Centennial Reflections on Suffrage Scholarship: Feminist Intersectional Assessments

Abstract

AbstractIn this essay, we assess feminist rhetorical scholarship that focuses on the suffrage movement, prioritizing intersectional research in which the analytic frame brings together considerations of gender, race, and power. Here, we trace scholarly lines of conversation among feminist scholars that (1) trouble dominant White suffrage narratives and historiography, (2) amplify the rhetorics of suffragists of color, (3) interrogate the racist rhetorics that inflected and shaped the suffrage movement, and (4) imagine possibilities for and the challenges of cross-racial coalitions and alliances, all in the hope that more scholars will join these ongoing discussions.