; Northampton, Massachusetts; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Iowa City, Iowa;
and Los Angeles, California), this dissertation tracks the circulation of ideas to explore how
feminism as a collective identity was produced and reproduced. Based on archival research
throughout the country and an analysis of the circulation and repetition of language and images as
well as on the effects of modes of periodical production, this dissertation draws from a wide
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range of literatures, including history, sociology, geography, cultural studies, visual studies, and
history of the book, as well as from feminist theories about power and identity. I argue that during
the 1970s feminist periodicals were vital to the production not just of feminism’s present and
presence but also of feminism’s past and future. Periodicals additionally contributed to the
discursive and material existence of the women’s liberation movement, allowing feminism’s past,
present, and future to be imaginable as well as physically locatable.

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Acknowledgments

My dissertation research was a labor of love in many ways. From the first time I picked
up a copy of Ain’t I a Woman? at the Lesbian Herstory Archives to the month I spent in New
Orleans almost three years later, I have experienced wondrous gifts of people’s time, energy,
knowledge, and care. First, thank you to the archivists, volunteers, and student workers made it
possible for me to so easily find and read through manuscript and periodical collections. In
addition to the Herstory Archives, I am grateful to have spent time at the Sophia Smith Collection
at Smith College, the DuBois Library archives at the University of Amherst, the Southern
California Library for Social Studies and Research in Los Angeles, the Chicano Studies Research
Center at UCLA, the University Archives at California State University, Long Beach, the Iowa
Women’s Archives, the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in
America at Radcliffe, the Northeastern University archives, the Joseph P. Healy Library archives
at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and
Culture at Duke, the Nadine Vorhoff Library at Tulane, and the New Orleans Public Library.
Many thanks, as well to the archivists at the Sallie Bingham Center, the Schlessinger Library, and
the Sophia Smith Collection for inviting me to give a research talk and providing lively, engaged
feedback.
This labor and travel was supported by generous funding from the Newcomb College
Center for Research on Women, the Schlesinger Library, the Sallie Bingham Center, the Sophia
Smith Collection, the Historical Society of Southern California, and the State Historical Society
of Iowa. I also received the gift of a year to write my dissertation with an American Association
of University Women American Dissertation Fellowship (2009-10).
People who opened their homes and hearts to me as I traveled across the country doing
archival research made the different cities I visited feel like home. Yashna, first a friend of a
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friend and now a dear love, let me stay in her spare bedroom in Durham. And Steve, an old friend
from Tucson, helped me navigate the buses of Los Angeles, brought home avocados,
persimmons, pomegranates, and other found fruit, and shared lovely evenings cooking and sitting
in the back yard of your apartment in Echo Park. Elizabeth and Elliott let me wander into their
house one cool evening, borrow their bikes to shop at Whole Foods, and gave me a new
appreciation of New Orleans through their contagious joy and love of the city. Thank you.
It would be impossible to extol my dissertation committee in proportion to the guidance,
assistance, feedback, great quantity of letters of reference, and general encouragement as I
stumbled through this dissertation. Nancy Hewitt, Harriet Davidson, Joanna Regulska, and Trysh
Travis are the kinds of scholars I want to emulate and their presence in the academy gives me
hope for its future. I’ve also been fortunate to take part in interdisciplinary graduate-faculty
seminars through the Institute for Research on Women and the Center for Historical Analysis at
Rutgers, through both of which I was able to experience the best of academic knowledge
production. And Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy—thank you for taking a chance on me as co-editor
of Women’s Studies for the Future, a decision that undoubtedly increased the amount of labor and
energy that was required of you for this project, and for mentoring me in a way that still echoes in
my daily practices.
Also incomparable is the support and joy I’ve experienced from family and friends.
Having grown up with parents who never questioned my ability to do something and somehow
never seemed to discourage me from making what may have been questionable decisions let me
enter graduate school without a doubt that I’d make it through. Sara and Allison, thanks for
making the places I’ve lived filled with love, good food, and booze. Not only unparalleled
thinkers and dreamers, the people I’ve been able to work and live with have provoked me to find
beauty in the world: Alix, Alison, Alex D., Alex W., Amber, Anahi, Andy, Ben, Caleb, Finn,
Jess, Judy, Julie, Laurie, Marton, Steph J., and Temma. This list must also include the women
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who were active in the 1970s and whose informal conversations with me both made feminist
activism more alive and helped me more carefully craft my dissertation: Aaron, Sondra, Jill,
Sherna, Karla, and Mary, thank you. And, Steph C., I already miss you but also know that we
have many more conversations and tasty dinners in our future.
A version of Chapter 3 appears as the article “Sisterly Solidarity: Politics and Rhetoric of
the Direct Address in U.S. Feminism in the 1970s” as part of a special issue on the history of
feminisms in 2010 in Women: A Cultural Review (21.3: 293-308).

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Table of Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………...……… ii
Acknowledgments………………………………………………………..……… iv
Table of Contents…………………………………………………………..……. vii
List of Archives, Manuscript Collections, and Periodicals ……………...………viii
List of Illustrations………………………………………………………….….... xii
Introduction……………………………………………………………..………… 1
Chapter 1: Repeating the Movement:
Finding Feminism’s Tactics and Strategies …………………..………46
Chapter 2: Spaces of Feminism:
Bodies, Practices, and Modes of Production…………………………..72
Chapter 3: Sisterly Solidarity:
Politics and Rhetoric of the Direct Address…………………….…….104
Chapter 4: Radical Others:
Women of Color and Revolutionary Feminism……………………… 134
Chapter 5: “We Are Being Evicted!!!!!” Versus the Future:
Producing a Place for Feminism’s Survival………..…………………171
Conclusion………………………………………………………….………………198
Illustrations ……………………………………………………….………………..205
Bibliography …………………………………………………….…………………249

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List of Archives, Manuscript Collections, and Periodicals

Archives and Manuscript Collections
Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA
Comision Femenil de Los Angeles Papers

CSPG: Center for the Study of Political Graphics (Los Angeles, California)

CSULB: California State University, Long Beach Special Collections and University Archives
OHC: Oral History Collection: Los Angeles Women’s Movement
VOAHA: The Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive

Du Bois Library: Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library,
University of Massachusetts Amherst
VWU records (Valley Women’s Union Records, 1974-76)

IWA: Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
Aaron Silander papers
Dale McCormick papers
WRAC records (Women’s Resource and Action Center Records, 1960-2006 and
ongoing)

LHA: Lesbian Herstory Archives, Brooklyn NY

NCCROW: Newcomb Archives, Newcomb College Center for Research on Women, Tulane
University, New Orleans, Louisiana
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Mary Gehman Collection
Phyllis Parun Papers
Videotapes from Voices from the Louisiana Women’s Movement: First-Hand Accounts
from People Who Made It Happen, a conference hosted by the Newcomb College Center
for Research on Women Conference

Northeastern: University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department, Northeastern
University, Boston, Massachusetts
FL records (Female Liberation: A Radical Feminist Organization Records, 1968-74)

Sallie Bingham Center: Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, Rare Book,
Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Angela Jeannet Papers
ALFA archives (Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance Archives [and periodicals, ca. 1972-
1994])

Schlesinger: Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Ann Hunter Popkin Papers, 1968-1977
Fran Ansley Papers
Rochelle Ruthchild Papers
Wini Breines Papers, 1969-1974

SCLSSR: Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles, California
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