Reflecting on the women’s suffrage movement, Alice Paul remarked: “the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end.” This PSP program examines the long history of women’s activism over the course of the 19th century, to highlight the multi-faceted mosaic of the women’s suffrage movement. Traditional accounts of the women’s suffrage movement tend to focus on key events, such as the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 or the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade held in Washington, D.C. Yet such famous moments were part of a much larger movement that created ripples across American society and politics. Throughout the 19th century, many women became involved in a number of reform movements, including educational access, abolitionism, charitable societies, married women’s property rights, temperance, dress reform, and of course, the suffrage movement. Participants will explore the diverse paths that led women to engage in civic and public life to make a difference in their own communities.
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Lucia McMahon, Ph.D.
Professor of History and Department Chair, William Paterson University
Lucia McMahon, Ph.D. is currently Professor and Chair of History at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ, where she regularly teaches courses in historical methods, early national U.S. history, and women’s history. Her research broadly focuses on women’s intellectual and educational history, with a particular focus on the recovery of relatively “unknown” women’s voices and experiences. McMahon is the author of several books and articles, including Mere Equals: The Paradox of Educated Women in the Early American Republic (Cornell University Press, 2012), and The Journal of Rachel Van Dyke, 1810-1811 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). |
