The Right to Vote: Reexamining Women's Suffrage

Tuesdays, March 23 - May 4, 2021
1:3o-3pm Eastern; Free & Online via Zoom

Click here to register for free.

2020 marked the centennial of the 19th amendment. In this course, we will explore the history of women’s suffrage in the United States, the constitutional framework within which the suffragists worked, and the continuing efforts to address women’s issues including voting, elected representation, and gender related public policy efforts.

This live and interactive course is free and open to the public, and includes the following guest speakers:

March 23: Thomas Gerety on "The Right to Vote: Constitutional Constraints."  Click here to watch the class recording. Dr. Gerety holds a JD and Ph.D. from Yale University. He served as Dean of the College of Law at the University of Cincinnati and is former president of both Trinity and Amherst Colleges.  He was executive director and Brennan Professor at the Brennan Center for Justice, New York University (NYU) School of Law. He recently retired as Collegiate Professor of Law and Humanities, NYU.

March 30: Barbara Berenson on "Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers"  Click here to watch the class recording.  Ms. Berenson is a historian and the author of Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers and other books. A former Senior Attorney at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, she currently teaches at Tufts University and Harvard Law School.

April 6: Rebecca Edwards on "Suffrage in the Gilded Age." Click here to watch the class recording. Dr. Edwards received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. Her research interests focus on the post-Civil War era and includes electoral politics and the history of women and gender. She teaches courses on the 19th-century United States, women in the United States up to 1890, and the American West, and is the author of New Spirits: Americans in the ‘Gilded Age’ 1865-1905.

April 13: Lauren Santangelo on "Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot."  Click here to watch the class recording. Dr. Santangelo is the author of Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot and a historian with a focus on gender and the urban environment. She earned her Ph.D. at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and is a Lecturer at Princeton University where she teaches in the Writing Program.

April 20: Liv Cummins and Rob Hartmann on "Suffrage and Song: Suffrage Protest Music." Click here to watch the class recording. Ms. Cummins brings expertise as a musical theater lyricist/book writer, theater director, screenwriter, and singer/songwriter, and is a graduate of Skidmore College and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. She’s a Professor of Drama & Creative Writing at Lesley University, having been on the faculty since 2007.   Mr. Hartmann received his MFA from New York University’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, where he was a member of the faculty for 15 years. Rob has had more than a dozen musicals produced across the United States in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Nashville. 

April 27: Cathleen Cahill on "Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement."  Dr. Cahill is a social historian who explores the everyday experiences of ordinary people, primarily women. She holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago. She focuses on women's working and political lives, asking how identities such as race, nationality, class, and age have shaped them, and is the author of Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement.

May 4: Robyn Rosen on "Unfinished Business: Women in National Politics." Dr. Rosen has taught U.S. History and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Marist College since 1994.  Her research has focused on American women’s political activism and social movements, particularly the history of the birth control movement in the 20th century. More recently, her research has expanded into the politics of reproductive rights and men’s responses to the women’s movement in the 1970s.

SUGGESTED READING:  The list below includes books authored by the speakers:

Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers, Barbara Berenson. [The History Press, 2018]

New Spirits: Americans in the ‘Gilded Age’ 1865-1905, Rebecca Edwards. [Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2010]

Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot, Lauren Santangelo. [Oxford University Press, 2019]

Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement, Cathleen D. Cahill. [University of North Carolina Press, 2020]

Katherine Kidd, moderator, earned her Ph.D. in international relations at the University of Pennsylvania.  She directed the programs and taught in international studies at Sacred Heart and Fairfield Universities.  She has taught courses for OLLI at BCC on women in politics, contemporary Russia, Hannah Arendt, global public health, and more.

This program is supported by Mass Humanities.