Ambivalent broadcasters: women contest the public sphere in postwar U.S. college radio

ABSTRACT

Between the end of World War II and the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, college radio women secured a tenuous credibility within the postwar educational landscape. Educators claimed civic discourse could advance democracy at home and abroad by training student broadcasters and audiences to resist crass commercialism and political subversion. Dismissed as future housewives peripheral to a white male-defined public sphere, female broadcasters strategically deployed national security rhetoric to gain acceptance within Cold War containment logic. Racially diverse women used civil rights strategies to transform the public sphere into an incubator for a non-hierarchical, inclusive society. Using Nancy Fraser’s “subaltern counterpublics” as a theoretical framework, I analyze how women built on-air female communities that acted collectively to achieve social change. By examining women-authored radio scripts, educational radio publications, promotional materials, studies, and speeches, one can better understand how women used college radio as a platform for intersectional, even international, racial and gender equity movements.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold War
• public sphere
• educational radio
• women
• national security

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See (Susan Carter 2004; Alley et al. 2001; Beadle et al. 2001; Donna Halper 2001; Laurie Ouellette 2002; A. Perlman 2016; Rebecca Ann. Lind 2018), 177–178.

2. Studies did not report women’s racial identity.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the College of William and Mary under the Monroe Scholars Program and by the University of Houston-Clear Lake under the Faculty Development Support Fund.