TOUR NOTES: SUNY-New Paltz on Monday

Join me, if nearby, for: "The Personal and the Political: Three Generations of Feminism,” an intergenerational panel co-sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program, the History Department, and FMLA.

Monday, March 24, 2008, 5:00-7:00pm, Honors Center, College Hall

Here's the description:

How have feminists across generations understood the relationship between personal transformation and political activism? What tensions and insights surface from the intersections of personal life and social change? What visions and projects do women share across generations? How is our understanding of the second and third waves of feminism evolving, and what is feminism’s future? Come join three generations of feminists in a discussion about the relationship between personal life and political activism during the last fifty years of the women’s movement!

The panel will feature writer Deborah Siegel, Ph.D., author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild (Palgrave Macmillan 2007). Siegel is at the forefront of reexamining the feminist movement and the ways in which younger women are reinventing feminism. [WOW! THAT'S SO NICE OF THEM TO SAY! -A HUMBLED GWP] Contrary to those who have proclaimed the women’s movement dead, or too divided between older and younger generations, Siegel has brought attention to the continuities that cross generational lines. In Sisterhood, Interrupted, Siegel examines how the relationship between individual change and collective action has emerged as a recurring theme for both the second and third waves of feminism. Siegel will be joined by Amy Kesselman, Professor of Women’s Studies at SUNY New Paltz, a historian of second-wave feminism, and one of the founders of the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960’s. Our third panelist, Elizabeth Gross, president of the SUNY New Paltz chapter of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, will join them in what we hope will be a lively discussion that brings together intellectual inquiry, personal reflection and intergenerational understanding.

A bizillion thanks to the hard-working and brilliant Heather Hewett for making this happen. I'm really excited--I write about Amy Kesselman in my book. It's truly humbling to be on panels with these women, and I'm totally looking forward to meeting Elizabeth, and to the conversation.