Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism

FAIN: FT-56576-09

Melissa R. Klapper
Rowan University (Glassboro, NJ 08028-1702)

This research project investigates American Jewish women's social and political activism during the last decades of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. The project will focus on three important and under-studied areas of Jewish women's activism: the suffrage, birth control, and peace movements. It will explore Jewish women's ambivalence about their religious and ethnic identity in the context of secular activism. This project will challenge the idea that American Jewish women never shared political concerns or participated in social movements alongside non-Jewish women. It will document their experiences of activism and explore their choices in relation to identity politics.

Associated Products

Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace (American Jewish Women's Activism 1890-1940) (Book)
Title: Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace (American Jewish Women's Activism 1890-1940)
Author: Melissa R. Klapper
Abstract: Jennie Franklin Purvin symbolizes Jewish women throughout the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries who developed a distinctive activist identity that drew on both their gender and their religious or ethnic identities. American Jewish women who wanted to be both good Jews and good women found themselves negotiating sometimes competing, sometimes complementary demands, and they daily made complex choices as their under-standings of their American, Jewish, and female identities fluctuated.
Year: 2013
Publisher: New York University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780814748947
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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