Feminism in Chicago and the CWLU
Between 1969 and 1977, the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union was one of the nation’s largest socialist feminist women’s unions. The CWLU made significant contributions to service projects, cultural presentations, theoretical work, and the women’s health movement. As is often the case, the textbooks of the patriarchy don’t tell the whole story. Holly Graff and other founders of this activist group discuss the organization’s contemporary relevance.
From Margin to Center and Back Again: Deviance and Discipline in LGBT Spaces
Six years of work by a coalition of LGBT and ally community leaders culminated with the 2007 opening of The Center on Halsted, a community center in the heart of “Boystown,” Chicago’s most visibly gay neighborhood. Join Kevin Cates and Jamie Moran for a look at how The Center has altered the relationship between space and identity in Boystown, as well as how new relationships between space and identity have emerged in The Center itself.
Simultaneous Visibility and Invisibility of Feminist Performance Art in Chicago, Pt. 2
Joanna Gardner-Huggett moderates a roundtable discussion that explores performance art as both a repository for feminist work and a vehicle for examining how that work is or is not contextualized within Chicago art history since 1970. Performance artists Maria Gaspar, Ginny Sykes, and Ni’Ja Whitson also will discuss how Chicago’s reputation as a “second city” parallels women’s place as second tier artists, and explore the dynamic of the “prodigal” artist who feels they must leave home to be successful.
Work and Family: The Final Feminist Frontier?
Mothers have a long history of organizing for better schools, childcare, and labor conditions. Progress aside, many mothers continue to face an uphill battle in their efforts to earn a living and pursue a career while caring for children and families – from pay inequity and employment discrimination to a lack of supportive workplace policies. Join Veronica Arreola, Catherine Caporusso, and Rhonda Present to learn how mothers have been disproportionately affected by shifts in society in recent decades, and what obstacles remain to their economic security.
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