In June 1950, a group calling itself American Business Consultants published Red Channels: A Report on Communist Influence in Broadcasting, a publication that came to be known as the “bible” of the blacklist. Although broadcasting as an industry was largely male-dominated, over 30 percent of those named in Red Channels were women. In the months that followed, these women, who held diverse political perspectives, found their lives and livelihoods jeopardized by the blacklist and their voices decisively silenced. This presentation follows the lives of several women writers in particular, focusing on the work they had done prior to the blacklist and the creative potential that was stifled by the anti-communist crusade.
Presenter Profile: Carol A. Stabile, Director, Center for the Study of Women in Society; Professor, School of Journalism and Communication and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies
Carol Stabile
Carol Stabile has a PhD in English from Brown University. Her interdisciplinary research interests lie in the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation in media and popular culture She is the author of Feminism and the Technological Fix, editor of Turning the Century: Essays in Media and Cultural Studies, co-editor of Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture, and author of White Victims, Black Villains: Gender, Race, and Crime News in US Culture. She is currently writing a book on women writers and the broadcast blacklist in the 1950s.
