Degree Type

Honors Capstone Project

Date of Submission

Spring 5-2017

Capstone Advisor

Pedro DiPietro

Honors Reader

Erin Rand

Capstone Major

Women's and Gender Studies

Capstone College

Arts and Science

Audio/Visual Component

no

Capstone Prize Winner

no

Won Capstone Funding

no

Honors Categories

Humanities

Subject Categories

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Abstract

This paper argues that mail correspondence among 19th century suffragists functions as a practice of creating space for cultivating a political feminist consciousness and sustaining the first women’s rights movement. Using Michel de Certeau’s theory of space and Nancy Fraser’s work on feminist counterpublics, letters from a variety of suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, were analyzed. Through a close reading of these letters, this paper identifies alternative discursive patterns as they circulate within those epistolary spaces. The early suffragists used letters to reaffirm their identity as white, middle-class, educated, Protestant women at the same time as they subverted the meaning of “woman.”

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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