In the early years of the Cold War, fear of the Soviet Union led some Americans to conclude that Soviet subversion was destroying American society from within. If not actual spies, then certainly enemies — some deliberate apostles of Communism, others unwitting dupes — were everywhere: in the universities, in the entertainment industry, in journalism, even in the federal government. What fueled the anti-Communist frenzy? How did it manifest itself? What impact did it have on American life?

How do we remember the 1950s? As the climax of the American Century, when returning GIs and their wives settled into suburbia to have lots of children and enjoy the fruits of living in the only major industrial power left standing after World War II? Or as an age of conformity and anxiety, when anyone who challenged the status quo was suspect and Americans were poised to retreat to fall-out shelters? Or both? Join us to explore how we remember those mid-century years and learn why those memories matter now.

The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which removed “sex” as a legal reason to disqualify citizens from voting. Centennial celebrations have revealed how little most Americans know about the history of women’s rights and how contested this history remains. For the past 100 years, suffrage history has been marginalized and narrowly focused on a few white leaders. But recent scholarship has upended the standard narrative of suffrage, which starts with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and focuses on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This webinar will incorporate new research on suffrage, highlighting sex and race. Drawing on the book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (W.W. Norton, 2020), we will consider how the sexual double standard motivated activists, how the 19th Amendment got through Congress, and how racism shaped the suffrage movement and its legacy.

The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which removed “sex” as a legal reason to disqualify citizens from voting. Centennial celebrations have revealed how little most Americans know about the history of women’s rights and how contested this history remains. For the past 100 years, suffrage history has been marginalized and narrowly focused on a few white leaders. But recent scholarship has upended the standard narrative of suffrage, which starts with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and focuses on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This webinar will incorporate new research on suffrage, highlighting sex and race. Drawing on the book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (W.W. Norton, 2020), we will consider how the sexual double standard motivated activists, how the 19th Amendment got through Congress, and how racism shaped the suffrage movement and its legacy.These readings support the webinar of the same title featuring Kimberly Hamlin, Associate Professor of History, Miami University of Ohio.

Clip 1/5. The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which removed “sex” as a legal reason to disqualify citizens from voting. Centennial celebrations have revealed how little most Americans know about the history of women’s rights and how contested this history remains. For the past 100 years, suffrage history has been marginalized and narrowly focused on a few white leaders. But recent scholarship has upended the standard narrative of suffrage, which starts with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and focuses on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This webinar will incorporate new research on suffrage, highlighting sex and race. Drawing on the book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (W.W. Norton, 2020), we will consider how the sexual double standard motivated activists, how the 19th Amendment got through Congress, and how racism shaped the suffrage movement and its legacy.

Clip 2/5. The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which removed “sex” as a legal reason to disqualify citizens from voting. Centennial celebrations have revealed how little most Americans know about the history of women’s rights and how contested this history remains. For the past 100 years, suffrage history has been marginalized and narrowly focused on a few white leaders. But recent scholarship has upended the standard narrative of suffrage, which starts with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and focuses on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This webinar will incorporate new research on suffrage, highlighting sex and race. Drawing on the book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (W.W. Norton, 2020), we will consider how the sexual double standard motivated activists, how the 19th Amendment got through Congress, and how racism shaped the suffrage movement and its legacy.

Clip 3/5. The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which removed “sex” as a legal reason to disqualify citizens from voting. Centennial celebrations have revealed how little most Americans know about the history of women’s rights and how contested this history remains. For the past 100 years, suffrage history has been marginalized and narrowly focused on a few white leaders. But recent scholarship has upended the standard narrative of suffrage, which starts with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and focuses on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This webinar will incorporate new research on suffrage, highlighting sex and race. Drawing on the book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (W.W. Norton, 2020), we will consider how the sexual double standard motivated activists, how the 19th Amendment got through Congress, and how racism shaped the suffrage movement and its legacy.

Clip 4/5. The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which removed “sex” as a legal reason to disqualify citizens from voting. Centennial celebrations have revealed how little most Americans know about the history of women’s rights and how contested this history remains. For the past 100 years, suffrage history has been marginalized and narrowly focused on a few white leaders. But recent scholarship has upended the standard narrative of suffrage, which starts with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and focuses on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This webinar will incorporate new research on suffrage, highlighting sex and race. Drawing on the book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (W.W. Norton, 2020), we will consider how the sexual double standard motivated activists, how the 19th Amendment got through Congress, and how racism shaped the suffrage movement and its legacy.

Clip 5/5. The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which removed “sex” as a legal reason to disqualify citizens from voting. Centennial celebrations have revealed how little most Americans know about the history of women’s rights and how contested this history remains. For the past 100 years, suffrage history has been marginalized and narrowly focused on a few white leaders. But recent scholarship has upended the standard narrative of suffrage, which starts with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and focuses on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This webinar will incorporate new research on suffrage, highlighting sex and race. Drawing on the book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (W.W. Norton, 2020), we will consider how the sexual double standard motivated activists, how the 19th Amendment got through Congress, and how racism shaped the suffrage movement and its legacy.

"I was a brand new college freshman getting ready to attend my Political Science class that started at 8:45am on September 11, 2001."

In correspondence with her husband John as he and other leaders were framing a government for the United States, Abigail Adams (1744–1818) argued that the laws of the new nation should recognize women as something more than property and protect them from the arbitrary and unrestrained power men held over them.

History has treated the founding of the United States as an exclusively male enterprise. One reason for this is that biographers and historians mostly focus on the political, military, and diplomatic aspects of the era. Scant attention is paid to the social world where women primarily functioned. The story of Abigail and John Adams changes the narrative by examining their remarkable fifty-four year marriage in the context of the Revolutionary and Federal periods, shifting the historical lens to their family. This is possible because, alone among the wives of the founders, Abigail Adams’ hundreds of letters have survived. Abigail wrote elegant, poignant, picturesque prose, and John Adams wrote back. John was undoubtedly the greatest literary stylist among the founders. The story of their marriage set into the context of their time provides a more complete narrative of the Revolution and early National Era.

Clip 1/5. History has treated the founding of the United States as an exclusively male enterprise. One reason for this is that biographers and historians mostly focus on the political, military, and diplomatic aspects of the era. Scant attention is paid to the social world where women primarily functioned. The story of Abigail and John Adams changes the narrative by examining their remarkable fifty-four year marriage in the context of the Revolutionary and Federal periods, shifting the historical lens to their family. This is possible because, alone among the wives of the founders, Abigail Adams’ hundreds of letters have survived. Abigail wrote elegant, poignant, picturesque prose, and John Adams wrote back. John was undoubtedly the greatest literary stylist among the founders. The story of their marriage set into the context of their time provides a more complete narrative of the Revolution and early National Era.

Clip 2/5. History has treated the founding of the United States as an exclusively male enterprise. One reason for this is that biographers and historians mostly focus on the political, military, and diplomatic aspects of the era. Scant attention is paid to the social world where women primarily functioned. The story of Abigail and John Adams changes the narrative by examining their remarkable fifty-four year marriage in the context of the Revolutionary and Federal periods, shifting the historical lens to their family. This is possible because, alone among the wives of the founders, Abigail Adams’ hundreds of letters have survived. Abigail wrote elegant, poignant, picturesque prose, and John Adams wrote back. John was undoubtedly the greatest literary stylist among the founders. The story of their marriage set into the context of their time provides a more complete narrative of the Revolution and early National Era.

Clip 3/5. History has treated the founding of the United States as an exclusively male enterprise. One reason for this is that biographers and historians mostly focus on the political, military, and diplomatic aspects of the era. Scant attention is paid to the social world where women primarily functioned. The story of Abigail and John Adams changes the narrative by examining their remarkable fifty-four year marriage in the context of the Revolutionary and Federal periods, shifting the historical lens to their family. This is possible because, alone among the wives of the founders, Abigail Adams’ hundreds of letters have survived. Abigail wrote elegant, poignant, picturesque prose, and John Adams wrote back. John was undoubtedly the greatest literary stylist among the founders. The story of their marriage set into the context of their time provides a more complete narrative of the Revolution and early National Era.

Clip 4/5. History has treated the founding of the United States as an exclusively male enterprise. One reason for this is that biographers and historians mostly focus on the political, military, and diplomatic aspects of the era. Scant attention is paid to the social world where women primarily functioned. The story of Abigail and John Adams changes the narrative by examining their remarkable fifty-four year marriage in the context of the Revolutionary and Federal periods, shifting the historical lens to their family. This is possible because, alone among the wives of the founders, Abigail Adams’ hundreds of letters have survived. Abigail wrote elegant, poignant, picturesque prose, and John Adams wrote back. John was undoubtedly the greatest literary stylist among the founders. The story of their marriage set into the context of their time provides a more complete narrative of the Revolution and early National Era.

Clip 5/5. History has treated the founding of the United States as an exclusively male enterprise. One reason for this is that biographers and historians mostly focus on the political, military, and diplomatic aspects of the era. Scant attention is paid to the social world where women primarily functioned. The story of Abigail and John Adams changes the narrative by examining their remarkable fifty-four year marriage in the context of the Revolutionary and Federal periods, shifting the historical lens to their family. This is possible because, alone among the wives of the founders, Abigail Adams’ hundreds of letters have survived. Abigail wrote elegant, poignant, picturesque prose, and John Adams wrote back. John was undoubtedly the greatest literary stylist among the founders. The story of their marriage set into the context of their time provides a more complete narrative of the Revolution and early National Era.

When mapping the struggle for Black freedom and racial justice, historians have often emphasized the events and organizational efforts that occurred in urban areas, largely led by men. However, in order to take Black Power politics seriously in a more comprehensive fashion, we need to understand how they also emerged from and developed in rural American communities, where the voices and leadership of women were extremely influential.
In this podcast episode, Katherine Mellen Charron, associate professor of history at North Carolina State University, discusses her research into the legacies of local, community-based, rural Black womenÕs activism in North Carolina. By thinking about how Black Power politics, economics, and culture were affirmed and shaped by women outside of urban centers, we are better able to honor less historically visible forms of political engagement and innovation.

Drug education has traditionally been delivered by science and health teachers who present scientific research regarding drugs' physiological effects. This webinar explores the ways in which the humanities can provide essential historical context for understanding addiction as a medical condition and help students and citizens better interpret narratives of addiction and recovery. After presenting an overview of the history of addiction in the United States, we will consider how this framework can inform the way we teach about social movements and works of literature. Join us to discover what the humanities have to offer contemporary conversations about addiction.

Clip 1/5. Drug education has traditionally been delivered by science and health teachers who present scientific research regarding drugs' physiological effects. This webinar explores the ways in which the humanities can provide essential historical context for understanding addiction as a medical condition and help students and citizens better interpret narratives of addiction and recovery. After presenting an overview of the history of addiction in the United States, we will consider how this framework can inform the way we teach about social movements and works of literature. Join us to discover what the humanities have to offer contemporary conversations about addiction.