2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Before women’s studies cemented itself within the academy, scholars downplayed, and some even denigrated, the importance of woman suffrage in the nation’s history. They wrote little about the intense battles women waged to win full citizenship rights. When they did write about woman suffrage they emphasized its failure to fulfill its promise to transform the nation.

Interest in the suffrage movement rose among scholars thanks to the modern women’s movement. A tremendous amount of enduring work on these topics resulted. Of late, however, this interest has diminished. Scholars have turned away from the study of suffrage leaders, many of whom they considered either elitist or racist. They have also argued that, since the importance of the vote in general declined in twentieth-century party politics, women’s political history was no longer as compelling a subject as it once was.

As the Berkshire Conference on Women’s History is taking place both in New York and in the centennial year of New York State’s woman suffrage amendment (1917-2017), a presentation of new perspectives on New York suffrage history is both timely and appropriate. All of the proposed presenters are working on projects that not only illuminate the ballot’s importance to the various constituencies that sought it but also demonstrate how a reexamination of both the movement and its consequences challenges our broader understanding of U.S. history. In a nation still wrestling with questions of democratic citizenship, the vote continues to have political and symbolic power.