Silander, Aaron
Dates
- Usage: 1950-
Biography
Anne "Aaron" Silander was born in 1950 and attended Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, for a time before moving to Iowa City in 1970. She was involved with a number of progressive grassroots social movements in Iowa City, beginning in the 1970s and participated in the publication of a local radical feminist newspaper, Ain't I a Woman? When all of the print shops in eastern Iowa refused to print the first issue of Ain't I a Woman?, Silander and other local feminists established the Iowa City Women's Press in 1972. Silander was active in a number of feminist collectives and organizations, including the Childcare Collective, the Women's Liberation Front, and later, the Women's Resource and Action Council (WRAC). Her activism was tied to her interest in issues of class, sexual identity, and race. Silander served as a research assistant for the Center for Excellence for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered People. In 2005, Silander received an MA in social work at the University of Iowa.
Found in 2 Collections and/or Records:
Aaron Silander papers
Oral history with Dale McCormick, Aaron Silander, and Jill Jack, 2017
This oral history consists of seven digital videos created by Dale McCormick, Aaron Silander, and Jill Jack. The videos are each a few minutes long. The participants variously interview one another or tell stories individually. The videos were recorded just prior to the 2017 Iowa City Feminist Reunion.
Two videos feature the participants promoting the reunion and its oral history programming. Two videos feature McCormick and Silander discussing a cartoon Silander created for the Ain't I a Woman feminist newspaper published in Iowa City in the early 1970s; the two videos are very similar, with one conducted in front of a blue screen. One video features Jack discussing a bomb threat against the Emma Goldman Clinic in the late 1970s and the feminist community's response. One video features McCormick and Jack discussing the DIY culture of the Iowa City feminist community. One video features McCormick describing how her business Bidet Plumbing got its name.
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- Archival Object 1
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- 1971-1980 1
- 1981-1990 1
- 1991-2000 1
- 2001-2010 1
- Archives (groupings) 1
- Bisexuals 1
- Community activists 1
- Feminism 1
- Feminists 1
- Gays 1
- Iowa City (Iowa) 1
- Lesbians 1
- Personal papers 1
- Sexual minorities 1
- Social advocacy 1
- Social justice 1
- Social participation 1
- Transgender people 1
- Women 1 + ∧ less