Tag: Ellen Herman

Femininity and Athleticism: Title IX at the University of Oregon

Presenter: Lauren Goss, History

Panel: Gender, Power & Change

Mentor: Ellen Herman, History

AM Session Panels

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Century D

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 addressed the discrimination of students at any educational institution that received federal funding. Intended to focus on unfair admission practices, Title IX is best known for improving the treatment of female intercollegiate athletes. However, the intricacies of reconciling the federal standards of equality presented substantial challenges, and each institution confronted the ideological intersection of femininity and athleticism in various ways. The University of Oregon administration remedied cases of overt discrimination, most notably in facility access, but acute examples persisted. Becky Sisley, the first and only women’s athletic director for the University of Oregon, served as the driving force for changing athletic policies for women athletes. In extensive interviews, former female athletes corroborate this struggle for recognition. Archival evidence shows the University of Oregon administration presented concerns about increased funding for women’s athletics during the 1970’s. However, the Women’s Intercollegiate Association survived on a meager budget and remained autonomous until the Athletic Department combined men’s and women’s athletics in 1977. The merger, and Sisley’s resignation shortly thereafter, hindered any further attempts for reaching true equality. Discrimination against female athletes persists at the University of Oregon and there is just cause to explore gender equality in all aspects of higher education.

Feeding Democracy: Protection, Defense, and Scientific Nutrition in the National School Lunch Program

Presenter: Phoebe Petersen (History)

Mentor: Ellen Herman

Oral Presentation

Panel A: “Culture and Education” Maple Room

Concurrent Session 2: 10:30-11:45am

Facilitator: Nedzer Erilus

The text of the 1946 National School Lunch Act (NSLA) asserts three central reasons for enacting National School Lunch Program (NSLP): it was “a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food”. Rooted in twentieth century ideas about the rights of childhood and the government’s interest in protecting children for national security, the implementation of scientific nutrition standards, which also developed around the turn of the twentieth century, was the means through which the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) set out to use the NSLP to protect children. An analysis of the evolving nutrition standards set out in twentieth century USDA food guides for all Americans in conjunction with the primarily static NSLP food standards provides evidence of the rigor with which the USDA pursued its goal of using scientific nutrition to protect children. By tracing the evolution and implementation of scientific nutrition in the NSLP through USDA documents and other public accounts, it becomes clear that despite placing agriculture, the protection of children, and national security as equals, the NSLP has shown overwhelming loyalty to agriculture at the expense of children’s health.

Revolutionary Theatricality: Dramatized American Protest, 1967–1968

Presenter: Angela Rothman

Faculty Mentor: Ellen Herman

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: History, Political Science

Protests against established power in the United States grew between the years 1967 and 1968 because dramatic aspects of political and cultural rebellion manifested in theatrical methods. Prominent examples include the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the production of Paradise Now by the Living Theatre, the Broadway cast production of the musical Hair, and the Festival of Life by the Yippie movement outside the Chicago Democratic National Convention. During this intense period of domestic conflict, these activists embraced radical theater as a visible form of protest.

I use the scripts of plays, the writings of the movement’s leaders, and secondary analysis of the conflicts in which these groups participated to argue that each borrowed tactics from one another to bolster the effectiveness of “revolutionary theatricality.” Because of such reactionary tactics, the United States in the late 1960s was a domestic theater of war: the home front of the Vietnam War was almost as turbulent a society in its own way as was the conflict in Vietnam itself. Theater in the late 1960s used group participation as a dramatic and popular form of socio- political collective action.