Section outline

  • MON
    11/2
    Nixon, Environmental Activism, and the White Working Class 
    How did President Nixon work to reorient the Republican Party? And what can the path of environmentalism tell us about the fate of 1960s/70s activism?
    SLIDES TO COME

    Primary Sources

    • New York Times "Earth Day" ad, January 1970 (JPG)

    Secondary Sources

    • Jefferson Cowie, "The ‘Hard Hat Riot’ Was a Preview of Today’s Political Divisions" New York Times, May 1, 2020 [Link]
    • James Morton Turner, excerpt from "'The Specter of Environmentalism': Wilderness, Environmental Politics, and the Evolution of the New Right," Journal of American History, 96 no 1 (2009), 123–129. [PDF] [full article link]

    Optional

    • Thomas Borstelmann, Chapter 1 (pages 36-72), The 1970s: a New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2012), 36-72. [PDF]
    • Finis Dunaway, "Gas masks, pogo, and the ecological Indian: Earth day and the visual politics of American environmentalism," American Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2008): 67-99 [PDF]

    READING QuestionS

    1. The "Earth Day" ad was run in the New York Times in January 1970, to raise support for the first nationwide Earth Day on April 22, 1970. How does the ad frame the challenges to the environment, and how does it seek to motivate/mobilize the general public to contribute, organize, and take part? Why was this approach ultimately effective, and what do you see as some of its potential limits? (See the optional reading by Finis Dunaway for more background, and more critique, of 1960s/70s environmentalism.)

    2. Jefferson Cowie's article (drawing from his larger book Stayin' Alive) puts the "hard hat riots" of 1970 at the center of the new rise of right-wing populism. In what ways did the hard hat riots feed into Nixon's notion of a "silent majority"? How would you compare the archival images of the riots and marches with the images of leftist protests we have looked at this semester?
    3. In the article excerpt, Turner looks back to the 1960s/70s as a moment when environmentalism won the support of both Democrats and Republicans. In what ways did environmentalism emerge as a bipartisan issue in the late 1960s/70s? Why could Nixon support initiatives like the EPA without getting push back from his supporters? And what are some reasons the Republican Party largely turned against environmentalism?
     
    WED
    11/4
    The Rise of the New Right: Antifeminism and Discophobia
    How did the New Right mobilize against the social and cultural movements of the 1960s/70s? 
    SLIDES TO COME

    Primary Sources

    • Phyllis Schlafly, “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women?” (1972) [PDF / HTML version]
    • Richard Dyer, “In Defence of Disco,” Gay Left, 1979 [PDF]

    Optional

    • Marjorie Spruill, Chapter 4, Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics, 71-92. [PDF]
    • Gillian Frank, "Discophobia: Antigay Prejudice and the 1979 Backlash against Disco," Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, no. 2 (2007): 276-306 [PDF]

    READING QUESTIONS

    1. Phyllis Schlafly was a conservative activist who campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) -- an amendment first proposed in 1923, but which gained speed in the 1970s, to guarantee equal rights for women in the U.S. Constitution. This essay was published in her widely circulating newsletter. What are some of her specific arguments about why the ERA and women's liberation was bad, in her view, for women, the family, and US. society more broadly? 

    2. Disco music took off in the mid-1970s, but was also attacked, in part because of its associations with gay men. Based on gay critic Richard Dyer's loving tribute to disco, what was so appealing about disco -- and what might have been threatening about it? Also, how would you compare or contrast the culture of disco to the music and culture of the counterculture?