Varieties of American Feminism, 1830s to 1930s

FAIN: FV-50248-10

Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)
Elisabeth Israels Perry (Project Director: March 2010 to September 2012)

A four-week seminar for sixteen school teachers to examine ideological traditions within American feminism from its beginnings to the Great Depression.

The Varieties of American Feminism introduces teachers to the fundamental ideas of the first American woman's rights movement (approximately from the Early Republic to the Great Depression). Seminar participants read texts by Judith Sargent Murray, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Anna Julia Cooper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ida B. Wells, Jane Addams, Emma Goldman, Crystal Eastman, and Eleanor Roosevelt, among others. To understand why the movement lost momentum after woman suffrage was won, we end the seminar with arguments taken from the first 1923-25 campaign for an Equal Rights Amendment. The seminar helps history teachers enrich their curricula in U.S. history and English teachers deepen their understanding of the historical context of American feminism.