Beginning with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and ending in 1920 with the successful passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the movement for female suffrage united, but also divided American women, particularly along lines of race. This seminar concentrates on the increased visibility of women fighting for the right to vote in the suffrage movement’s later decades to analyze struggles for representation that were political and visual.

This seminar will provide students a grounding in histories and theories of what is sometimes known as “first-wave” US feminisms. Rather than surveying feminist art, the course will work with case-studies focused on particular artists and artworks across a variety of mediums, from monumental marble sculpture to pocket-sized advertising prints. We will focus particularly on the ways artworks facilitated and critiqued ideologies of universality, which continue to hold promise and trouble for projects of feminist solidarity.

This course fulfills the following Major requirements: Geographical area (C ), and Chronological period (III).