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Women Workers' Education, Life Narratives and Politics pp 155–189Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Visual Technologies and ‘other archives’

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education ((GED))

Abstract

In this chapter I take the visual turn in opening up new ways of seeing and understanding workers’ education. In doing so I focus on archival research with photographs found amongst Fannia Cohn’s papers, which I have contextualised within the ILGWU and Bryn Mawr photographic archives. The photographs and videos that I discuss bring in space, place and the body as material entanglements, opening up vistas in the history of workers’ education with gender at its centre. There are three insights that emerge from the turn to the visual: 1) the importance of space/time rhythms; 2) the difficulties women activists faced in ‘organizing the unorganizable’; and 3) the striking emergence of bodies, affects and emotions in the analysis.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Rose Pesotta to David Dubinsky, 7 November 1939 (RPP/NYPL/GC).

  2. 2.

    See Pesotta amongst men at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279330871/ and https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5278921239/ [Accessed 7 March 2016].

  3. 3.

    Bryn Mawr Summer School for working women in the industry at: http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/search/collection/BMC_photoarc [Accessed 7 March 2016].

  4. 4.

    Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives Cornell University Library: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/KCL05780.html For the on-line photographic archive, see also, https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/with/5279612316/ [Accessed 23 February 2016].

  5. 5.

    ‘Women’s archives and women’s history’ Joan Wallach Scott’s comments on the dedication of the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives, 10 October 1986. Available at: http://www.brown.edu/research/pembroke-center/sites/brown.edu.research.pembroke-center/files/uploads/JWSExcerpt_06957_0.pdf [Accessed 12 November 2015].

  6. 6.

    For an overview of Mary Beard’s work see Lane 2000. Her papers are housed at the Sophia Smith Collection (SSC/MS 13).

  7. 7.

    World Center for Women’s Archives (WCWA) brochure, (SSC/MS 13/Series IV/WCWA/General).

  8. 8.

    Open letter, dated 17 September 1935, signed by Mary R. Beard, Dr Kathryn McHale, Mary Jobson, Lena Madesin, Phillips and Geline MacDonald Bow [emphasis in the text]. (SSC/MS 13/S. IV/WCWA/Cor) The letter has been reprinted in Relph 1979, 599–600.

  9. 9.

    See Relph 1979 and Voss-Hubbard 1997 for the history and difficulties of the WCWA.

  10. 10.

    (SSC/MS 13/S. IV/WCWA/Cor) The letter has been reprinted in Relph 1979, 602–603.

  11. 11.

    FC to Mary Beard, letter dated 23 January 1940 (NYPL/FCP/Cor).

  12. 12.

    Ibid.

  13. 13.

    Ibid.

  14. 14.

    Ibid.

  15. 15.

    See, https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279153393/ [Accessed 6 March 2016].

  16. 16.

    Fannia Cohn, ‘Unity house’ in The Educational department of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union: Its Aims and Achievements, paper presented at the 1940 ILGWU Annual Convention (FCP/NYPL/Writings), 53. For images of the main building and its premises, see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/with/5279760854/; https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279760680/; https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279760538/; https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279760360/; [Accessed 28 February 2016].

  17. 17.

    FC to ILGWU’s Executive Board, letter dated July 31, 1922 (FCP/NYPL/Cor).

  18. 18.

    ‘Unity Summer House of the Philadelphia and Boston Waistmakers’, Ladies’ Garment Worker, October 1918, 23–24.

  19. 19.

    See https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279155461/; https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279152935/ [Accessed 6 March 2016].

  20. 20.

    FC to Frances Perkins, US Secretary of Labour, letter dated 4 April 1933 (FCP/NYPL/Cor).

  21. 21.

    FC to Artie White, letter dated 2 July 1934, (FCP/NYPL/Cor).

  22. 22.

    See a video about the life of the Unity House from the Kheel Center film archives at: http://ilgwu.ilr.cornell.edu/archives/filmVideo/index.html?defaultVideoID=5 [Accessed 27 February 2016].

  23. 23.

    See, https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279756142/ [Accessed 6 March 2016].

  24. 24.

    See photos of these destroyed murals at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5278985153/ [Accessed 27 February 2016].

  25. 25.

    See image of this destructive fire at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279759022/ [Accessed 28 February 2016].

  26. 26.

    See, https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279622496/ [Accessed 28 February 2016].

  27. 27.

    ‘Can women lead?’, Justice, February 15, 1936, reprinted as a pamphlet. (FCP/NYPL), 2.

  28. 28.

    Ibid.

  29. 29.

    Ibid.

  30. 30.

    Ibid.

  31. 31.

    Ibid.

  32. 32.

    FC to a friend, undated letter that has been written sometime in the spring of 1931 as transpires from its content and context, (FCP/NYPL/Cor.).

  33. 33.

    ‘Can women lead?’ (FCP/NYPL), 3.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., 4.

  36. 36.

    FC to a friend, undated letter that has been written sometime in the spring of 1931 as transpires from its content and context (FCP/NYPL/Cor.).

  37. 37.

    See another group photograph with six women organisers walking happily together in the 1937 Atlantic city convention: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5278911285/ [Accessed 29 February 2016].

  38. 38.

    See, https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279609254/ [Accessed 29 February 2016].

  39. 39.

    See [Fig. 26] at: https://sites.google.com/site/womenworkerseducation/home/visual-archive [Accessed 1 May 2016].

  40. 40.

    See for example the special issue of the Educational Philosophy and Theory Journal on ‘Thinking with Spinoza about Education: a new materialist ethics’, to be published in 2017.

  41. 41.

    Spinoza, Ethics, Part IV, Appendix XXVII, (2002, 192).

  42. 42.

    Ibid.

  43. 43.

    Heller 1985, The Women of Summer, documentary film. See it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hOiOreS8ZQ [Part I] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoRSemT8jCg [Part II] [Accessed March 3, 2016]. There is further a rich collection of photographs at Bryn Mawr at the M. Carey Thomas Library at Bryn Mawr College, also available as a digital archive at: http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/search/collection/BMC_photoarc. See also http://greenfield.brynmawr.edu/exhibits/show/the-summer-school-for-women-wo/introduction; http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/speccoll/rbma/archivesresources.html#sswwii [Accessed 3 March 2016].

  44. 44.

    ‘Philosophy and social change’, course syllabus (FCP/NYPL/Writings).

  45. 45.

    Ibid.

  46. 46.

    Ibid.

  47. 47.

    Ibid.

  48. 48.

    Ibid.

  49. 49.

    History, Fiction or Fact, Approach and Method in the Study of History, including suggestions for teacher in Workers’ Classes by Fannia M. Cohn, (FCP/NYPL/Writings).

  50. 50.

    Spinoza, Ethics, First Part, Definition VII (2002, 4).

  51. 51.

    Carmen Lucia, a Bryn Mawr students talking in the film ‘Women of Summer’ (Heller and Bauman 1985). Available on line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hOiOreS8ZQ [Part I, 14.06–14.45m].

  52. 52.

    See for example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279527718/

    [Accessed 3 March 2016].

  53. 53.

    See: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5278606724/ [Accessed 7 March 2016].

  54. 54.

    See also: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/5279619790/ [Accessed 7 March 2016].

  55. 55.

    ‘Education for a troubled World, class on wheels’ by Fannia M. Cohn, unpublished paper dated March 1946 (FCP/NYPL/Writings, emphasis mine).

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  1. School of Law & Social Sciences, University of East London, Docklands Campus, London, United Kingdom

    Maria Tamboukou

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Tamboukou, M. (2017). Visual Technologies and ‘other archives’. In: Women Workers' Education, Life Narratives and Politics. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-49015-5_5

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