Jo Reger
Biographic Data
| ID | 239099 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jo Reger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jo |
| FAMILY NAME | Reger |
| SIGNATURE | REGER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Oakland University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0044-3018 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 146 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 15 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Lesbian Feminist Music and Meaningful Community Work
The Power of Song: Music and the Construction of a Politicized Lesbian Identity
Big Tent” Feminism
After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism: Taking Back a Revolution. Lynn S. Chancer. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019. It is an admirable task to take on to summarize where the U.S. women's movement has been and where it should be going. Pinpointing the necessary focus of feminist activism can also be like trying to catch a moving target. Things we could take for granted (Roe v. Wade and legal abortion) disappear. Issues that se…
Nevertheless, They Persisted: Feminisms and Continued Resistance in the U.S. Women’s Movement
Nevertheless, They Persisted: Feminisms and Continued Resistance in the U. S. Women's Movement
Academic opportunity structures and the creation of campus activism
Past research points to elite, liberal and/or wealthy universities and colleges as the most likely sites of campus activism. In addition, periods of high social movement mobilization in society in general are given credit in spurring student activists. In contrast, this study examines how a feminist activist subculture is created on a conservative campus at a time of subdued societal activism. I draw on a four-year ethnography of a U.S.-based, fe…
The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women's Social Movement Activism
Women have long been involved in social movement activism in the United States, from the nation’s beginning up to the present, and in waves of feminist activism as well as in a variety of other social movements, including the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and conservative mobilizations. The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women’s Social Movement Activism provides both a detailed and extensive examination of the wide range of U.S. wom…
Women in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Movement
This chapter explores the history of women’s participation in the LGBT movement, from the homophile phase in the 1950s–1960s through gay liberation, lesbian feminism, anti-AIDS activism in the 1980s–1990s, to contemporary queer activism and the marriage equality movement. The chapter points to shifts in women’s participation, ranging from fighting for women’s issues within male-dominated organizations to creating separatist groups to collaboratin…
American Women’s Environmental Activism
Women have played instrumental, often leading, roles in the twentieth-century environmental movement. The sparse literature on women’s activism in the early twentieth century indicates that both White and Black women in the racially segregated, middle-class women’s club movement pursued urban reforms. But White women additionally adopted conservationism, while Black women led the struggle for racial justice. The more robust literature focuses on …
Mobilizing the Faithful
In this chapter, we examine how conservative and right-wing organizations mobilize predominately White, religious women to action. We begin by outlining the importance of networks to mobilization efforts. Then, we discuss how conservative and right-wing women’s groups use religious doctrine as well as gendered assumptions regarding women’s and men’s roles in society to move women from their armchairs to the streets. The second half of the chapter…
The Swells between the “Waves”
American women’s history is often understood as unfolding in two movement “waves”: the movement for political equality (suffrage) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the movement for social and economic equality a half-century later. In the period between these two waves, women supposedly retreated from the public sphere. This chapter argues that the inter-wave era was actually a politically vibrant time for American women. …
Women in the White Supremacist Movement
A small but growing body of literature highlights the roles of women in White supremacist movements in the United States. This chapter reviews the diverse findings of this work by showing when, why, and how women participate in White supremacist movements. It begins by analyzing the interlocking ideologies of race and gender that shape women’s participation. Most White supremacist movements glorify stereotypical gender norms for both men and wome…
Women’s Activism in the Modern Movement for Black Liberation
This chapter examines women’s activism in the modern movement for Black liberation. It examines women’s roles across three phases of mobilization. Starting with an exploration of women’s participation in the direct action phase of the U.S. civil rights movement (1954–1966), the chapter discusses the key roles that women played in the fight for legal equality for African Americans. Next it examines women’s central role in the Black Power movement …
Push, Pull, and Fusion
Women’s activism has focused not only on state institutions, such as the military, electoral politics, and education, but also on religious institutions. At the same time, participation in organized religion has helped women develop organizational and leadership skills that they can then draw on for their activism, both in movements directed toward religious institutions and in other, non-religious movements. Further, religion provides cultural f…
Sexuality, Gender Identity, Fluidity, and Embodiment
Social movement activists have frequently used a variety of embodied tactics to negotiate cultural conceptions of gender and sexuality, which are in constant flux. This chapter attends to the ways that new social formations of gender and sexuality—including the recent emphases on gender and sexual fluidity—have impacted the politics, goals, tactics, and identities of contemporary women’s movements. Incorporating queer, transgender, critical race,…
Women’s Activism and Educational Institutions
Mobilized women have indelibly changed educational institutions, their activism creating equality in many spheres of higher education. This chapter draws on literature on women’s movements and movements within institutions to argue that women’s activists have successfully organized for educational accessibility and resources, the legal rights of women and girls in educational institutions, and the presence of women and incorporation of scholarshi…
Battles over Abortion and Reproductive Rights
This chapter examines the history of feminist struggles for abortion and reproductive rights in the United States. It analyzes why these issues continue to mobilize participants in opposing movements. Symbolic politics are an important reason for the longevity of the conflict, and issues of abortion and reproduction are connected to concerns about gender and sexuality. Movement/countermovement dynamics also help to keep the conflict alive; when o…
The Historical Roots of a Global Feminist Perspective and the Growing Global Focus among U.S. Feminists
This chapter examines the emergence and existence of a global feminist perspective within the United States. The authors argue that the foundation of the relationship between U.S. feminists and global understandings is rooted in women’s international organizing and activism. Examining U.S. feminists’ involvement in international women’s movements from the end of the nineteenth century until post Beijing 95 (the United Nations Fourth World Confere…
Gendered Activism and Outcomes
U.S. women’s peace and anti-war activism grew from their involvement in the abolition and suffrage movements of the nineteenth century, and some have continued to foster women-focused organizations in the twenty-first century. This chapter examines the relationship between the historical development of women’s peace activism and a U.S. political system that frequently excluded women from international relations. Women enlarged the U.S. peace move…
Identity Politics, Consciousness-Raising, and Visibility Politics
This chapter describes the emergence of consciousness-raising, including differences among women. It then discusses collective identity, explaining the concept and describing activists’ attempts to reconstruct collective identity as women and to determine how to practice their collective identity in daily life. Next, it discusses coming out and other forms of visibility politics, which aim to display collective identity and change conceptualizati…
Feminism: First, Second, and Third Waves
The women's movement in the United States is generally broken into waves of protest, each set in different time periods with diverse tactics, ideologies, and goals. The waves are divided into a first wave, starting in the 1840s; a second wave, beginning in the late 1960s; and a third wave, emerging in the mid‐1990s. Although most scholars and historians use the analytical device of waves to discuss the movement, a variety of debates have arisen a…
Finding a Place in History: The Discursive Legacy of the Wave Metaphor and Contemporary Feminism
The women's movement in the United States has a long and complex history, incorporating a variety of contexts, issues and identities. Often conceptualized as a series of waves of mobilization that grow, peak and decline, the U.S. women's movement is broadly divided into a first (1860s-1920), second (1960s-‘80s) and third (1990s and beyond) wave. However, feminist scholars find the wave metaphor problematic, a critique taught in many Women and Gen…
Transitions
Uprising at Bowling Green: How the Quiet Fifties Became the Political Sixties
The Story of a Slut Walk: Sexuality, Race, and Generational Divisions in Contemporary Feminist Activism
Drawing on a participant observation at a 2011 slut walk, I use elements of autoethnography to investigate issues and divisions in contemporary feminism. Slut walks emerged as a form of feminist protest early in 2011 when a police officer remarked that women should stop dressing like sluts if they did not want to be victimized, spurring a global mobilization promoting ideas such as "sexual profiling" and "slut shaming." As quickly as the slut wal…
Organizational "Emotion Work" Through Consciousness-Raising: An Analysis of a Feminist Organization
Organizational Dynamics and Construction of Multiple Feminist Identities in the National Organization for Women
Through an analysis of two National Organization for Women chapters, the author finds that members construct multiple feminist identities that vary in collective definitions of feminism, the overall strategies adopted, and organizational culture. To explain these variations, the author analyzes meso-level relations between the organization and the environment, issues of diversity, and leadership continuity. This study illustrates how organization…
Patterns of Mobilization in Local Movement Organizations: Leadership and Strategy in Four National Organization for Women Chapters
This article focuses on the organizational strategies of four local chapters of the National Organization for Women (NOW) across three decades. The goal is to explain differences in chapters' abilities to remain active and to survive over time by examining their overall patterns of mobilization. The authors argue that the ability to maintain organizational stability and collective action is influenced by internal organizational characteristics an…
Emotions, objectivity and voice
Voice and Agency in Social Movement Outcomes
Motherhood and the Construction of Feminist Identities: Variations in a Women's Movement Organization
This paper examines the relationship between feminism and motherhood as it plays out in the construction of feminist identities. Through a qualitative analysis of two grassroots chapters of the National Organization for Women (NOW), I examine how members’understandings and experiences with motherhood and their community context and organizational environment shape the construction of shared feminist identities. Central to this study is the concep…
The Story of a Slut Walk: Sexuality, Race, and Generational Divisions in Contemporary Feminist Activism
Drawing on a participant observation at a 2011 slut walk, I use elements of autoethnography to investigate issues and divisions in contemporary feminism. Slut walks emerged as a form of feminist protest early in 2011 when a police officer remarked that women should stop dressing like sluts if they did not want to be victimized, spurring a global mobilization promoting ideas such as "sexual profiling" and "slut shaming." As quickly as the slut wal…
Academic opportunity structures and the creation of campus activism
Past research points to elite, liberal and/or wealthy universities and colleges as the most likely sites of campus activism. In addition, periods of high social movement mobilization in society in general are given credit in spurring student activists. In contrast, this study examines how a feminist activist subculture is created on a conservative campus at a time of subdued societal activism. I draw on a four-year ethnography of a U.S.-based, fe…
Debating US Contemporary Feminism
The US women's movement has challenged societal norms, policies, laws, and culture since its inception. However, at the same time, it has inspired debates about its goals, ideology, tactics, and outcomes. These debates emerge from two main sources: the mainstream media as it reflects dominant culture and among feminist activists and/or scholars. I elaborate on three of the most contentious aspects of contemporary feminism through a series of ques…
Debating New Social Movements: Culture, Identity, and Social Fragmentation
Exploring Social Movement Theories through an Interactive Exercise
engaging students (Lowney 1998). In addition, interactive learning is valuable in courses where students have little familiarity with the subject (Cornelius 1998). Frequently, students experience social movement courses as unfamiliar in subject or lacking relevance to their lives. For example, in an undergraduate social movements course Cornelius found that few of her students had any experience with social movement activism either personally or …
Finding a Place in History: The Discursive Legacy of the Wave Metaphor and Contemporary Feminism
The women's movement in the United States has a long and complex history, incorporating a variety of contexts, issues and identities. Often conceptualized as a series of waves of mobilization that grow, peak and decline, the U.S. women's movement is broadly divided into a first (1860s-1920), second (1960s-‘80s) and third (1990s and beyond) wave. However, feminist scholars find the wave metaphor problematic, a critique taught in many Women and Gen…
Where Are the Leaders? Music, Culture, and Contemporary Feminism
This article examines how cultural dynamics shape leaders' agency by investigating who is seen as articulating contemporary feminism. The author finds that many contemporary feminists have difficulty identifying leaders visible beyond their own communities, and when asked to identify those who are articulating contemporary feminism, many identify nationally known music icons. This results in "emotional mobilization," empowering feminists, but doe…
Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women
The Power of Song: Music and the Construction of a Politicized Lesbian Identity
Lesbians in Academia: Degrees of Freedom
Emotions, objectivity and voice
Exploring Social Movement Theories through an Interactive Exercise
engaging students (Lowney 1998). In addition, interactive learning is valuable in courses where students have little familiarity with the subject (Cornelius 1998). Frequently, students experience social movement courses as unfamiliar in subject or lacking relevance to their lives. For example, in an undergraduate social movements course Cornelius found that few of her students had any experience with social movement activism either personally or …
Motherhood and the Construction of Feminist Identities: Variations in a Women's Movement Organization
This paper examines the relationship between feminism and motherhood as it plays out in the construction of feminist identities. Through a qualitative analysis of two grassroots chapters of the National Organization for Women (NOW), I examine how members’understandings and experiences with motherhood and their community context and organizational environment shape the construction of shared feminist identities. Central to this study is the concep…
Organizational Dynamics and Construction of Multiple Feminist Identities in the National Organization for Women
Through an analysis of two National Organization for Women chapters, the author finds that members construct multiple feminist identities that vary in collective definitions of feminism, the overall strategies adopted, and organizational culture. To explain these variations, the author analyzes meso-level relations between the organization and the environment, issues of diversity, and leadership continuity. This study illustrates how organization…
Feminist Co-Mentoring: A Model for Academic Professional Development
In this paper, we critique the traditional model of mentoring in academia and offer an alternative model, co-mentoring, grounded in feminist principles. Our conception of co-mentoring challenges masculinist values of hierarchy, competition, and objectivity by emphasizing the importance of cooperative, non-hierarchical relationships for learning and development. Feminist co-mentoring seeks to dispel the view of the disembodied intellectual by atte…
Organizational "Emotion Work" Through Consciousness-Raising: An Analysis of a Feminist Organization
Governing NOW: Grassroots Activism in the National Organization for Women
Voice and Agency in Social Movement Outcomes
Patterns of Mobilization in Local Movement Organizations: Leadership and Strategy in Four National Organization for Women Chapters
This article focuses on the organizational strategies of four local chapters of the National Organization for Women (NOW) across three decades. The goal is to explain differences in chapters' abilities to remain active and to survive over time by examining their overall patterns of mobilization. The authors argue that the ability to maintain organizational stability and collective action is influenced by internal organizational characteristics an…
Feminism, First, Second, and Third Waves
The women's movement in the United States is generally broken into waves of protest, each set in different time periods with diverse tactics, ideologies, and goals. The waves are divided into a first wave, starting in the 1840s; a second wave, beginning in the late 1960s; and the third wave, emerging in the mid‐1990s. Although most scholars and historians use the analytical device of waves to discuss the movement, a variety of debates have arisen…
Where Are the Leaders? Music, Culture, and Contemporary Feminism
This article examines how cultural dynamics shape leaders' agency by investigating who is seen as articulating contemporary feminism. The author finds that many contemporary feminists have difficulty identifying leaders visible beyond their own communities, and when asked to identify those who are articulating contemporary feminism, many identify nationally known music icons. This results in "emotional mobilization," empowering feminists, but doe…
Debating New Social Movements: Culture, Identity, and Social Fragmentation
Debating US Contemporary Feminism
The US women's movement has challenged societal norms, policies, laws, and culture since its inception. However, at the same time, it has inspired debates about its goals, ideology, tactics, and outcomes. These debates emerge from two main sources: the mainstream media as it reflects dominant culture and among feminist activists and/or scholars. I elaborate on three of the most contentious aspects of contemporary feminism through a series of ques…
Uprising at Bowling Green: How the Quiet Fifties Became the Political Sixties
The Story of a Slut Walk: Sexuality, Race, and Generational Divisions in Contemporary Feminist Activism
Drawing on a participant observation at a 2011 slut walk, I use elements of autoethnography to investigate issues and divisions in contemporary feminism. Slut walks emerged as a form of feminist protest early in 2011 when a police officer remarked that women should stop dressing like sluts if they did not want to be victimized, spurring a global mobilization promoting ideas such as "sexual profiling" and "slut shaming." As quickly as the slut wal…
Transitions
The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women's Social Movement Activism
Women have long been involved in social movement activism in the United States, from the nation’s beginning up to the present, and in waves of feminist activism as well as in a variety of other social movements, including the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and conservative mobilizations. The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women’s Social Movement Activism provides both a detailed and extensive examination of the wide range of U.S. wom…
Women in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Movement
This chapter explores the history of women’s participation in the LGBT movement, from the homophile phase in the 1950s–1960s through gay liberation, lesbian feminism, anti-AIDS activism in the 1980s–1990s, to contemporary queer activism and the marriage equality movement. The chapter points to shifts in women’s participation, ranging from fighting for women’s issues within male-dominated organizations to creating separatist groups to collaboratin…
American Women’s Environmental Activism
Women have played instrumental, often leading, roles in the twentieth-century environmental movement. The sparse literature on women’s activism in the early twentieth century indicates that both White and Black women in the racially segregated, middle-class women’s club movement pursued urban reforms. But White women additionally adopted conservationism, while Black women led the struggle for racial justice. The more robust literature focuses on …
Mobilizing the Faithful
In this chapter, we examine how conservative and right-wing organizations mobilize predominately White, religious women to action. We begin by outlining the importance of networks to mobilization efforts. Then, we discuss how conservative and right-wing women’s groups use religious doctrine as well as gendered assumptions regarding women’s and men’s roles in society to move women from their armchairs to the streets. The second half of the chapter…
The Swells between the “Waves”
American women’s history is often understood as unfolding in two movement “waves”: the movement for political equality (suffrage) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the movement for social and economic equality a half-century later. In the period between these two waves, women supposedly retreated from the public sphere. This chapter argues that the inter-wave era was actually a politically vibrant time for American women. …
Women in the White Supremacist Movement
A small but growing body of literature highlights the roles of women in White supremacist movements in the United States. This chapter reviews the diverse findings of this work by showing when, why, and how women participate in White supremacist movements. It begins by analyzing the interlocking ideologies of race and gender that shape women’s participation. Most White supremacist movements glorify stereotypical gender norms for both men and wome…
Women’s Activism in the Modern Movement for Black Liberation
This chapter examines women’s activism in the modern movement for Black liberation. It examines women’s roles across three phases of mobilization. Starting with an exploration of women’s participation in the direct action phase of the U.S. civil rights movement (1954–1966), the chapter discusses the key roles that women played in the fight for legal equality for African Americans. Next it examines women’s central role in the Black Power movement …
Push, Pull, and Fusion
Women’s activism has focused not only on state institutions, such as the military, electoral politics, and education, but also on religious institutions. At the same time, participation in organized religion has helped women develop organizational and leadership skills that they can then draw on for their activism, both in movements directed toward religious institutions and in other, non-religious movements. Further, religion provides cultural f…
Sociology (34 works) · Political science (31 works) · Law (28 works) · Gender Studies (27 works) · Politics (24 works) · Feminism (14 works) · Race, History, and American Society (13 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Social science (11 works)