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Tucker Pamella Farley papers

 Collection
Identifier: SSC-MS-00676

Scope and Contents

The Tucker Pamella Farley papers contain materials from her academic career and study groups. Most material is related to Marxist Feminist Group 1 (MF 1). Farley maintained a personal set of the organization's records, which include an extensive amount of discussion notes and minutes, planning materials, and publications. The group's topics ranged significantly over the years, and have included socialism, homophobia, racism, and postmodernism. Farley's contributions to these discussions included the subjects of lesbian feminism and women in literature, among others. Most documentation of MF 1 consists of discussion notes and presentation papers; the collection also contains audiocassettes of a 2010 session. Farley created item level inventories of most of the MF1 documents in this accession. These lists can be found appended to the box list. The remainder of the papers relate to other aspects of Farley's career. A small amount of printed material and correspondence documents her association with labor organizing, feminist organizing, lesbian issues, and direct action campaigns in the academy in the early 1970s. Some records also exist of her participation in early women's studies courses, research, and conferences. The collection contains draft and published writings by Farley on the subjects of women in literature, women's self-narratives, and the history of women's studies.

Dates of Materials

  • Creation: 1862 - 2014
  • Creation: Majority of material found within 1969 - 2014

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for use without restriction beyond the standard terms and conditions of Smith College Special Collections.

Conditions Governing Use

To the extent that she owns copyright, Tucker Pamella Farley has assigned the copyright in her works to Smith College; however, copyright in other items in this collection may be held by their respective creators. For reproductions of materials that are governed by fair use as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission to cite or publish is required.

For instances which may regard materials in the collection not created by Tucker Pamella Farley, researchers are responsible for determining who may hold materials' copyrights and obtaining approval from them. Researchers do not need anything further from Smith College Special Collections to move forward with their use.

Biographical / Historical

Tucker Pamella Farley is an activist and academic who helped create a space for women's studies in the university. She has been active in a variety of social justice causes. Farley earned her bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in 1961, and as a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University in the late 1960s, she became involved in Leftist activist efforts aimed at radicalizing the university. She organized for academic labor unions, and she participated in the Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association and the New University Conference, among other groups. She was also involved in the women's liberation movement and the emergent field of women's studies. Farley completed her Ph.D. in 1973.

Hired by Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in 1970 to teach women's studies and American literature, she was instrumental in the development of the school's Women's Studies Program and Women's Center. She was a founder of the New York Women's Labor Project, where she created and taught women's studies course for trade union women. A founder of the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), Farley spearheaded the creation of NWSA's Lesbian Caucus. At the same time, she engaged in small-scale activist and intellectual networking through participation in a variety of study groups on radical and feminist issues. This included Marxist-Feminist Group 1 (MF 1), which has been active since 1973. Organized in the northeastern United States, MF 1 combined elements of the consciousness raising group with academic inquiry into issues of radicalism and feminism. Members have included academics, policy makers, and political activist. The group continues to meet two to three times a year. Tucker Farley maintained an active publishing and teaching career through the 2000s. She earned emerita status in 2005. She is featured in the Feminist Press book The Politics of Women's Studies: Testimony from the 30 Founding Mothers.

Extent

17.5 linear feet (17 containers)

0.130124 Gigabytes

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Author; Labor organizer; Lesbian activist; Professor, English; Professor, Women's Studies. The papers contain materials from her academic career and study groups. Most material is related to Marxist Feminist Group 1 (MF 1) which include an extensive amount of discussion notes, minutes, planning materials, and publications. The group's topics ranged significantly over the years, and have included socialism, homophobia, racism, and postmodernism. Some records also exist of her participation in early women's studies courses, research, and conferences. The collection contains draft and published writings by Farley on the subjects of women in literature, women's self-narratives, and the history of women's studies.

Arrangement

This collection has been added to over time in multiple "accessions." An accession is a group of materials received from the same source at approximately the same time.

Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements

This collection contains materials received from the donor in digital form that are not currently available online. Please consult with Special Collections staff to request access to this digital content.

Other Finding Aids

One or more content listings to individual accessions in this collection are available for download. Links can be found in the description of the individual accessions.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Donated by Tucker Pamella Farley, 2011 and 2015.

Processing Information

Accessioned by Amanda Izzo, April 2010. This collection has not been processed, in the sense that archival arrangement and description beyond creating minimal box lists has not been done. The arrangement and description of materials may change in the future as iterative processing occurs. Researchers are encouraged to document their citations with this in mind.

The contents of computer media in this collection has been copied to networked storage for preservation and access; the original directory and file structure was retained and file lists were created. Some floppy disks were unable to be copied. See the log files linked in the container list for more details.

Processing Information

Between September 2022 and February 2023, Smith College Special Collections renumbered many boxes to eliminate duplicate numbers within collections in order to improve researcher experience. The following changes were made in this collection: Accession 2011-S-0017, Boxes 1-3 renumbered as Boxes 16-18

Related Names

Subject

Source

Subjects

Finding Aid & Administrative Information

Title
Finding aid to the Tucker Pamella Farley papers
Date
2012
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin

Revision Statements

  • 07/26/2017: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
  • 2017-07-26T17:48:21-04:00: This record was migrated from InMagic DB Textworks to ArchivesSpace.
  • 2018-08-17: Finding aid updated per donor's request of 8/10/2018, notes, etc. brought up to current standards
  • 2020-06-11: Description added for born-digital content.
  • 2021-07-02: Content description added from accession inventory

Repository Details

Repository Details

Part of the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History Repository

https://libraries.smith.edu/special-collections/about/sophia-smith-collection-womens-history
Contact:
Neilson Library
7 Neilson Drive
Northampton MA 01063

  • Smith College Special Collections
  • Neilson Library, 7 Neilson Drive
  • Northampton, Massachusetts, 01063
  • specialcollections@smith.edu
  • 413-585-2970

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