The Politics of Female Identity: An Interview with Jane Sherron De Hart

This September 26, 1996 Jane De the University of Iowa as an Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor. Cur­ rently at the University of California at Santa Barbara, De Hart’s work includes77ie Federal Theatre, 1935-39: Plays, Relief, and Politics ( 2nd ed., 1971), Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation (1990), and the co-editorship of four editions of the women’s history text Women’s America: Refocusing the Past (4th ed., 1995). While in Iowa City, De Hart presented two lectures, “Containment at Home: Boundaries and the Body Politic” and “Exclusion from Home: Black Welfare Mothers as ‘Other,’” based on her cur­ rent research on national identity in Cold War America. She also presented the keynote address, “Suffragists’ Hopes/Feminists’ Strategies: Women and Elec­ toral Politics” at the University of Iowa conference “The Uses of Suffrage: Women, Politics, and Social Change Since 1920.” Here she discusses some of the ways race and gender identities and constructions of difference have influ­ enced and been influenced by federal politics and policy. your