UConn Scholars at the Boston Seminar on the History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

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The Boston Seminar on the History of Women, Gender, & Sexuality is a collaboration of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America and the Massachusetts Historical Society. This series, whose five meetings in 2017-2018 will alternate between the Radcliffe Institute and the MHS, aims to seed fresh conversations on the history of women, gender, and sexuality in America without chronological limitations. Some sessions will offer the opportunity to discuss new scholarship presented in pre-circulated essays. This fall, two sessions will include members of the UConn History department:

 

October 17, 2017
Tuesday, 5:30PM – 7:45PM
Location: Fay House, Radcliffe Institute

 

Discussion: Gender, Sexuality, and the New Labor History

Anne G. Balay, Haverford College; Aimee Loiselle, University of Connecticut; Traci L. Parker, UMass-Amherst
Moderator: Seth Rockman, Brown University

The “New Labor History” is highly gendered, global, and often situated in spaces that are transitory or obscured. This session will consider the new directions that the path-breaking work of these three scholars indicates: on female, trans, and intersex truck drivers and state surveillance (Balay), on Puerto Rican needleworkers and the global working class (Loiselle), and on African American women workers in the post-Civil Rights Era (Parker). Note: There are no pre-circulated essays for this session.

 

December 19, 2017
Tuesday, 5:30PM – 7:45PM
Location: Massachusetts Historical Society

 

Miss America’s Politics: Beauty and the Development of the New Right since 1968

Micki McElya, University of Connecticut
Comment: Genevieve A. Clutario, Harvard University

Drawn from McElya’s larger book project, this essay examines the centrality of the Miss America pageant, its local networks, and individual contestants to the rise of activist conservative women and the New Right in the 1960s and 1970s. It analyzes the celebration, power, and political effects of normative beauty, steeped in heterosexual gender norms and white supremacy, and argues for the transformative effect of putting diverse women’s voices at the center of political history and inquiry.

Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.