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The Participation of Women in the Paris 1968 Protests

Presenters Name: 
Shreya Maini
Co Presenters Name: 
Primary Research Mentor: 
Allan Megill
Secondary Research Mentor: 
Session: 
4
Location: 
Newcomb Hall Ballroom
Grant Program Recipient: 
Harrison Undergraduate Research Grant
Abstract: 

Much of the scholarship centered around the May 1968 Paris protests have ignored women’s participation in the protests, and its correlation to subsequent developments in French feminism. There were a variety of sources I examined as I conduct my research, including primary sources (namely newspapers, magazine articles, and radio transcripts) that described the events of May of 1968 and corroborated my hypothesis for women’s participation in the protests. At the National Archives (France) and at the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF) I accessed various media representations of the event, including newspapers, magazine articles, and radio transcripts that further supported my hypothesis that women were key figures in the protests. As a result of this archival research I uncovered the gender-driven agendas of protesters, and to what extent these agendas challenged existing hierarchies, politics, and truths. What I have found serves as a crucial touchstone for theorizing about the development of feminist theory in 1970s France.