Abstract

This project aims to reconsider the Women’s Liberation Movement through lesbian feminist periodicals. With emotion expressed in writing as a point of departure, I deploy José Esteban Muñoz’s contemporary queer utopian theory in selected chapters from Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Future Futurity in tandem with selected speeches and essays in Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider. I reconsider the popular memory of the Women’s Movement, centralizing Black, queer, and radical voices through their own published works. I posit that the queer utopian impulse is present in feminist ephemera. In harnessing language, periodicals allowed feminist consciousness to develop as a collaboration across space, time, and coalitions. I apply Audre Lorde’s assertion that language opens a portal to transcend time and space.

I created my own lesbian feminist periodical, placing texts and art from Women’s Liberation alongside contemporary writings, in addition to contributions from queers and women in my own life.

Advisor

Holt, Katie

Second Advisor

Thomas, Zareen

Department

History; Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Cultural History | History | History of Gender | Intellectual History | Public History | United States History | Women's History

Keywords

Second Wave Feminism, Women's Liberation, Women's Print Movement, Multiracial Feminism, Utopia, lesbian, feminist periodicals, queer theory, feminist theory, lesbian feminist periodical, radical lesbian, radical feminism, radical, feminist history, queer history, history of emotion, collective memory, popular memory

Publication Date

2023

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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