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

Abstract

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.