The Scholar and the Feminist XII:
Women in Culture and Politics – March 30, 1985

Conference Program (PDF, 804 KB)

Morning Session

Welcoming Remarks
Ellen V. Futter, President, Barnard College
Conference Opening
Music by Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts Gospel Choir

Morning Workshops

1. Traditions and Plot in Women’s Fiction
   Julie Abraham, Columbia University; “Tell the Lacadaemonians: Lesbian Writers and the Heterosexual Plot”
   Rachel Brownstein, Brooklyn College, CUNY; commentator
   Jewelle Gomez, literary critic, Program Associate of New York State Council on the Arts; “Speaking in Tongues: The Oral Tradition in Women of Color Writers”
2. Contradictions in Women’s Culture in the Days of Rosie the Riveter
   Bettina Berch, Barnard College
   Ruth Milkman, Queens College, CUNY
3. Poetry and Politics
   Alexis de Veaux, poet, activist
   Kathy Engel, Founding Director of MADRE, poet
4. Inside Right-Wing Women’s Culture
   Faye Ginsburg, CUNY, Graduate Center
   Susan Harding, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
5. Women’s Voices: Past and Future Music
   Andrea Goodman, singer, dancer, actress with Meredith Monk’s “the House” and with the Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble, “One Has Many Her Own Voices”
   Marianne Weems, musician, moderator
   Elizabeth Wood, writer, musicologist, Hunter College, CUNY, “Siren, Shaman, Syrinx: Women in Opera and Performance”
6. Breakin’, Rappin’, and Writin’ in New York
   Nancy Guevara, Queens College
   Barbara Winslow, Barnard College
7. Biology and the Politics of Sexual Difference
   Claudia Koonz, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA; “Race, Sex, and Misogyny in Nazi Germany”
   Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, Ramapo College; “Essentialism and Difference in Feminist Thought”
8. Representation of Women in the Third World
   Anne McClintock, Columbia University; “Dangerous Boundaries: the Colonized and the Female Body in Joseph Conrad and Rider Haggard”
   Gauri Viswanathan, Columbia University and the University of New Delhi; “The Mythologization of Women in Modern Indian Fiction”
9. Challenging the Myth of Passivity: Working Class Women’s Culture and Neighborhood Politics, Part I, Film and Discussion of “Metropolitan Avenue” (Preview)
   Christine Noschese, Producer, Director
   Special Guests from the film
10. Preserving and Publishing: Women’s Voices
    Betty Powell, Administrative Coordinator of Kitchen Table Press, Brooklyn College, CUNY; “To Publish or Perish”
    Judith Schwarz, Lesbian Herstory Archives, Lesbian Herstory Education Fund
    Aida Wakil, Co-founder of Between Ourselves: A Women of Color Newspaper, Arab-American lesbian writer; “Establishing A Women of Color Newspaper”
11. Romance and Sexuality
    Janice Radway, University of Pennsylvania; “Identifying Ideological Faults: Feminism, Analytical Method, and Political Practice”
    Valerie Walkerdine, University of London Institute of Education; “The Family Romance: Girls in Popular Culture”
12. Uprooting/Readjusting: The Lives of Women in South Africa and Mozambique
    Marjorie Mbilinyi, Institute of Development Studies, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
    Stephanie Urdang, Research Director, American Committee on Africa

Afternoon Session

13. Who’s Telling Whose Story and Why?
    Martha Ackelsberg, Smith College; “Doing Oral History among Spanish Anarchists”
    Judith Friedlander, SUNY, Purchase; “Doing Oral History among Mexican Indians and Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust”
14. Women’s Revolutionary Use of Language
    Electa Arenal, The College of Staten Island, CUNY; “Women and the New Latin American Epic”
    Helene Foley, Barnard College; “Sapphic Resistance”
    Celeste Schenck, Barnard College; “‘Nothing that has been said meets our case’: The Female Elegist as Revisionist”
15. Images of Women in American Film (with Filmclips)
    Pearl Bauser, Third World Newsreel
    Elizabeth Kendall, writer, author of Where She Danced
16. The Politics of Women’s Theatre
    Danielle Brunon, director; moderator
    Kathleen Collins, playwright and filmmaker
    Clare Coss, playwright and psychotherapist
    Mary Gallagher, writer, director, actor
    Linda Powell, performer and writer
17. Outside the Fraternity: Women in Jazz
    Linda Dahl, freelance writer and novelist, author of Stormy Weather, the Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen
    Nina Sheldon, performer, Rutgers University
18. Some Effects of American Mass Culture on Women Outside the United States
    Victoria de Grazia, Rutgers University, “Americanism and the European 鮮ew Woman'”
    Jean Franco, Columbia University; commentator
    Maria Celeste Olalquiaga, Columbia University; “Visualizing Latin America Through 薦l Zorro'”
19. Gender Politics
    Franchesca Farmer, Crossroads Africa, Rainbow Coalition, former Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus; “Issues Affecting Black Women and Implications of Political Participation”
    Ethel Klein, Columbia University; “Gender Voting: What is the Women’s Vote?”
20. Women in Storytelling
    Rayna Green, Smithsonian Institute, Native American Museum of American History
    Ramina Y. Mays, Black lesbian writer, Co-founder of Between Ourselves: A Women of Color Newspaper
21. What the Women’s Peace Camps Suggest About Feminist Political Forms for the Future
    Ynestra King, activist, Visiting Scholar at Rutgers University, Women’s Pentagon Action
    Gwyn Kirk, co-author of Greenham Women Everywhere
    Naomi “Little Bear” Morena, folksinger, author of “You Can’t Kill the Spirit”
    Ann Snitow, activist, Co-editor, Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality
22. Challenging the Myth of Passivity: Working Class Women’s Culture and Neighborhood Politics, Part II
    Terry Haywoode, Baruch College; “Creating Community: Overcoming the Dichotomy between Public and Private”
    Laura Scanlon, National Congress of Neighborhood Women; “Neighborhood Women’s Culture and Liberal Arts Education”
    Ida Susser, SUNY, Old Westbury; “Redefining Community Politics”
23. Work, Culture, and Consciousness: The Contribution of Women’s History to New Theoretical Perspectives
    Alice Kessler-Harris, Hofstra University
    Carole Turbin, Empire State University, SUNY, Old Westbury
24. Educating Judges About Sexism in the Courts
    Norma Wikler, University of California, Santa Cruz

Closing Session

Slide Presentation: Political and Literary Needlework
Marjorie Agostin, Wellesley College; “Chilean Arpilleras: Not Just a Pretty Picture”
Gladys Marie-Fry, University of Maryland, College Park; “Militant Needles: Slave Quilting in the Ante-Bellum South”
Elaine Showalter, Princeton University; “Quilts as Metaphors”
Opening Plenary
Temma Kaplan, Director of the Barnard Women’s Center; moderator
Closing Song
Naomi “Little Bear” Morena, “You Can’t Kill the Spirit”

Conference Director

Temma Kaplan

Conference Coordinators

Jane Foress-Betty, Janie L. Kritzman, Bonnie Sheldon