"Betty, Barbara, Joan and Jane: The Gendered Dimensions of Highway Construction in Postwar America": A presentation by Eric Avila
Eric Avila is a professor of History, Chicano Studies and Urban Planning at UCLA. He is author of Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (2004). His research and teaching interests focus upon the historical interplay of social identity, cultural expression and urban space. In the workshop and talk for this visit, Professor Avila will deliver pieces from his next book project, tentatively titled, The Folklore of the Freeway: Highway Construction and the Politics of Identity in the Modernist City. Kim Fortun's visit is hosted by Quadrant, a joint initiative of the University of Minnesota Press and the Institute for Advanced Study. Quadrant is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This talk considers the gendered politics of highway construction in postwar America, emphasizing the role of diverse women -- as artists, writers and community activists -- in the social conflicts sparked by building a national highway infrastructure. In some cities, women like Barbara Mikulski and Jane Jacobs played a prominent role in organizing local opposition to official plans for highway construction. In other cities like San Jose and Los Angeles, women generated powerful literary and artistic critiques of building freeways. Though plans to build freeways in urban neighborhoods pushed many women into local politics, other women, like Joan Didion, took advantage of new freeways to escape the confines of what Betty Friedan identified in the 1950s as "the feminine mystique." In their words and deeds, diverse American women took sides in the conflicts incited by urban highway construction, asserting a gendered critique of the modernist built environment.
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