Registration CLOSED!

UNCOVERING A LEGACY OF INNOVATION, ACTIVISM, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

 

SPONSORED BY THE

THE GOLDSTEIN-GOREN CENTER FOR AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

APRIL 10-11, 2011

 

The conference will bring together 40 Jewish women who participated in the women’s liberation and Jewish feminist movements beginning in the late 1960s. A number of these women jumpstarted the first radical feminist groups in the country, among them, the influential Chicago Women’s Liberation Union; Redstockings and New York Radical Women; Boston’s Bread and Roses and the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective; Berkeley Women’s Liberation and the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance. A subsequent wave of explicitly Jewish identified feminists initiated significant social change in Jewish based secular and religious life as well as in broader social institutions.  Over the ensuing decades, many of these leaders pursued their activism in striking and varied ways: increasing women’s participation in religious and communal life; organizing for improved health care and reproductive rights; consumer advocacy; welfare and housing rights; protecting the homeless, the aging, and low- income workers, and much more.  Those who became writers and scholars are responsible for many landmark works in women’s art, culture, politics, and social history.

 

The story of these varied groups of feminists in relation to one another and to larger narratives of feminist activism and American Jewish history remains to be told. At the conference, key figures in women’s liberation will reflect on their motivations for becoming activists, the factors and contexts that enabled them, and their continuing journeys as activists. Probing the ways in which Jewish identity, culture and tradition interacted with universal goals for women’s liberation, the conference will provide a forum to explore the goals, objectives, visions, struggles, achievements and legacies of feminist activism. It will conclude with a session of younger Jewish feminists probing issues about feminism, Jewish identity, and activism today.

 

Registration CLOSED!

CONFERENCE CONVENER: Joyce Antler

Samuel Lane Professor of American Jewish History and Culture, and Professor of

Women’s and Gender Studies, Brandeis University

Participants include Arlene Agus, Rebecca Alpert, Diane Balser, Rosalind Baxandall, Evelyn Torton Beck, Heather Booth, Wini Breines, Susan Brownmiller, Aviva Cantor, Irin Carmon, Tamara Cohen, Ellen DuBois, Paula Doress-Worters, Gloria Feldt, Jaclyn Friedman, Vicki Gabriner, Linda Gordon, Maralee Gordon, Blu Greenberg, Miriam Hawley, Susannah Heschel, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Amy Kesselman, Alice Kessler-Harris, Irena Klepfisz, Marya Levenson, Yavilah McCoy, Collier Meyerson, Ruth Rosen, Judith Rosenbaum, Vivian Rothstein, Susan Weidman Schneider, Alix Kates Shulman, Catharine Stimpson, Meredith Tax, Marilyn Webb, Chava Weissler,  and Nona Willis-Aronowitz.

 

CO-SPONSORS:

THE JEWISH WOMEN’S ARCHIVE; BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY;

THE SPENCER FOUNDATION’S INITIATIVE FOR CIVIC LEARNING & CIVIC ACTION

 Seating is limited. For further information and to RSVP contact jewishfeminists@gmail.com.

Registration CLOSED!

WOMEN’S LIBERATION AND JEWISH IDENTITY:

UNCOVERING A LEGACY OF INNOVATION, ACTIVISM, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

 

The Goren-Goldstein Center for American Jewish History, New York University

KING JUAN CARLOS CENTER, 53 WASHINGTON SQUARE SOUTH

April 10-11, 2011

 

SUNDAY

 

9-9.30

Welcome

Hasia Diner

 

Setting the Stage

Joyce Antler

 

9.30-11

1. The Women’s Movement in Historical Perspective

Ellen DuBois, Linda Gordon, Alice Kessler-Harris, Ruth Rosen

CHAIR: Catharine Stimpson

 

11-11.15         BREAK

 

11.15-1.00

2. Opening Salvos

Heather Booth, Amy Kesselman, Vivian Rothstein, Marilyn Webb

CHAIR: Rosalyn Baxandall

 

1.00-2.00          LUNCH

 

2.00-3.30

3. Building Strengths

Diane Balser, Meredith Tax, Alix Kates Shulman, Vicki Gabriner

CHAIR:  Wini Breines

 

 

3.45-5.15

4. Take Back the Night, Take Back Our Bodies

Miriam Hawley, Paula Doress-Worters, Susan Brownmiller, Gloria Feldt

CHAIR:  Debra Schultz

 

 

DINNER

 

5. 7.30-9.00  Writing, Activism, and Women’s Liberation Foremothers

Excerpts from the new documentary,“Grace Paley: Collected Shorts”

and discussion with filmmaker Lilly Rivlin, E.M. Broner, and Eva Kollisch

 

        

 

Registration CLOSED!

 

MONDAY

 

9.00-9.15

Welcome

 

9.15-10.45

6. Jewish Feminism/Feminist Judaism

Arlene Agus,  Blu Greenberg, Susan Weidman Schneider, Susannah Heschel

CHAIR: Chava Weissler

 

10.45-11         BREAK

 

11-12.15

7. Jewish Liberation Projects

Aviva Cantor, Maralee Gordon, Rebecca Alpert, Yavilah McCoy

CHAIR:  Marya Levenson

 

12.15-1.30

LUNCH

 

1.30-2.45

8. Jewish Lesbian Feminism

Evelyn Torton Beck, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Irena Klepfisz

CHAIR: Idit Klein

 

2.45-3         BREAK

 

3-5.00

9. Women’s Liberation Daughters: The Next Generation

Tamara Cohen, Collier Meyerson, Judith Rosenbaum, Nona Willis-Aronowitz, Irin Carmon

CHAIR: Jaclyn Friedman

 

5.00

Farewell

 

 

 

 

Registration CLOSED!