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US Feminists and Central America in the “Age of Reagan”: The Overlapping Contexts of Activism, Intellectual Culture and Documentary Filmmaking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2014

NICK WITHAM
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Abstract

This paper examines the attitudes of feminist activists, intellectuals and filmmakers to US intervention in Central America during the 1980s. It traces the development of mutual intellectual and political sustenance between feminism and anti-interventionism, arguing that as feminist thinking bred new ways of approaching US involvement in Central America, so anti-interventionist struggles bred new ways of thinking about women's activism. In making this point, the paper complicates narratives of the “age of Reagan” that overlook the persistence of left-wing politics during the 1980s. Instead, it argues that a specific form of international feminism enabled a community of activists to contribute to a vibrant culture of dissent that criticized conservative approaches to women's rights and, at the same time, vigorously contested the interventionist foreign policy of the Reagan administration.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 199 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

I am very grateful to Sharon Monteith, Tony Hutchison, Richard King, Nick Grant, Zalfa Feghali and two anonymous referees, who all provided insightful comments at different points during the completion of this article. I would also like to extend my thanks to Pamela Cohen, who generously answered my questions via email.

References

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47 Author's personal email correspondence with Pamela Cohen, 28 Aug. 2010.

48 Pamela Cohen to CISPES, 7 June 1985, Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador Records, Wisconsin Historical Society, M94-308, Box 1, Folder 3.

49 Author's personal email correspondence with Pamela Cohen, 28 Aug. 2010.

50 Ibid. Evidence of the manner in which Maria's Story was distributed can be found in Polemicist, a left-wing student journal with ties to CISPES that ran on the Austin campus of the University of Texas during the early 1990s. In May 1991, the journal advertised a screening of the film, and stated that “on opening night, Gladis Sibrian, a U. S. representative of the FMLN (and like Maria Serrano, a woman originally from rural Chalatanago) will speak.” In its review of the film, the New York-based radical weekly Guardian advertised a CISPES/MADRE screening of the film at NYU scheduled for March 10 1991. See Bradwell, Scott, “Maria's Story,” Polemicist, 2, 6 (May 1991), 10Google Scholar; and Knauer, Lisa Maya, “Maria's Vivid View of Revolt,” Guardian, 6 March 1991, S-8Google Scholar.

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