Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement
Katherine M. Marino
Katherine M. Marino charts an alternative history of international feminism between the World Wars, a period often viewed as relatively stagnant in feminist history, by shifting our attention to the work of six major activists from across the Americas. This historiographical pivot to the South reveals a depth and vigor of activism that served to align women’s socio-political rights with progress in international human rights policy on a global scale. Marino resists oversimplifying or sugarcoating the supremacist, even racist, views some of her protagonists held and their often prickly personal clashes. Indeed, her original archival research draws evidence from lively personal correspondence, both friendly and inimical. Letters and ephemera highlight recurring tensions between an anti-imperialist Pan-Americanism (epitomized by Paulina Luisi) and a U.S.-oriented, incremental pragmatism (championed by Bertha Lutz). In spite of and because of these ideological differences and personal spats, their broader resistance to U.S. hegemony forged a productive feminist collaboration: a Feminism for the Americas with enduring repercussions for our own time. Beyond chronology, the patterns in Marino’s history are organized around varied geographies and representative biographies. This approach brings attention to individuals whose work channeled regional movements, linking the local to the transcontinental “to recover what global feminism felt like.” Marino’s historical analysis is timely and necessary, for it renders accessible this neglected arena of the complex struggle for women’s rights in the Western Hemisphere. |
Katherine M. Marino's research and teaching interests include twentieth-century U.S. and Latin American history; histories of women, gender, sexuality, and race in the Americas; human rights; and transnational feminism. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Women's History, Gender & History, and Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies.
Feminism for the Americas is a publication by The University of North Carolina Press. Click here to purchase.
Feminism for the Americas is a publication by The University of North Carolina Press. Click here to purchase.
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