The evening will include a 35-minute screening of a clip on the 1913 Washington Parade from American Experience‘s The Vote. This will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with Penn State faculty.

One hundred years after the passage of the 19th Amendment, The Vote tells the dramatic culmination story of the hard-fought campaign waged by American women for the right to vote, a transformative cultural and political movement that resulted in the largest expansion of voting rights in U.S. history. In its final decade, from 1909 to 1920, movement leaders wrestled with contentious questions about the most effective methods for affecting social change, debating the use of militant, even violent tactics, as well as hunger strikes and relentless public protests. The battle also upended previously accepted ideas about the proper role of women in American society and challenged the definitions of citizenship and democracy. Exploring how and why millions of 20th-century Americans mobilized for—and against—women’s suffrage, The Vote brings to life the unsung leaders of the movement and the deep controversies over gender roles and race that divided Americans then—and continue to dominate political discourse today.

Panelists:

• Cathleen Cahill 
  • Cahill is an associate professor of history at Penn State. Among other roles, she currently serves as the honors adviser for the History department. Cahill’s research focuses on American women’s working and political lives. In addition to other publications on the subject of women’s suffrage, her recent monograph—Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement (The University of North Carolina Press, 2020)—will be available next month in November 2020. As part of the College of the Liberal Arts’ year-long theme, Moments of Change: A Century of Women’s Activism, in spring 2020 Cahill taught a first-year seminar titled Women, Race, and the Right to Vote.
• Lee Ann Banaszak
  • Banaszak is the head of the Department of Political Science and professor of political science and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State. Her current research interests focus on voting rights and on women’s movements in the U.S. and other countries. Banaszak published a monograph—The Women’s Movement Inside and Outside the State (Cambridge University Press, 2010)—addressing elements of feminism as they occur within and outside of formal governance. She has also written extensively on women’s suffrage and recently coedited a volume titled 100 years of the Nineteenth Amendment: An Appraisal of Women’s Political Activism (Oxford University Press, 2018). 
• John Gastil
  • Gastil is a distinguished professor of communication arts and sciences and political science at Penn State. He is also a senior scholar at the McCourtney Institute for Democracy housed in the College of the Liberal Arts. His primary research focuses on political deliberation and group decision making in a variety of political contexts, including such deliberation in the American jury system. Among his other publications, Gastil has co-authored a new monograph—Hope for Democracy: How Citizens Can Bring Reason Back into Politics (Oxford University Press, 2020). One of his most germane courses at Penn State is Democratic Deliberation, a course that is cross-listed between communication arts and sciences and political science.

Kathryn Salzer, Gorman-McCourtney Early Career Professor in Medieval History and associate professor of history, will serve as the moderator.