CHARLOTTE BUNCH, 1944-

For biographical information, see the finding aid for Charlotte Bunch papers, 85-M30--85-M66.

From the guide to the Additional papers, 1950-1988, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)

One of four children of Charles Pardue Bunch and Marjorie Adelaide (King) Bunch, CB was born in West Jefferson, North Carolina, on October 13, 1944. Later that year her family moved to Artesia, New Mexico, where she attended the public schools before enrolling at Duke University in 1962. A history major, CB graduated magna cum laude in 1966. Her college years were marked by numerous extracurricular activities, including work with the Young Women's Christian Association; the Methodist student movement; a poverty program in Oakland, California; and various civil rights groups.

In the summer following her graduation, she was a youth delegate to the World Council of Churches Conference on Church and Society in Geneva, Switzerland, and attended a meeting on China sponsored by the World Student Christian Federation. That autumn CB began a one-year term in Washington, D.C., as president of the University Christian Movement, an ecumenical organization concerned with social change. The following year she served as student intern at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, exploring the interaction of education and politics.

Moving to Cleveland in 1968, CB helped to organize both the local women's liberation movement and the first national women's liberation conference, held in Chicago in November 1968. She worked on the staff of the campus ministry at Case Western Reserve University before returning to Washington in 1969 as a visiting fellow at IPS. Continuing her active involvement in the women's liberation movement, she helped to develop a women's studies curriculum that was taught at the Washington Area Free University. Her work on the Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam led to a trip to North Vietnam and Laos in 1970 and to participation in the International Conference of North American and Indochinese Women held in Canada in 1971.

Since 1971, CH has worked primarily to develop a lesbian/feminist ideology nationally and a lesbian/feminist community in Washington. She continued as a fellow at IPS until 1977, and has taught a variety of courses on feminism at a number of colleges and universities. She has lectured widely, been a participant or facilitator at a number of international workshops and conferences, and served from 1979 to 1980 as consultant to the secretariat for the World Conference for the United Nations Decade on Women.

CB is the coeditor of a number of books, including The New Women: A Motive Anthology on Women's Liberation (1970), Learning Our Way: Essays in Feminist Education (1983), and Not By Degrees: Essays in Feminist Education, as well as one of the founders and editors of Quest: A Feminist Quarterly, (from 1974 until its demise in 1984) and The Furies (1972-1973), a lesbian/feminist newspaper. The author of numerous articles and pamphlets, she is active in many organizations, including the National Women's Program Committee of the American Friends Service Committee, the National Women's Conference, and the National Organization for Women; she is a board member of the New York Feminist Art Institute and the National Gay Task Force.

From the guide to the Papers, 1967-1985, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)