[sixties-l] Complicating generations & periodization

From: Ian Lekus (lekus@duke.edu)
Date: Thu Jun 08 2000 - 11:28:18 CUT

  • Next message: purplewins: "Re: [sixties-l] generations & periodization"

    I second Rosalyn's recommendation - Joanne Meyerowitz's "Not June
    Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960" is a great
    collection of articles of women's experiences during these years.

    I've been wondering about gender all through these conversations, as well
    as about geography as meshed with gender, race, class, and other
    identities. In talking about generations, I wonder about the differences
    in what (to pick a random example) 1960 meant in Boston vs. Austin, in
    Albany GA vs Albany NY, etc., especially depending on who your cohort
    was. Even the local differences can be intense- I went to a commuter high
    school on Manhattan's Upper East Side in the 80s (this is where I come
    out as one of those "new" historians of the 60s) while living on the far
    side of Brooklyn, & in talking to people in my class at high school, it's
    hard to believe we grew up in the same city. And that's even all among
    all the leftist students.

    So in my own work on homosexuality and antiwar activism during the
    Vietnam era, I've been struck how much more gay-friendly or tolerant (and
    that's a phrase that needs some defining, but not before I have my
    morning coffee) the groups that spanned different generations were than
    those that were generally all composed of activists of the same age. I'd
    be interested to hear list members' experiences support such a thesis in
    regards to relations between women and men or not.

    That's all for now-
    Best,
    Ian Lekus

    On Wed, 7 Jun 2000 ROSYBAX@aol.com wrote:

    > Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 22:25:32 EDT
    > From: ROSYBAX@aol.com
    > To: sixties-l@lists.village.virginia.edu
    > Subject: Re: [sixties-l] generations & periodization
    >
    > Can't believe someone mentioned women on this net. There's a great book,
    > collection of articles about the 50s and women called I think IT'S NOT JUNE
    > CLEAVER. Many of us in the women's liberation movement like myself, Linda
    > Gordon, Naomi Weisstein and others were born in 1939 or 1940.
    > Rosalyn Baxandall
    >
    >

    =============================================================================
    Ian Lekus -- lekus@duke.edu -- www.duke.edu/~lekus
    Dept. of History, Duke Univ., Box 90719, Durham, NC 27708; Fax 919-681-7670

    Project Coordinator, Rainbow Triangle Oral History Project
    Duke Univ. Center for LGBT Life, 202 Flowers Bldg, Box 90958, Durham NC 27708;
    Phone: (919) 684-6607; Email: rainbowtri@duke.edu; Fax: 919-681-8463

    "To be a revolutionary is to love your life enough to change it, to choose
    struggle instead of exile, to risk everything with only the glimmering
    hope of a world to win." -- Andrew Kopkind
    =============================================================================



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