Last week, Kate Raphael of Pacifica’s Women’s Magazine (KFPA 94.1) contacted me to see if I would let her interview me about Stephanie Camp and the importance of her scholarship. Kate put together a series of commemorations of the lives of feminist women who have died recently–Maya Angelou, Sandra Bem, and Stephanie. The show also features a lengthy interview with Stacy Russo, who edited Life as Activism: June Jordan’s essays in the Progressive. Russo shares her memory of Jordan as a teacher as well as reviews the importance of her work.
You can hear the results here. Women’s Magazine’s blog is here. I hope you’re enjoying June.
Historiann 
Cool clip, Historiann! I discovered that my laptop’s “media player” had never even been activated, but with that problem solved, it streamed nicely….
I never heard of Sandra Bem, but the first job I applied for the summer after my first year in graduate school was via a newspaper classified advertisement organized around “Help Wanted–Male,” and “Help Wanted-Female.” It must have seemed stone-agey even then, but the fact of something seeming stone-agey wasn’t enough to make it a thing of particular notice, much less objection. Culture is like stone in that way. It was even worse in my case, because unlike any would-be academic now (who would expect or take nothing less than a summer gig as a strategist at a consulting shop somewhere), all I needed or wanted was rent and food money until my TA stipend kicked back in three months later. So I paged through the ghettoized ads until I got to “Man.” Which was a place-holder for some amorphous category of day labor. Whoever I called called me back, and I reported the next day to “Seventeenth and Argonne,” which turned out to be 17th and Oregon, in South Philly. Where I proceeded to Man-it woefully for about eight weeks. Then when I had enough money saved to reach Labor Day, I ran off that chain gang and hitch-hiked to Winnepeg and back. (I even passed through your town of that time)!
I had all-but-forgotten this episode, but I should probably re-do my c.v. to add a category for “Man, May-197X-July 197X.” Thanks for this. I liked the Camp segment, too, but the Bem account is the one that landed in my memory like a grenade!
June is just fine, so far, thankee!
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My college students love reading Maya Angelou interviews. Sometimes I think her true metier was the spoken word.
And that voice!
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And, a shout-out to the long-life and activism of Yuri Kochiyama!
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This is wonderful. Thanks. I’ve forwarded the link to colleagues who knew Stephanie personally and who are still in shock. I didn’t know her myself but I wish I had. And I can testify to the huge hole she has left around her.
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