Clio's Foot Soldiers: Twentieth Century U.S. Social Movements and the Uses of Collective Memory

Drawing on African-American, Women’s, and Queer Studies, this dissertation historicizes the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Framing them as a response to the activism and community-building of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, leaders in the Civil Rights, Black Power, Women’s and Gay Liberation movements used collective memory to build identity, movement cohesion, political purpose, and mainstream legitimacy. They accomplished this through adult education, campus activism, public history efforts, community organizations, movement newspapers, and speeches.