The Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York gained a reputation as “Dyke Slope” during the 1980s-1990s. Prior to this nickname Park Slope had a substantial Black and Brown community, who were driven out as the neighborhood experienced an influx of new white residents. As lesbians began to move en masse to the area beginning […]
In her 1983-2008 comic series, Dykes to Watch Out For (DtWOF), cartoonist Alison Bechdel develops a realistic lesbian community whose interpersonal struggles and reactions to important events form the plot of her serials turned novels. While the strips center on Mo, an anxious lesbian with strong political beliefs, the storyline features several interconnected groups of […]
Foundations of Quaker Relief Work Amidst doctrinal infighting in American Quakerism and the entrance of the United States in World War I, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) emerged as an alternate path to service for Friends and conscientious objectors. On April 30th, 1917, members of the Five Years Meeting, Friends General Conference, and Philadelphia […]
Historical Overview The first few years of the 1980s were marked by a convergence of right-wing political agendas in the U.S. and Israel. In the years since the beginning of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israeli settler-colonialism was expanding, from the right-wing government’s support for Jewish settlement in occupied territories […]
By Maya Joncas In 1985, Rosemary Keefe Curb and Nancy Manahan published their groundbreaking and sensational book, Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence. Curb and Manahan were both former nuns themselves, Curb a Dominican sister for seven years, and Nancy spent a year in a Maryknowll convent. Though the book was originally aimed at lesbian and feminist […]
The United States has a long history of benefitting off of the exploitation of various populations, through mass colonization and enslavement. This has been passed down through tradition from European colonization. As a result of this history and the continued abuse of marginalized communities that were historically exploited, race and privilege functions in a hierarchical […]
NATO’s “Double-Track Decision:” The Deployment of Cruise and Pershing II Missiles Throughout the Cold War (roughly 1945-1989), both the United States and the Soviet Union sought to rapidly expand their nuclear arsenals. Each side developed missiles capable of facilitating nuclear strikes— some of the most powerful being medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (reaching targets of […]
This was the front page of the New York Times, on December 23rd 1935, and the biggest story of the day. To understand why a family leaving the U.S. for England was such a big deal, we have to start three years earlier…. A clip from the front page of The New York Times, December […]
Art has always been a powerful tool for social change. Across media, artistic expression has the ability to change hearts and minds, and legislation. We can see social protests throughout history using artistic media in public space to communicate grievances, group identity, and desires for change, particularly by marginalized groups who have limited access to […]
Photograph of Newton Arvin by Eric Stahlberg, 1946. Newton Arvin Papers, Mortimer Rare Book Collection. On September 2, 1960, police ransacked the home of a widely acclaimed Smith Professor, Newton Arvin (born Frederick Newton Arvin), in search of obscenity. They found magazines in Arvin’s room and office, under distributor titles like One and MANual, full […]