Women, Democratic Politics, and Progressive Reform in the United States, 1890-1925
Between 1890 and 1925, American women enjoyed great visibility in public life and helped to created institutions and public policies that shaped the lives of Americans for decades to come. This session will explore the vital participation of African American and European American women in U.S. public life during the early twentieth century. Analyses of women's activism will illuminate racial politics early in the century; the role of women in Progressive reform; the contributions of women to the welfare state; and the legacy of progressive era activists to American democracy in the twentieth century.
Speakers
Robyn Muncy is Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she has taught US women’s history, the history of progressive reform, and twentieth-century U.S. history since 1990. She earned a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Northwestern University in 1987. She has served as Interim Chair of the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland and is currently on the Board of Directors of the Labor and Working-Class History Association. She is a contributing editor of _Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, _and she is co-curating an exhibit on the struggle for women’s suffrage at the National Archives in Washington, DC. She is also on the advisory committee for the National Votes for Women Trail, a project sponsoring historical markers in all 50 states, commemorating the long and diverse history of American women’s struggle for the franchise.
