Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE June 2018 THE THIRD WORLD WOMEN’S ALLIANCE: HISTORY, GEOPOLITICS, AND FORM Ariane Vani Kannan Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Kannan, Ariane Vani, "THE THIRD WORLD WOMEN’S ALLIANCE: HISTORY, GEOPOLITICS, AND FORM" (2018). Dissertations - ALL. 906. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/906 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on the work of the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), a women-of-color-led activist organization that maintained active chapters in New York City and the Bay Area between 1971-80. Drawing on archival research and qualitative interviews, I reconstruct how the group invoked, constructed, and circulated intersecting Third World histories and geopolitical analyses through political education, publications, and cultural events. In addition to this historical study, I seek to understand the ongoing presence of the TWWA in educational spaces through interviews with archivists and professors across disciplines. This project makes three contributions to the field of Rhetoric and Composition: 1) offering a genealogy of the rhetoric and writing from the era that Cynthia Young refers to as the U.S. Third World Left; 2) demonstrating how the TWWA’s work--and U.S. Third World rhetoric and writing more broadly--blurs scales that are often treated as discrete in Rhetoric and Composition (embodied, local, and transnational); and 3) situating the study of archival research and writing assignments across disciplines as a method of tracing the ongoing impact of social activist histories.