Events & exhibitions

New Blocs, New Maps, New Power (ca. 1982)

  • Thursday, October 22, 2020
    4 PM ET
  • Online on Zoom
Sepia toned image of a regiment of women in uniform (white or pale clothes and a dark sash) carrying staffs and marching in formation in a suffrage parade
A regiment of women in uniform (white or pale clothes and a dark sash) carrying staffs and marching in formation in a suffrage parade. Crowds look on from both sidewalks. See individual photos for additional description., May 3,1914

By the early 1980s, a new political landscape was taking shape that would fundamentally influence American society and politics in the decades to come. That year, the long-standing effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment—championed by suffragist Alice Paul and introduced to Congress in 1923—ran aground, owing in significant measure to the activism of women who pioneered a new brand of conservatism. The power and organizational energies of conservative women provided one more proof that the suffragists’ notion of a universal women’s voting “bloc” was an illusion. But in the Reagan era, other organized political constituencies rose and matured, exerting significant pressure on elections.

This panel will draw together strands and stories that are often kept separate: the ideas and growing influence of conservative women, the political activism of gay communities, and the mobilization of Latinx constituencies in the ongoing struggle over who gets to vote, who draws the map, and whose vote counts.

Event Video

Sepia toned image of a regiment of women in uniform (white or pale clothes and a dark sash) carrying staffs and marching in formation in a suffrage parade

WELCOME

Jane Kamensky, Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences


SPEAKERS

Moon Duchin, associate professor of mathematics and senior fellow in the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, Tufts University


Timothy Stewart-Winter, associate professor of history, American studies, and women’s and gender studies, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey


Geraldo L. Cadava, associate professor of history, Northwestern University


Olivia Perez-Cubas, communications director, Winning for Women, and vice president, Bullpen Strategy Group


Michelle Nickerson, associate professor of history, Loyola University Chicago


Moderated by Lisa McGirr, professor of history, Harvard University

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