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WORK TITLE: Challenge and Change
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Sarasota
STATE: FL
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://usfsm.edu/faculty-members/dr-june-benowitz/ * http://usfsm.edu/sacs/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2015/01/Benowitz-CV.pdf * https://www.linkedin.com/in/june-benowitz-51ba7474/ * http://www.tampabaynewswire.com/2015/11/10/bulls-notebook-history-prof-spotlights-right-wing-women-in-new-book-40608
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married.
EDUCATION:Portland State University, B.A., M.A.; University of Texas, Austin, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. University of South Florida, Sarasota-Manatee, associate professor.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to publications, including History of Education Quarterly. Contributor of chapters to books.
SIDELIGHTS
June Melby Benowitz is an associate professor at the University of South Florida, Sarasota-Manatee. She holds both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Portland State University, as well as a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin.
Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion
In 1998 Benowitz released her first book, Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion. A second edition was published in 2017. In the second edition, she examines women’s connection to religion throughout the history of the United States, though she focuses on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A range of religions are represented in the book, from Christianity to Wicca. Among the women Benowitz profiles are Mahalia Jackson, Phyllis Scholarly, Mary Daly, Shirley MacLaine, and Anne Hutchinson, who was tried for heresy in 1637. More recent events involving women and religion include the formation of the Promise Keepers group and the celebration of the Woman’s Home and Foreign Mission Society’s one hundredth anniversary. Though the book contains individual entries, it also features chronology representing women’s involvement in religion throughout the years.
Cynthia A. Johnson, a contributor to Library Journal, commented: “Libraries supporting women’s studies or religious studies will find this of interest and value.” Writing in the Reference & User Services Quarterly, Betty Porter asserted: “Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion is unique in its focus, with a vast amount of information on the American religious landscape both past and present. It synthesizes the myriad ways women have made their voices heard.” Porter categorized the volume as “highly recommended.” In a lengthy assessment of the volume in the Journal of Women’s History, Kathleen M. Blee suggested: “An important part of this book is its examination of Elizabeth Dilling, the author of The Red Network, a widely distributed compilation of individuals and prominent people deemed subversive. Despite her prominence in World War II-era right-wing extremism, Dilling has had little scholarly attention, reflecting the gender double-standard by which rightist leaders are regarded in historical scholarship.” Blee added: “Benowitz is also skilled at portraying the paranoid style of far-right women, who, like male demagogues, generate an ever-expanding list of enemies.” Blee also stated: “Although [the book] provides valuable insights into the route by which women’s conservative politics in one era influenced subsequent politics, more work needs to be done to understand whether there are more direct forms of historical continuity.”
Days of Discontent
In Days of Discontent: American Women and Right-Wing Politics, 1933-1945, Benowitz examines the period from the Great Depression to World War II, highlighting how women responded to political movements during the time. She notes that a large number of women became affiliated with right-wing political groups during the specified years and explains why the women were attracted to those groups. Benowitz also profiles female figures of the political right, including Grace Wick and Elizabeth Dilling. Dilling is the author of The Red Network, a 1934 volume that warned of the dangers of Communists and those who support them. Wick was an Oregon woman who mounted quirky campaigns for her run for mayor of Portland and organized other stunts to broadcast her political views.
Writing in the Journal of Social History, Jason Scott Smith remarked: “In carrying out these examinations, comparisons, and explorations, Benowitz’s study is most successful in its well-drawn character portraits of right-wing women leaders such as Elizabeth Dilling and Grace Wick.” Smith concluded: “Although it breaks little new ground in explaining the dynamics between social movements and their leaders, this book succeeds in assembling a large body of information about heretofore obscure right-wing women activists.”
Challenge and Change
Challenge and Change: Right-Wing Women, Grassroots Activism, and the Baby Boom Generation finds Benowitz focusing on right-wing women from the 1950s through the 1970s. These woman are characterized as fearing the effects of state-mandated vaccines, sex education, and desegregation. They were often prejudiced against African Americans and Jews and believed that intellectual elites and the government were conspiring to tear apart the nation. Benowitz connects these women’s views with those of current political groups, including the Tea Party and the alt-right. In an interview with a contributor to the Tampa Bay Newswire Web site, Benowitz explained how she came to write the volume. She stated: “The editor of my earlier book said now that Days of Discontent is done why not follow up with one on a later period after World War II? … This is that book.”
Reviewing the book in the Journal of Southern History, Debbie Z. Harwell suggested: “Challenge and Change offers a cohesive picture of the issues and the people who pushed the Right’s agenda, and how both changed over time.” Harwell added: “The book enhances our understanding of how and why the new Right cultivated support in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the growing influence of women in the movement. Choice critic C.E. Neumann described the volume as “a clear account of national right-wing women activists between 1950 and the mid-1970s.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, May, 2016, C.E. Neumann, review of Challenge and Change: Right-Wing Women, Grassroots Activism, and the Baby Boom Generation, p. 1379.
Journal of Social History, winter, 2003, Jason Scott Smith, review of Days of Discontent: American Women and Right-Wing Politics, 1933-1945, p. 543.
Journal of Southern History, February, 2017, Debbie Z. Harwell, review of Challenge and Change, p. 235.
Journal of Women’s History, summer, 2003, Kathleen M. Blue, review of Days of Discontent, p. 214.
Library Journal, January, 1999, Cynthia A. Johnson, review of Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion, p. 82.
Reference & User Services Quarterly, spring, 1999, Betty Porter, Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion, p. 300.
ONLINE
Tampa Bay Newswire, https://www.tampabaynewswire.com/ (November 10, 2015), author interview.
University of South Florida, Sarasota-Manatee Website, http://usfsm.edu/ (July 31, 2017), author faculty profile.*
QUOTED: "The editor of my earlier book said now that Days of Discontent is done why not follow up with one on a later period after World War II? ... This is that book."
Bulls Notebook: History Prof. spotlights right-wing women in new book
November 10, 2015 by Press Release
USF Sarasota Manatee
SARASOTA, Fla. (Nov. 9, 2015) – USF Sarasota-Manatee associate professor of history Dr. June Benowitz explores the rise of right-wing women’s groups and their connection to today’s far right in her new book “Challenge and Change: Right-Wing Women, Grassroots Activism, and the Baby Boom Generation” (University Press of Florida).
The 368-page book, out a month ago, took nearly four years to research and follows Benowitz’s previous work, “Days of Discontent: American Women and Right-Wing Politics, 1933–1945.” She said she hopes the publication is used in history classes regarding the era, women’s studies and political science programs at universities.
“The editor of my earlier book said now that Days of Discontent is done why not follow up with one on a later period after World War II?” said Benowitz. “This is that book.”
The book is divided into two parts: The first examines the influence of conservative women’s groups on education, public health and school desegregation. The second looks at the rise of traditional family values in public discourse, the Vietnam War, and right-wing women who fought against women’s liberation and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
In researching “Challenge and Change,” Benowitz said she crisscrossed the country to pore over archival materials at libraries and universities.
A few surprises emerged during her examination, including how groups opposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reforms successfully pressured college and high school leadership to eliminate texts with references to his New Deal programs. William F. Buckley Sr., father of William F. Buckley Jr., the conservative founder of the National Review, aided in the effort, overseen by Lucille Cardin Crain of the Educational Reviewer.
“They considered New Deal programs as a step toward communism,” said Benowitz, adding this happened as McCarthyism was sweeping across the nation.
In other instances, she writes about right-wing groups opposed to the fluoridation of public water supplies – contending fluoridated water causes brain damage – and to polio vaccinations because they were thought to be part of a communist conspiracy. For the most part, the groups distrusted large central governments and liberal elites.
Benowitz goes on to chronicle women of the 1970s who opposed women’s liberation and the ERA. She found that some who called for a return to traditional female roles were themselves unconventional, joining picket lines in often loud protest to the women’s libbers.
Researching her book, she said she couldn’t help but draw parallels between certain events of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, and those of today. Back then, she said, groups opposing a particular policy or program often turned to a handful of “experts” to make their case while ignoring the vast consensus from the rest of scientific or medical community.
Today’s global warming debate uses that same strategy, she said. “The same thing is happening today.”
USFSM to host Open House for prospective students, transfers
USF Sarasota-Manatee will hold an Open House for prospective freshmen, transfer students and graduate students on Saturday, Nov. 14, from 9 to 11 a.m.
The event, on the USFSM campus at 8350 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, looks to be the largest Open House yet. Included will be campus tours, free food and presentations on academics, admissions, scholarships, financial aid, and student life. Help will be available for admission applicants.
The Open House, one of two held each semester, comes amid rising attendance at the university. Enrollment this past fall hit a 7-year high with 2,038 “home” students – those who identify the Sarasota-Manatee campus as their home USF System campus.
Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Andrew Telatovich said he expects a mix of prospective undergraduate and graduate students seeking admission for the upcoming spring, summer or fall 2016 semesters.
For more information about the Open House, contact Sean Grosso at (941) 359-4264 or sgrosso@sar.usf.edu.
Another Open House is set for prospective biology majors for Saturday, Jan. 30, from 9 to 11 a.m. at Mote Marine Laboratory, 1600 Ken Thompson Pkwy., Sarasota.
USFSM to head to Bulls-Owls game
Saturday’s USF Bulls-Temple Owls football game promises to have a larger-than-usual USF Sarasota-Manatee contingent.
The campus is participating in “Get on the Bus Day,” an annual event where students, faculty and staff meet at the USFSM parking lot to ride a bus to Raymond James Stadium. Admission to the game is free. Tailgating is two-hours before the 7 p.m. kickoff.
The 5-4 Bulls need one more win to secure a bowl appearance. Be part of the action by filling out the form at http://goo.gl/forms/xabrcuOr4v.
Dr. June Benowitz
Title: Associate Professor
Area of Interest: History
Phone: 941-359-4344
Curriculum Vitae: CV
Email: benowitz@sar.usf.edu
Office: SMC C251
Dr. June Melby Benowitz is an Associate Professor of History at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. She is the author of Days of Discontent: American Women and Right-Wing Politics, 1933-1945, Northern Illinois University Press (2002) and Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion, ABC-CLIO (1998). The latter book was chosen as an “Outstanding Textbook of 1999” by Choice magazine. Dr. Benowitz has also contributed articles to History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 1, February 2009, Women and War, ABC-CLIO (2006), Women in World History, Yorkin Publications (1999), and the New Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Society (1996). Book chapters on Transportation and Social Attitudes appear in the Handbook to Life in America: The Colonial and Revolutionary Era and The Age of Reform, respectively, Facts on File (2009). Recently, she completed a book manuscript tentatively titled The Challenge of Change: Right-Wing Women, Grassroots Activism, and the Baby Boom Generation. Dr. Benowitz received her B.A. and M.A. from Portland State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She moved with her husband from Oregon to Sarasota in 1995.
Research
“Right-Wing Women, American Morality, and the Battle Over School Prayer.” International conference on “Religion in American Life,” King’s College, London, February 22-24, 2013.
“Right-Wing American Women and Grassroots Revolt—the 1930s and Beyond.” Historians of the Twentieth Century United States Annual Conference, Oxford, England, July 9, 2011.
Benowitz, J. (2009) “Reading, Writing and Radicalism: Right-Wing Women and Education in the Post-War Years,” History of Education Quarterly (Vol. 49, No. 1, February 2009)
Book chapter, “Women, Gender Activism, and Public Policy,” Oxford Handbook on the New Deal (forthcoming).
Book chapter, “Transportation,” in Handbook to Life in America, Book 1, Facts on File, Inc. (2009)
Book chapter, “Social Attitudes,” in Handbook to Life in America, Book 5, Facts on File, Inc. (2009)
Book review of Jonathan Daniel Wells and Sheila R. Phipps, editors, Entering the Fray: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the New South, in The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 107, No. 4, Autumn, 2009.
“Antisemitism in the America First Committee.” Association for Jewish Studies Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., 21 December 2008.
Book review of Aviva Weingarten’s Jewish Organizations’ [sic] Response to Communism and to Senator McCarthy in American Jewish History, Vol. 94, No. 3, September 2008.
“United States: Opposition to U.S. Entry into World War II by Right-Wing American Women,” in Bernard Cook, ed., Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO (2006).
“Right-Wing Women and Education: The Post-War Years.” American Historical Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, 7 January 2006.
“Minute Women of the U.S.A.,” in Roy R. Barkeley and Mark F. Odintz, eds., The Portable Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Society (2000).
“Carrie Chapman Catt,” “Abigail Scott Duniway,” and “Lucretia Mott,” in Women in World History, Yorkin Publications (1999).
“Acuff, TX”; “Bayside, TX”; “Copano, TX”; “Johnston, Eliza Griffin”; “Minute Women of the U.S.A.” (this essay was reprinted in The Portable Handbook of Texas, 2000); “Neblett, Elizabeth Scott”; and “Nuestra Senoria Del Refugio Mission” in New Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Society (1996).
Authored booklet From Log Cabin to High Rise: The Washington County Courthouse, 1849-1988, Washington County, Oregon (1988).
CV: http://usfsm.edu/sacs/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2015/01/Benowitz-CV.pdf
QUOTED: "Libraries supporting women's studies or religious studies will find this of interest and value."
Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion
Cynthia A. Johnson
124.1 (Jan. 1999): p82.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1999 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Benowitz, June Melby. Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion. ABC-CLIO. 1998. 466p. permanent paper. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-87436-887-1. $75. REF
Historian Benowitz has defined religion broadly, including not just well-established denominations but also "groups that some might consider quasi-religious, such as witches and ecofeminists." Each entry ends with See also references and a list of secondary sources. There are no internal cross references, but the index does a good job in this regard. The encyclopedia is particularly strong in its biographical coverage, often providing one to two pages of information about little-known women such as the anti-Semite and anti-Communist Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Dilling. In addition to the numerous biographies, there are topical entries about religious denominations and beliefs; short essays about issues relating to women and religion, such as abortion or ministers' wives; and extensive coverage of religious organizations, from the American Missionary Association to the Young Women's Christian Association. The encyclopedia concludes with a chronology and a 21-page bibliography. Libraries supporting women's studies or religious studies will find this of interest and value.--Cynthia A. Johnson, Barnard Coll. Lib., New York
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Johnson, Cynthia A. "Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion." Library Journal, Jan. 1999, p. 82. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA53631068&it=r&asid=67cb1a68d5f8f3e3ca012ae8efe9fb4a. Accessed 22 June 2017.
QUOTED: "Challenge and Change offers a cohesive picture of the issues and the people who pushed the Right's agenda, and how both changed over time."
"The book enhances our understanding of how and why the new Right cultivated support in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the growing influence of women in the movement."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A53631068
Challenge and Change: Right-Wing Women, Grassroots Activism, and the Baby Boom Generation
Debbie Z. Harwell
83.1 (Feb. 2017): p235.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Challenge and Change: Right-Wing Women, Grassroots Activism, and the Baby Boom Generation. By June Melby Benowitz. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, 2015. Pp. xii, 368. $74.95, ISBN 9780-8130-6122-1.)
June Melby Benowitz seeks to demonstrate the connections between the old Right, the new Right, and the Tea Party by exploring the activism of mostly white, middle-class conservative women who hoped to influence the political and social thinking of their time against big government, communism, race mixing, and immorality. Although the definition of who constitutes the right wing changes across time and region, most rightist women shared similar conservative ideals and moral codes, a distrust of government, and a desire to halt or minimize social change.
The first section of Challenge and Change: Right-Wing Women, Grassroots Activism, and the Baby Boom Generation, "Our School, Our Children," looks at education, health, and civil rights through common themes: federal government intrusion into private lives, communist conspiracies, and protecting child safety. Benowitz contends right-wing women experienced degrees of success, such as influencing curriculum and textbook selection and causing some progressive educators to be removed, but they could not undo the Supreme Court's bans on segregation and school prayer. Rightists fought against the fluoridation of public water systems and polio vaccine requirements for children, saying these interventions jeopardized children's health as corporations profited. Right wingers questioned the use of intelligence tests, which they claimed brainwashed children, and mental health professionals who labeled people on the Far Right as unstable. Opposition to school desegregation and busing uniquely united northern and southern rightists as they addressed fears of miscegenation while steering clear of racist rhetoric.
Part 2, "Protesting the Protests," focuses on right-wing reactions to a changing society. Benowitz explores the decline in moral values as evidenced by the growth of secularism, the erosion of patriotism, the proliferation of sex education, and the rise of antiwar sentiment. Mothers were the "first line of defense" to save America from outside threats by saving future generations (p. 183). Student protests against the Vietnam War were unsettling to rightists who often saw their baby-boomer children questioning the draft and willing to settle for peace without victory. The Right also found young people's support of women's liberation and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) bothersome. Protection of families, rightists held, was more important than the amendment, and they warned against unisex toilets, women being drafted, homosexuality, and expansion of abortion should the amendment pass. In this instance, right-wing women gained the upper hand as they mobilized swiftly to defeat the ERA.
The book argues that rightist women, especially, were motivated by their anxieties about what the future held for their families and their desire to extend women's roles within the political culture. This same argument could be made for left-leaning and moderate women activists throughout history and, therefore, is not unique to the Right. Nevertheless, rightists' emphasis on tradition and individual rights made it a challenging task to advance their agenda.
Benowitz makes extensive use of primary sources. Particularly intriguing are the selections and analyses of letters between the women highlighted, the U.S. president, and organizational leaders. These excerpts clearly illustrate the evolution of their viewpoints, and it is here the book is at its best.
Challenge and Change offers a cohesive picture of the issues and the people who pushed the Right's agenda, and how both changed over time. Benowitz explores an array of issues, organizations, and leaders, including Lucille Cardin Crain, Frances Bartlett, and Phyllis Schlafly, to demonstrate similarities and differences in approach. The book enhances our understanding of how and why the new Right cultivated support in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the growing influence of women in the movement. It succeeds in making direct connections between the old Right, the new Right, and the Tea Party, although the last receives less emphasis.
Debbie Z. Harwell
University of Houston
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Harwell, Debbie Z. "Challenge and Change: Right-Wing Women, Grassroots Activism, and the Baby Boom Generation." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 1, 2017, p. 235+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481354202&it=r&asid=1150cae338801e5104a8e6309f1e7694. Accessed 22 June 2017.
QUOTED: "a clear account of national right-wing women activists between 1950 and the mid-1970s."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A481354202
Benowitz, June Melby. Challenge and change: right-wing women, grassroots activism, and the baby boom generation
C.E. Neumann
53.9 (May 2016): p1379.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Benowitz, June Melby. Challenge and change: right-wing women, grassroots activism, and the baby boom generation. University Press of Florida, 2015. 368p bibl index afp ISBN 9780813061221 cloth, $74.95
53-4074
HQ1236
2015-14588 CIP
The dull title of this engaging book does not do it justice. Benowitz (Univ. of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee) writes a clear account of national right-wing women activists between 1950 and the mid-1970s. In their roles as mothers, rightists perceived a responsibility to defeat any threats to their children. These women, often racist and anti-Semitic, saw communists at the heart of demands for school integration, mental health reform, sex education, and polio vaccination. Rightist women also viewed the government and progressive educators, as well as scientific and intellectual elites, as part of a broad conspiracy to undermine their vision of a utopian United States. Benowitz argues that these women set the stage for the rise of the New Right and the Tea Party. The scope of the book is impressive. The author covers every major rightist issue, including the Vietnam War and the Equal Rights Amendment, and shows command of the secondary literature. The historical context to such controversies as the fluoridation of public water will be very useful to readers. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. General collections, and upper-division undergraduates and above.--C. E. Neumann, Miami University
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Neumann, C.E. "Benowitz, June Melby. Challenge and change: right-wing women, grassroots activism, and the baby boom generation." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, May 2016, p. 1379. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA453288557&it=r&asid=8ffe9983640b1a1b1038bcc77be3b878. Accessed 22 June 2017.
QUOTED: "In carrying out these examinations, comparisons, and explorations, Benowitz's study is most successful in its well-drawn character portraits of right-wing women leaders such as Elizabeth Dilling and Grace Wick."
"Although it breaks little new ground in explaining the dynamics between social movements and their leaders, this book succeeds in assembling a large body of information about heretofore obscure right-wing women activists."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A453288557
Days of Discontent: American Women and Right-Wing Politics, 1933-1945
Jason Scott Smith
37.2 (Winter 2003): p543.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 Oxford University Press
https://academic.oup.com/journals
By June Melby Benowitz (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002. 230 pp.).
How can a social movement's political significance be measured? To what extent do the views of a movement's leaders reflect the beliefs of its followers? These two issues implicitly inform June Benowitz's study of American women and rightwing politics during the Great Depression and World War II. In investigating these topics, Benowitz contributes to a growing literature on the rise of twentieth-century American conservatism, carefully tracing the pre-1945 roots of political activism among women on the right. Benowitz identifies her approach as that of "a historian of women and women's movements" (7). She sets out to assess what combination of personal and political factors led ordinary women to join right-wing groups. "When we examine connections between women's status in American society and their participation in public life; compare women across the political spectrum; and explore the similarities, differences, and interrelationships among right-wing men and women and their organizations," Benowitz argues, "the story of the place of right-wing women in American history should unfold" (5).
In carrying out these examinations, comparisons, and explorations, Benowitz's study is most successful in its well-drawn character portraits of right-wing women leaders such as Elizabeth Dilling and Grace Wick. These "right-wing extremists" shared a common set of traits: they were racist, anti-Semitic, and anticommunist, and their rhetoric relied on Manichean divisions, conspiracy theories, and character assassination. Elizabeth Dilling, a religiously inspired superpatriot, is perhaps best remembered as the basis for the character Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch in Sinclair Lewis's novel It Can't Happen Here. In her 1934 work, The Red Network, Dilling warned against the threats presented by communists and their sympathizers, who for Dilling ranged from Jane Addams and Eleanor Roosevelt to Mahatma Gandhi and Sigmund Freud. Dilling took to the radio and toured the country to speak about the dangers posed by this growing conspiracy to remake the United States into a communist state, becoming a nationally known figure. In reconstructing Dilling's private and public life, Benowitz makes good use of government records of Dilling's activities, letters women wrote to Dilling, and Dilling's public statements and speeches. Dilling had little use for mainstream conservatives. Republicans such as Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenburg were "too liberal" for her, and she even objected to the isolationist America First Committee because she thought it contained too many communists (34).
Benowitz takes care to highlight the gender-based public activism of her subjects. Grace Wick, whom Benowitz describes as a disillusioned Democrat, came to public notice in Oregon for her quirky campaigns for community attention and electoral office. In 1935, she paraded through downtown Portland dad in a barrel trimmed with black lace and festooned with slogans such as "Horse thieves are hanged why not crooked politicians?" (67). In 1936, Wick mounted an odd campaign for Portland's mayoralty. She summarized her program as "a kiss for everyone in Portland," and her campaign slogan was "Don't mix your taffy with your boloney and applesauce and the kisses will take care of themselves" (69). While Benowitz does note that the point of Wick's campaign "was unclear," it seems more accurate to term it incoherent (69).
While Benowitz's character studies are informative, her treatment of the reception of right-wing ideas among ordinary women serves mostly to underscore, with one exception, the limited appeal these ideas held. During the months between the start of World War II in September 1939 and the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, right-wing women leaders were able to secure much public interest in and support for their opposition to American involvement in the war. Relying on maternal appeals to keep American boys safe at home, rather than on their usual rants against tyrannical government, leaders such as Dilling commanded national attention, campaigning against such measures as Lend-Lease. After Pearl Harbor, however, these leaders quickly lost their following and were pushed to the political margins by a renewed upsurge in support for war. For the most part, Benowitz's case for the political significance of right-wing women does not rest on their achievement of any measurable electoral influence. While Benowitz introduces her study with a quick review of the history of the women's suffrage movement, on the whole her account suggests that right-wing women generally preferred to seek power by parading, rallying, or speaking in public, and not through the ballot.
In fact, Benowitz's explanation of the history of right-wing politics among American women relies heavily on the social impact of modernization and on what earlier scholars such as Daniel Bell called "status anxiety." "Right-wing women," Benowitz argues, "fretted over the consequences of rapid urbanization and the economic and cultural changes accompanying it" (174). In the face of this "rapid transformation," these women, who "felt powerless in the midst of a changing society and feared that if they did nothing about it, they would be overwhelmed," enlisted in various right-wing women's organizations (175). This rather schematic explanation seems somewhat at odds with the more complex portrait of the relationship between women leaders and followers that Benowitz paints in the body of her study. Although it breaks little new ground in explaining the dynamics between social movements and their leaders, this book succeeds in assembling a large body of information about heretofore obscure right-wing women activists.
Jason Scott Smith
Harvard University
Smith, Jason Scott
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Smith, Jason Scott. "Days of Discontent: American Women and Right-Wing Politics, 1933-1945." Journal of Social History, vol. 37, no. 2, 2003, p. 543+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA111897862&it=r&asid=275663859098d346015cc06f52d095b2. Accessed 22 June 2017.
QUOTED: "Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion is unique in its focus, with a vast amount of information on the American religious landscape both past and present. It synthesizes the myriad ways women have made their voices heard."
"highly recommended."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A111897862
Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion
Betty Porter
38.3 (Spring 1999): p300.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1999 American Library Association
http://www.rusq.org/
Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion. By June Melby Benowitz. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1998. 446p. acid free, $75 (ISBN 0-87436-887-1).
American women traditionally have played a large role in religion, theology, and spirituality. Women make up the majority of membership in religious organizations and, as more and more churches are making leadership positions inclusive, women are on the cutting edge of theological thought.
In spite of great strides toward the prominence of women in religion, however, it continues to be primarily a patriarchal field, and women active in theology are little-known to the general public. Hence, the need for and importance of this book.
The scope of this encyclopedia is historical, with a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it is concerned with roles and attitudes of women in religion both in and out of the organized church. All denominations and viewpoints are represented--from Mary Daly to Phyllis Schlafly, from Wicca to the Salvation Army. Recent phenomena such as the Promise Keepers are included, and the book contains a chronology of women and religion, from the heresy trial of Anne Hutchinson in 1637 to the one-hundredth anniversary of the Woman's Home and Foreign Mission Society in 1997. Articles on individual women, not necessarily those associated with an organized religion (Mahalia Jackson, Shirley MacLaine, Sojourner Truth), make up close to two-thirds of the volume.
The writing is clear and concise, and each article is followed by a list of references and related articles. There is a complete bibliography of books and manuscripts, articles, primary sources, and chapters in books.
A two-volume work that covers somewhat similar ground is the 1999 publication Encyclopedia of Women and World Religion, edited by Serinity Young (Macmillan Reference USA). This set, of course, has international coverage; and the articles, written by world-known scholars, tend to be on more general religious topics, such as divinity, evil, Christianity, and ethics. There are some biographical entries, but they are not as extensive or as detailed as the Benowitz volume. Young's encyclopedia conveniently contains an alphabetical list of articles and contributors at the beginning. It also puts the information in a context through a synoptic outline of entries at the end of the second volume. This is a set that will find a great deal of use in academic and general libraries.
But the Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion is unique in its focus, with a vast amount of information on the American religious landscape both past and present. It synthesizes the myriad ways women have made their voices heard in the realm of religion, theology, and spirituality. Highly recommended.--Betty Porter, Lodge Learning Lab Director, Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Porter, Betty. "Encyclopedia of American Women and Religion." Reference & User Services Quarterly, Spring 1999, p. 300. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA55587795&it=r&asid=165b504c93fbb9a1f47e9b6a49e88ea3. Accessed 22 June 2017.
QUOTED: "An important part of this book is its examination of Elizabeth Dilling, the author of The Red Network, a widely distributed compilation of individuals and prominent people deemed subversive. Despite her prominence in World War II-era right-wing extremism, Dilling has had little scholarly attention, reflecting the gender double-standard by which rightist leaders are regarded in historical scholarship."
"Benowitz is also skilled at portraying the paranoid style of far-right women, who, like male demagogues, generate an ever-expanding list of enemies."
"Although each provides valuable insights into the route by which women's conservative politics in one era influenced subsequent politics, more work needs to be done to understand whether there are more direct forms of historical continuity."
Gale Document Number: GALE|A55587795
Troubling women's history: women in right-wing and colonial politics
Kathleen M. Blee
15.2 (Summer 2003): p214.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 Johns Hopkins University Press
http://www.press.jhu.edu
June Melby Benowitz. Days of Discontent: American Women and Right-Wing Politics, 1933-1945. Dekalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002. ix + 230 pp. ISBN 0-87580-294 (cl).
Kim E. Nielsen. Un-American Womanhood: Antiradicalism, Antifeminism, and the First Red Scare. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2001. x + 219 pp. ISBN 0-8142-0882-7 (cl); 0-8142-5080-7 (pb).
Lora Wildenthal. German Women for Empire, 1884-1945. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. xi + 336 pp. ISBN 0-8223-2807-0 (cl); 0-8223-2819 (pb).
It was once assumed that women's history would unearth stories of tenacious, admirable women who challenged the limits of their assigned social positions. Now, we are more cautious. Since Claudia Koonz's groundbreaking study of women in German Nazism, we know that historical scholarship does not necessarily produce inspiring stories of women's heroic efforts to safeguard peace and justice. (1) Studies of women in Italian fascism, the U.S. Ku Klux Klan, Latin American dictatorships, Hindu nationalism in India, and other right-wing politics across the globe have documented women's participation in history's most vicious racist, colonialist, and right-wing movements and demonstrated that women have shaped the nature and possibilities of rightist politics in many places and times. (2) Rather than seeking women to celebrate, many feminist scholars now are excavating the racial subtexts, the conservative sexual and gender politics, and the nationalistic and xenophobic impulses behind various women's political projects, even those with positive aspects. The books reviewed here take another step into this troubling aspect of women's history, revealing how right-wing and colonial politics have provided both a context and a forum for new forms of women's political citizenship.
Days of Discontent chronicles women in U.S. right-wing extremism during and immediately after the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when the far right targeted Jews, Roosevelt's New Deal policies, and communism at home and abroad. An important part of this book is its examination of Elizabeth Dilling, the author of The Red Network, a widely distributed compilation of individuals and prominent people deemed subversive. Despite her prominence in World War II-era right-wing extremism, Dilling has had little scholarly attention, reflecting the gender double-standard by which rightist leaders are regarded in historical scholarship.
Dilling's transformation from an upper-middle-class housewife and mother to extremist leader came about, or so she claimed, after a 1931 family trip to the Soviet Union, where she was shocked by restrictions on personal liberty and scarcity of goods. When she published The Red Network, subtitled "A 'Who's Who' and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots," Dilling came into contact with prominent, male, far-right leaders, including those from the German-American Bund, and was launched on a career as an extremist leader and spokeswoman. Dilling's net of enemies was cast widely, but her extremism was often not far from the political mainstream of the time. When she targeted Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, for example, Addams was simultaneously being investigated by the War Department for her involvement with Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). The boundary between the tactics of the far right and policies of government surveillance in this era were fragile indeed.
Dilling's life also illustrates the entanglement of political belief and personal scandal and the ironic twists that are familiar features of the biography of right-wing leaders throughout the twentieth century. Dilling's increasing visibility as an anti-Semite is a case in point. Perhaps Dilling became more anti-Semitic over time as a result of contacts with the far right. Or perhaps it was because she discovered that her husband had a Jewish girlfriend. Or perhaps she always hated Jews, but this simply became more public during her divorce trial. In any case, Dilling's anti-Semitism undermined her stance as an impassioned patriot, as she expressed admiration for Nazi movement in Germany for combating "conspiring, revolutionary Communist Jews." Like other leaders of the far right, Dilling's earlier political efforts to fight subversion now sealed her own fate. As a partisan of Germany, she herself became viewed as subversive and was indicted on sedition charges during the 1940s "Brown Scare." Such details are fascinating, although Benowitz's explanations for Dilling's political actions often seem strained as, for instance, when she attributes Dilling's tactics of political attack to her underlying sense of vulnerability and persecution rooted in an emotional and insecure childhood, an argument that easily slides into tautology.
The question of individual motivation is a tricky one in studies of right-wing women. It is fairly unproblematic to construct an argument for why some white Christian men might support patriarchal, racist, anti-Semitic, and right-wing politics or even to understand why women with similar sets of interests--the wives of these men, or other upper-class women, for example--might be interested in movements of the right. Benowitz's description of Cathrine Curtis, upper-class founder of "Women Investors In America," an association that opposed regulation of business by the federal government is such a figure. But why other women would find the far right a reasonable path into public life is more puzzling. "Pro America," which began as a garden club in Seattle, provided a political training ground for some women right- wing extremists but it is not clear what caused its transition from a group devoted to beautifying home and community to one battling on behalf of patriotism and sexual purity. Despite her difficulty tracing the motivations of diverse women in the far right, Benowitz is excellent at showing that right-wing activism was not the exclusive province of women of a particular class, martial status, or employment status. In addition to the upper-class Curtis and Dilling, she depicts such political actors as Grace Wick, a right-wing ideologue from Portland whose considerable financial problems did not prevent her anti-New Deal and anti-Semitic activism, and Alice Waters, a widow and vehement anti-Semite known for urging that clotheslines be readied to lynch Jews.
Benowitz is also skilled at portraying the paranoid style of far-right women, who, like male demagogues, generate an ever-expanding list of enemies. Dilling, for example, tarred even groups with strong right-wing credentials such as the isolationist America First Committee and the National Legion of Mothers of America with the allegation of communist infiltration. Lyrl Clark Van Hyning headed "We, the Mothers Mobilize for America, Inc.," a group that insisted that World War II was being fought on behalf of Jews and decried the United States as the aggressor in Pearl Harbor. Hyning eventually came into conflict with the hyper-nativist Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) when she charged that it was a vehicle for communist propaganda, in league with the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and League of Women Voters (LWV). Such cases suggest that the style and outcomes of women's right-wing extremism may differ little from that of men, even if the process of their political mobilization is different.
Un-American Womanhood is a careful, lively work that examines anti-feminism, antiradicalism, and antistatism a decade earlier, in the Red Scare of the 1920s. Nielsen traces the precondition for women's involvement in the Red Scare to the networks and organizations of the earlier antisuffrage movement in which women were mobilized for a conservative cause. Women's activism against the granting of female suffrage, she argues, spilled over into opposition to other social phenomena perceived as a social threat, such as labor and political radicalism. As women moved from antisuffragism to the Red Scare attacks on gender and social equality, they brought political experience and legitimacy to a conservative movement that had feared that women's new political citizenship would be wielded in a progressive direction. In turn, right-wing activism in the 1920s gave some women an opportunity to exercise their political muscle without threatening traditional notions of gender roles.
In the 1920s, conservative forces targeted various fronts--sexual, gender, economic, political--in their battle to defend traditional society, believing that changing any one structure of society would lead to a transformation of them all. (Subsequent social changes, such as feminism, have sadly made it clear that this is not the case.) Linking these issues made it possible for women to slide from anti-women's suffrage to antiradicalism, but with a gendered flair, as illustrated in the renaming of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS) to the Women Patriots. And these links, Nielsen points out, fueled attacks on social welfare legislation, the women's peace movement, and various forms of political and labor radicalism--attacks that blended antifeminist and antiprogressive ideologies.
Nielsen's study uncovers many interesting details of how antiradical and antifeminist ideas interacted to shape the political actions of conservative women and create a model of conservative female citizenship that would persist for decades. Much like the rightist assault on welfare in the late twentieth century, it was not hard to detect the gender subtext of rightwing attacks on the expansion of the state in the 1920s. Conservatives opposed Progressive-Era proposals to restrict child labor, expand health care, and establish a federal department of education--all seen as benefiting women and children--but supported federal expansion in the form of military growth and extension of the highway system. The roots of such distinction among state policies, she argues effectively, can be traced to the fusion of antifeminist and antistatist ideas in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Nielsen's dissection of the 1920s debate over child labor is particularly effective. She demonstrates that those who opposed restrictions on child labor did so by depicting an idealized, patriarchal home as its location. Ending child labor, they suggested, meant that children could refuse parental requests to pick berries or set the dinner table. Such arguments not only reinforced the idea that existing hierarchies in the home were necessary and just but also diverted attention from the widespread abuse of child workers in the nation's factories and fields. The debate over child labor also provides insight into right-wing political strategies. The discussion of whether children would pick berries is an example of a rhetorical strategy that is common on the right, the generation of effective but tangential arguments to demolish the opposition. Such tactics are in wide spread use by the right to the present day. While I was writing this review, a conservative newspaper columnist, arguing against same-sex parenting rights, discussed two deaf lesbian mothers who hoped their child would be born deaf as an example of why gay men and lesbians are not fit to be parents. Another political form that has persisted over time on the right is the use of mass media to persuade the public, used to great effect by conservatives in the debate over the Child Labor Amendment and echoed in right-wing talk radio today. Moreover, conservative women of the early twentieth century--as now--were effective in what Nielsen terms the "battle of definition" (45). Antisuffragists were able to equate feminism with hostility to men, political subversion, and opposition to the family. A decade later, right-wing women made progressive women a symbol of Bolshevism, positioning women as the vulnerable point in national security and making gender, as Nielsen argues, a "litmus test" for domestic radicalism. These examples suggest that not only the personnel, networks, and organizations of the right but also its tactics can be transmitted over time.
German Women for Empire is an excellently documented and intricately argued study of women's role in German overseas expansion. Here, the relationship of women to conservative politics is much different than in the U.S. right. Wildenthal argues that German women themselves were invested in the acquisition of a colonial empire but that German men were less sure of the importance of German women to that venture. Moreover, unlike women in the post-World War I United States, who had won some measure of political citizenship before entering rightist politics, German women were blocked from most avenues of institutionalized, public power--they did not have the suffrage and were not admitted to German universities. Thus, German women found the colonial movement to be a base from which they could exercise political power otherwise denied to them. It is ironic that colonial space could provide German women the opportunity to create a new social order at the same time that it circumscribed life for women and men in the places colonized by Germany.
A rich aspect of Wildenthal's study is her analysis of the gendering of space in the colonies. If German women saw colonial space as creating avenues of possibility, German colonialist men fought for a colonial space that they could rule with impunity. To some German men, this meant a space in which they could enact their own fantasies, freed of the oversight of German woman. German women resisted this male-centered notion of colonial morality, but ultimately failed because they refused to see women of the colonies as their equals.
A vivid example of the contestation over the moral space of the colonies is that of colonial sexual politics. Claiming absolute authority in all aspects of colonial life, German men regarded sexual access to African women as their colonial prerogative, palliatives for the rigors of life in the colonies. One German man expressed it clearly: "the eternal feminine, alsounder dark skin, is an excellent charm against low spirits" (81). As in the context of American slavery, white men's beliefs in racial hierarchy--a foundation of colonial life--did not seem to require that they honor the principle of racial separation when it conflicted with their sexual privileges.
The issue of intermarriage in the colonies presented a similar conflict between racial separation and men's privilege. Ideologies of racial purity and the superiority of whites and Europeans made unthinkable the idea of intermarriage, especially children born in unions between German men and African women. However, bans on intermarriage were a visible infringement on German men's perceived right to choose any woman for a marriage partner. Solutions varied in different colonies. In some places, African women, but not German men, faced punishment for interracial marriages. In other colonies, intermarriage was banned but interracial concubinage, casual sex, or prostitution between German man and African women was allowed. In some, German men were permitted to buy an African girl as a sexual partner for a short time as long as no children would be born. Other scholars have documented such convoluted racial and sexual politics in colonial spaces, but Wildenthal takes the analysis further, demonstrating that issues of sexual propriety and racial privilege shaped the political identity and sense of political agency of male German colonists. She also contributes to the growing scholarship on the social and political construction of race, with her discussion of how to be white in German Samoa meant to have fluency in the German language, an education in Germany, and a European way of life.
Another fascinating aspect of Wildenthal's study is her consideration of the role of German nurses in colonialization. Nursing was a primary route by which German women could find a place for themselves in the colonies. Backed by a group of married, wealthy women, the German Association for Nursing in the Colonies, comprised of unmarried and widowed women nurses, were shipped to Germany's colonies. These nurses often were the only German women in the colony besides missionaries. For them, the colonial experience was fraught with danger and contestation. They witnessed the sexual physical abuse of African women by German men, were confronted with the complexities of working with colonized people as employer, teacher, surrogate mother, and healer, and faced the constant threat of malaria and dysentery. While the wealthy German women who sponsored nurses had a romantic notion of colonialization, discussing the charms of African children taken from slave traders and brought to Germany, nurses practicing in the colonies developed different and more nuanced perspectives of the racial and sexual politics of colonialism. Colonial nurses, for example, protested venereal disease examinations of African women prisoners in German Southwest Africa. Their vulnerable and contradictory position as German women in the colonies created the possibility for autonomous thought and action, even against the deeply embedded principles of male and German privilege in the colonies.
Taken together, these studies of women on the right have several implications for the broader field of women's history. First, it is clear that what is considered in a particular time and place to be the political "right," broadly conceived, is more accurately understood by its boundaries than by its center. That is, the right is better defined by looking at its common enemies than by what its various groups have in common, which is often very little. A vivid example is that of the role of women's rights and pacifism in women's politics. The women who participated in the Red Scare of the 1920s, like right-wing activists in many times, attacked women's peace organizations as subversive, yet far-right women's groups in the 1930s and 1940s claimed women's natural pacifism, rather than pro-Axis sentiments, as the reason for their opposition to U.S. involvement in World War II. Similarly, it was the National Woman's Party, a fervent supporter of women's legal equality, that launched the political career of some rightwing women leaders in the 1940s, and at least some far-right women combined their attacks on Jews and communists with calls for women's rights. Moreover, the gender antagonism that characterizes many conservative and Colonialist movements belies easy categorization of right-wing movements as simply patriarchal. Such complexities need to be considered as we construct the history of women's role on the political right.
Second, these works complicate the notion of female citizenship, showing how both enfranchisement, and its lack, can stimulate women's participation in protest, and cautioning scholars of women's history against valorizing women's entrance into public politics. Women who claim political citizenship in order to challenge women's citizenship--a phenomenon that stretches from the antisuffrage movement to the anti-ERA and anti-abortion movements in the U.S. today--defy easy conclusions about public politics as empowering and self-reinforcing. Too, the lack of a consistent relationship between conservative politics in the United States and the social class, marital status, or educational background of its female leaders suggests that we cannot understand right-wing women with the assumptions and theories of political motivation that were developed to explain men's participation on the political right.
Finally, these works find that the participation of women in colonialist and far-right movements set the stage for later forms of conservative politics, but the authors suggest very different forms by which historical transmission across political movements took place. Wildenthal focuses on political strategies, tracing how women's colonialist work eventually became channeled into the mission of racial reproduction, pushing German women to work on "keeping German men and children German" (171) She concludes that strategies that emphasized women's feminine expertise, forged in a period when women had little access to formal political power, persisted after women's political enfranchisement in the form of maternalist politics. Nielsen, in contrast, focuses on the personnel and organizational links between movements. Red Scare antiradicalism, she argues, was influenced by early movements against women's suffrage due to a network of participants and organizations that spanned these movements. Benowitz looks at changing normative standards for women's political actions, finding that women in the pre-World War II far right laid the groundwork for later right-wing attacks on subversives, such as McCarthyism, by making it more acceptable for women to participate in politics, especially conservative politics. Although each provides valuable insights into the route by which women's conservative politics in one era influenced subsequent politics, more work needs to be done to understand whether there are more direct forms of historical continuity. To what extent does conservative women's politics in one time enable, or perhaps disable, the possible tactics, ideologies, recruitment, and probability of success faced by later movements? Is there evidence that right-wing women experience a sense of gendered agency, or are inspired, by knowledge of earlier women's conservative politics? Although such historical transmission is commonplace over time in progressive and feminist politics, the ambiguity with which women's public protest is viewed in conservative and colonial politics makes the process of historical continuity more difficult to predict.
NOTES
(1) Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987).
(2) See Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland; Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California, 1991); Victoria DeGrazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley: University of California, 1992); and Paola Bacchetta and Margaret Powers, eds., Right-Wing Women: From Conservatives to Extremists Around the World (New York, Routledge, 2002).
KATHLEEN M. BLEE is professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her most recent books are Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (University of California Press, 2002) and Feminism and Anti-Racism: International Struggles for Justice (co-edited with France inddance Twine, NYU Press, 2001).
Blee, Kathleen M.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Blee, Kathleen M. "Troubling women's history: women in right-wing and colonial politics." Journal of Women's History, vol. 15, no. 2, 2003, p. 214+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA109581242&it=r&asid=b1a42ad3cc38bd0ac7799fc7cd2da1b2. Accessed 22 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A109581242