The Indiana Women’s Suffrage Centennial commemorates the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote in 2020. How did early Midwestern feminists, from various backgrounds, conceive of freedom? “White feminism,” a phrase at times misused in the media, suggests that feminists of the past were all invested in white supremacy. While early U.S. feminism was indeed at times a “segregated sisterhood,” intersections of race and class exist in the historical narrative about Indiana suffragists and Midwestern feminists. Using correspondence, yearbooks, bulletins and other archival sources from the Indiana League of Women Voters and the Women’s Franchise League of Indiana, Jamie Wagman will discuss how women worked for gender equality and how race and class affected women’s actions and rights in this Zoom presentation. Registration with email required for Zoom meeting invitation. 

Jamie Wagman is an Associate Professor and Chair of History and Gender and Women’s Studies at Saint Mary’s College. She teaches courses on U.S. Women’s History, African-American History, and Feminist Theory. She has a Ph.D. in American Studies, a Gender Studies graduate certificate, and an M.A. in Writing. She has been a NEH Summer Scholar and a Fulbright Specialist. Her work has been published in the Journal of Urban History, The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues and will appear this fall in Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000.