DAUGHTERS OF THE REPUBLIC: WOMEN’S RHETORIC AND THE ROAD TO SUFFRAGE (REMOTE)

How did nineteenth-century women move from being excluded from public speech to becoming reformers and eventually voters? This course explores the intertwined histories of women’s rhetoric, education, literacy, and activism in the United States through short primary texts from writers and reformers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Angelina Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida B. Wells, considering how their words shaped movements for abolition, reform, and suffrage. These women rhetoricians will be examined within the context of women’s education and literacy using Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, as a case study representing national trends.