Description
Book SynopsisAn analysis of the role public spaces—parks, clubs, book stores—played in shaping the feminist movement in three Midwestern cities during the 1960s and 1970s.
Trade Review“In places like softball fields, church basements, and dance floors, Anne Enke locates a cast of compelling characters who don’t usually make it into history books. The result is a startlingly original history of second-wave feminism. Enke forces us to think freshly about the 1960s, political mobilization, and the ways that people change the world around them.”—John D’Emilio, coauthor of
Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America“Possibly the best book to date on the ‘second wave’ women’s movement and certainly the most original . . . one of the best handful of studies of any social movement. I look forward to using it in my courses.”—Linda Gordon, author of
The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction“Enke gives us an account of feminist political values as they are struggled over in action, day by day. Taken cumulatively, the record she provides in this book of the flexibility, genius, and solid achievements of the modern women’s liberation movement—in all its varied forms—is simply astonishing.” -- Ann Snitow * Women's Review of Books *
“Enke’s book confidently moves beyond any feminist need to legitimize itself and instead explores the explosion of sites of feminist activism . . . that challenged social practices and laws restricting women’s use of public space, thereby producing the possibility for greater feminist organizing.” -- Julia Balén, * Signs *
Table of ContentsAbout the Series ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Locating Feminist Activism 1
Part 1: Community Organizing and Commercial Space
1. “Someone or Something Made That a Women’s Bar”: Claiming the Nighttime Marketplace 25
2. “Don’t Steal It, Read It Here”: Building Community in the Marketplace 62
Part 2: Public Assertion and Civic Space
3. “Kind of Like Mecca”: Playgrounds, Players, and Women’s Movement 105
4. Out in Left Field: Feminist Movement and Civic Athletic Space 145
Part 3: Politicizing Place and Feminist Institutions
5. Finding the Limit of Women’s Autonomy: Shelters, Health Clinics, and the Practice of Property 177
6. If I Can’t Dance Shirtless, It’s Not a Revolution: Coffeehouse, Clubs, and the Construction of “All Women” 217
Conclusion: Recognizing the Subject of Feminist Activism 252
Notes 269
Bibliography 335
Index 357
