Newswise — Dr. Kathy Feeley, University of Redlands professor of history, is available to comment on the speech given by Oprah Winfrey upon receiving the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globe Awards, and the #MeToo movement/anti-harassment initiative sponsored by powerful Hollywood women.
"While many were quick to dismiss the organizing around the Golden Globes as superficial activism from limousine liberals, the events of last evening were actually unprecedented in the history of the Hollywood and its awards shows and red carpets. Previously, individuals like Marlon Brando and Vanessa Redgrave have mounted personal protests or attendees have worn pins in support of worthy causes but said or did little else.
"'Time’s Up' is an initiative of an entirely different order of magnitude that seeks to affect national and global changes around issues of harassment and inequality. And it has the financing and backing to do so with the support of powerful and eloquent industry leaders like Oprah Winfrey. 'Time’s Up' is building the infrastructure to be in it for the long haul and make changes in workplaces and hearts and minds with charismatic figures like Winfrey at the helm."
Feeley has written widely on celebrity gossip and the Hollywood film industry and its key figures including Mary Pickford, Irving Thalberg, Louella Parsons, and Hedda Hopper. Most recently, a forthcoming chapter “‘The Great and Important Thing in Her Life’: Depicting Female Labor and Ambition in the 1920s and 1930s U.S. Movie Magazines,” in Mapping Movie Magazines, ed. Daniel Biltereyst and Liesbeth Van deVijver (forthcoming in 2018 from Palgrave/MacMillan) examines the professional and personal relationships amongst Joan Crawford and the female writers and editors of an emerging Hollywood press corps and the complex and contested discourse they produced in the pages of movie magazines around issues of work, harassment, ambition, and likeability in the 1920s and 1930s America.
She earned her Ph.D., U.S. History and Women's Studies Certificate, Department of History, The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (GSUC/CUNY), February 2004. and her B.A., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, History and Women's Studies, Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y., May 1990