THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Amy Kesselman
“Women’s liberation made thinking about lesbianism possible. We can make these kinds of choices about our lives.”
Author, Historian, Women’s Studies Professor. Faculty member in the Women’s Studies Program at SUNY New Paltz, 1981-2012. Expert in Women’s History and Feminist Politics. Founding member of Chicago Women’s Liberation Union. West Coast organizer for New University Conference. Citizens for Independent Political Action in Rogers Park in Chicago.
Interviewed by Vivian Rothstein, August and September 2021
Photo 1. Amy as a Witch performing Everywoman during a play at the founding convention of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, 1969. Photo 2. Amy in Chicago. Photo 3. Amy, 1974. Photo 4. Fleeting Opportunities: Women Shipyard Workers in Portland and Vancouver During World War II and Reconversion by Amy Kesselman, May 8, 1990. Photo 5, 6, 7. Three of the four editions of Women: Images and Realties, a Multicultural Anthology, co-edited by Amy Kesselman, 1998, 2002 and 2006.
More About Amy:
- Amy Kesselman Select Academia Papers
- Select Publications
- Paper presented as part of “A Revolutionary Moment: Women’s Liberation in the late 1960s and early 1970s,” a conference organized by the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Boston University, March 27-29, 2014 Panel: Comparing City Organizations – Panel: The New Haven Liberation Movement
- Amy honors group activity during the Second Wave during the Veteran Feminists of America event – Feminism and its Values, an Intergenerational Dialogue, Cromwell, CT, April 2005
- Good Work Sister. The Northwest Women’s History Project was formed in 1978 to capture the stories of women in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington who had done ‘men’s work’ in area shipyards during World War II. A DVD slideshow was produced based on the interviews with former shipyard workers.
- Our Gang of Four: Friendships and Women’s Liberation by Amy Kesselman with Heather Booth, Vivian Rothstein and Naomi Weisstein, 1999
- Guide to the Revolting Behavior Conference Papers, SUNY New Paltz Women’s Studies Program, 1997
- The Freedom Suit: Feminism and Dress Reform in the United States, 1848-1875 by Amy Kesselman, First Published in Gender and Society, December 1, 1991
- Chicago Women’s Liberation Movement website
- Dreamers and Fighters: The NYC Teacher Purges. Documentary – Children of the Blacklist: Amy Kesselman
- The Last of the Red Hot Mammas, or, the Liberation of Women as Performed by the Inmates of the World, 1969
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America, page 252