Presentation "Chicana por mi Raza: Uncovering the Hidden History of Chicana Feminism"

 

Uncovering the Hidden History of Chicana Feminism, a project that will document the development of Chicana feminist thought from 1965 to 1985 through the creation of an interactive website that provides an access point to digitized archival materials (out-of-print books, newspapers, reports, leaflets and other material culture culled from personal collections), oral histories, and secondary sources. In the summer of 2009, Dr. Maria Cotera received a CEW Riecker Undergraduate Research grant, which funded her research team for a week in Texas. They reviewed university and personal archival collections and conducted oral histories with women who had bridged the gap between ethnic nationalist social movements and the women's movement in the 1970s. Dr. Cotera's project will broaden the collective understanding of second wave feminism as well as the civil rights era by documenting the experiences of women of color who carved out their own particular approach to feminism at the crossroads of civil rights struggles and the women's movement. In this presentation, Dr. Cotera and her students will offer an outline of their research objectives and share their findings with the CEW community. They will also discuss the importance of historical research on women to the development of a broad vision of women's history.