Historiography:

Abstract

This essay traces the evolution of scholarship on the role of a broad range of media in the American suffrage movement, including the suffrage press, plays, films, and consumer goods as well as mainstream news representations of the movement. The essay retrieves individual suffrage editors and publications to historical memory and considers the social construction of gender in mainstream media and suffragists’ “self-mediation”; the intersection of race, class, and gender in media accounts of woman suffrage; the marketing of woman suffrage; and insights into related fields, including political science, social movements, journalism history, popular culture, literary studies, and communications studies. The essay traces how scholarship has evolved from casting woman suffrage as a white, middle-class, Northeastern movement dominated by a few leaders to a diverse mix of activists across the United States.