The Scholar and the Feminist XI:
Women and Resistance – April 14, 1984

Conference Program (PDF, 440 KB)

Opening Session

Welcoming Remarks
Ellen V. Futter, President, Barnard College
Conference Opening: “The Gender Gap and Resistance in Reagan’s America”
Bella Abzug, Founder and Director of Women, USA

Morning Forums

1. Women’s Personal Literary Resistance to Racism and Colonialism
   Meena Alexander, Fordham University; “Sarojini Naidu: Romanticism as Anti-Colonialism”
   Gloria Hull, University of Delaware; “Sight Deceiving: The Strategies of Alice Dunbar-Nelson”
   Quandra Prettyman Stadler, Barnard College; moderator
2. Women’s Resistance to Internment
   Jane Caplan, Bryn Mawr College; “Hanna Levy-Hass: Woman, Jew, Resister”
   Eleni Fourtouni, poet; “Women in the Greek Camps”
   Gina Tlamsa, KCR-FM Producer; “Shamrock Shore”; “Women in Armagh Gaol”
   Sandra Uyeunten, University of California, Berkeley; “Behind Barbed Wire: Japanese-American Women Challenging Patriarchy”
3. Community Resistance and Quality of Life
   Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Boston University; “Black Women and Community Work: Going Up for the Oppressed”
   Ida Susser, State University of New York at Old Westbury; “Women’s Organizations in Brooklyn and Puerto Rico”
4. The Literature of Traditional and New Forms of Women’s Communal Resistance
   Kate Cannon, Harvard Divinity School; “Black Women as Cultural Custodians of Revolution”
   Helene Foley, Barnard College; “Women’s Resistance in Classical Drama”
5. The Resistance of Mothers
   Jean Franco, Columbia University; “Empowerment by Death in El Salvador”
   Marysa Navarro, Dartmouth College; “Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo”
6. Female Resistance Through Arts and Media
   Eva Cockcroft, muralist in Artmakers, Inc; “Murals and Public Art”
   Barbara Garson, playwright; “Women’s Political Theater”
   Barbara Juppé, WBAI, Executive Producer; “Behind the Green Curtain”; “Using the Media for Our Side”
   Paula Montero, University of Minas Gerais, Brazil; “Popular Culture and the Brazilian Feminist Movement”
   Jane Rubin, Barnard College; moderator
   Marianne Weems, Barnard College; moderator
7. Double Militancy in Italy
   Margherita Repetto Alaia, Columbia University; “The Italian Case”
   Joanne Barkan, writer; “The Italian Working Class and Feminism”
8. Women’s Resistance in Catholic Communities of Faith
   Blaise Lupo, Clergy and Laity Concerned; “Maryknolls and Liberationist Resistance in the Philippines and Central America”
   Marsie Silvestro, former National Coordinator of the Women’s Ordination Conference; “Resistance to Patriarchy in the Catholic Church”
9. Resistance of Indian Women
   (Has been cancelled.)
10. Reproductive Rights and Resistance to Violence Against Women
    Joan Bertin, ACLU; “Resistance to Sterilization in West Virginia”
    Julie Doron, Barnard College; “Battered Women Who Kill Their Husbands: New Perspectives on Self-Defense”
11. Feminism, Anti-Racism, and the Peace Movement
    J.E.B. (Joan E. Biren), photographer; “Direct Action in the Peace Movement: Seneca Women’s Encampment”
    Zahla Chandler, Medgar Evers College, City University of New York; “Feminism, Anti-Racism, and the Peace Movement: The Connections from a Black Perspective”
    Laura Flanders, Barnard College; moderator
    Ynestra King, Women’s Pentagon Action; “Feminist Peace Politics”
    Dr. Andrée Nicola-McLaughlin, Medgar Evers College, City University of New York; “Resistance and Women of Color”
    Sara Ruddick, Seminar College, New School for Social Research; “Mothers in Resistance to Militarism and Violence”
12. Forms of Resistance in South Africa
    Film: “You Have Struck a Rock”, Directed by George Karvellas and Deborah May
    Penny Andrews, Columbia Law School; “South African Laws”
    Motlalepula Chabaku, political organizer; “Women’s Resistance in the Fifties”
    Thabisile Nyide, activist; “Forms of Organization”
13. Lesbianism and Resistance
    Katherine Davenport, WBAI; “Surviving Heterosexist Society”
    Raymina Mays, co-founder of Between Ourselves: A Bi-monthly Women of Color Newspaper; “Writing as a Form of Resistance”
    Minnie Bruce Pratt, poet; “No Safe Space: Some Connections Between Lesbian Oppression, Anti-Semitism, and Racism”
    Aida Wakil, co-founder of Between Ourselves: A Bi-monthly Women of Color Newspaper; “An Arab-American Perspective on Lesbianism and Resistance”
14. Immigrants and Refugees
    Guadalupe González, Democratic Revolutionary Front for El Salvador in the United States; “Central American Refugees”
    Saskia Sassen-Koob, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York; “Caribbean and Central American Women in New York”
    Ida Torres, Vice President of United Storeworkers; “Organizing Women”

Afternoon Session

Poetry and Music
Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Division of Performing Arts, Smithsonian Institution
Panel
Dolores Hayden, UCLA, author of Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work, and Family Life
Elizabeth Janeway, feminist theorist, author of Power of the Weak
Elizabeth Martinez, U.S. Out of Central America
Grace Paley, Sarah Lawrence College, War Resisters League
Frances Fox Piven, The Human SERVE Campaign
Barbara Ransby, Columbia University
Barbara Smith, Kitchen Table Women of Color Press
Open Plenary
Dr. Temma Kaplan, Director of the Barnard Women’s Center, moderator

Closing Session

Collaborative Performance of Poetry and Music by June Jordan and Adrienne Torf

Academic Coordinator

Temma Kaplan

Conference Coordinators

Amy Bachrach, Lee Coppernoll, Temma Kaplan, Janie Kritzman