Queer Places:
Rutgers University, 77 Hamilton St, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, Stati Uniti
Duke University, Durham, Carolina del Nord 27708, Stati Uniti
The Furies Collective, 219 11th St SE, Washington, DC 20003, USA
Charlotte
Bunch (born October 13, 1944) is an American feminist author and organizer in
women's rights and human rights movements.[1][2][3]
Bunch is currently the founding director and senior scholar at the Center for
Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.[3]
She is also a distinguished professor in the Department of Women's and Gender
Studies at Rutgers.[4]
Active in the women's liberation movement of the 1960s, Bunch taught courses
on feminism at colleges and universities, participated in international
conferences concerning women, peace, and Christianity, edited feminist books
and journals, and worked to develop a lesbian/feminist ideology. See also
Charlotte Bunch, Additional Papers.
Bunch, one of four children to Charles Pardue Bunch and Marjorie Adelaide
(King) Bunch, was born in West Jefferson, North Carolina. That same year, her
family moved to Artesia, New Mexico. She attended public schools in Artesia
before enrolling at Duke University in 1962.[5]
She was a history major at Duke and graduated magna cum laude in 1966, and
was involved with many groups such as the Young Women's Christian Association
and the Methodist Student Movement.[6]
Bunch has said that she participated in "pray-ins" organized by the Methodist
Student Movement at Duke University, but later took a "break" from
Christianity because of the homophobia within the religion.[7]
She has been extremely active in political movements for decades and is
openly lesbian. She found inspiration for being a women's and human rights
activist through her family's dedication to "activism as good works."[7]
Featured in
Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay
and Lesbian Writers by Robert Giard [Rights Notice: Copyright Jonathan G. Silin (jsilin@optonline.net)]
The Furies Collective, Washington, DC
Shortly after graduating from Duke University, Bunch became a youth
delegate to the World Council of Churches Conference on Church and Society in
Geneva, Switzerland. That same year she became president of the University
Christian Movement in Washington D.C. for one year.
Following this position, Bunch became a fellow at the Institute for Policy
Studies in Washington D.C., and she founded the Washington D.C. publications,
Women's Liberation and Quest: A Feminist Quarterly.[8]
Through inspiration from Black Nationalism, Bunch took part in founding The
Furies Collective, a group that published its first newspaper, The Furies,
in January 1972. The goal was to give a voice to lesbian separatism.[7]
While the collective only survived for about one year, the home of the Furies
Collective later was named the first lesbian-related historic landmark in
Washington D.C., and became the first lesbian site on the National Register of
Historic Places.
In 1977, Bunch became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of
the Press (WIFP).[9]
WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works
to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of
women-based media. She participated in or facilitated numerous international
workshops and conferences, and from 1979 to 1980 she was a consultant to the
secretariat for the World Conference for the United Nations Decade on Women
which was hosted by WIFP.[6]
In 1989, she founded the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Douglass
College, Rutgers University, of which she remains the founding director and
senior scholar. She was succeeded as executive director by Radhika
Balakrishnan in September 2009.[10]
The Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) lobbied the United Nations
and the international community to view women's rights as a human rights
issue. CWGL is a component of the Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR)
Campaign, working towards the establishment of a new United Nations Gender
Entity that works for equality for all of the world's women. Bunch has been a
major voice for this campaign.[11][12]
The gender entity was finally created after four years of advocacy on July 2,
2010, and deemed UN Women.[13]
At its 20th-anniversary symposium on March 6, 2010,[14][15]
following panel discussions on body, economy, and movement, CWGL organized a
tribute[16]
to its founder, Charlotte Bunch,[17]
who transitioned on September 1, 2009 from her role as executive director to
working with CWGL in her new capacity as founding director and senior scholar.
Attendees watched a short preview of the then-upcoming documentary film
Passionate Politics: The Life & Work of Charlotte Bunch
(2011), directed by Tami Gold, which chronicles Bunch’s lifelong personal
and political commitment to women’s human rights.[18]
The Center for Women's Global Leadership launched the Charlotte Bunch
Women's Human Rights Strategic Opportunities Fund in recognition of her
contributions to the global women's human rights movement.[19]
She has served on the boards of numerous organizations and is currently a
member of the Advisory Committee for the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights
Division, and on the boards of the Global Fund for Women and the International
Council on Human Rights Policy.[20][21]
She has been a consultant to many United Nations bodies and recently served on
the Advisory Committee for the Secretary General's 2006 Report to the
General Assembly on Violence against Women.[22]
She has also voiced her support for the Campaign for the Establishment of a
United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for
democratic reform in the United Nations.[23]
My published books:
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