with author Katherine Turk in conversation with Professor Deirdre English

Join author Katherine Turk in conversation with writer, editor, and professor Deirdre English on Turk’s new book, The Women of NOW: How Feminists Built an Organization that Transformed America. In 1966, a diverse group of activists founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) to build “a civil rights movement to speak for women.” In The Women of NOW, the historian Katherine Turk chronicles the growth and influence of this foundational group through three relatively unknown core members: Aileen Hernandez, a federal official of Jamaican-American heritage; Mary Jean Collins, a working-class union organizer and Chicago Catholic; and Patricia Hill Burnett, a Michigan Republican and former beauty queen. The Women of NOW is the first full account of the largest and most expansive feminist membership organization in American history. By foregrounding NOW in the past half-century of American history, The Women of NOW reveals how mainstream feminism transformed the nation, clashing with conservative forces to create today’s social and political landscape.