Elizabeth Massie: Interpreting the Essentialist Rhetoric of the Women’s Suffrage Movement at the Centennial
Elizabeth Massie is a senior majoring in history at the University of Kentucky. She is a native Lexingtonian and graduate of Lexington Catholic High School. Elizabeth specializes in 20th century women’s history, particularly women in political movements. Elizabeth’s project is titled “Interpreting the Essentialist Rhetoric of the Women’s Suffrage Movement at the Centennial” and focuses on the representation of gender in published suffrage literature from the Laura Clay Collection at the UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center. The project combines her interest in archives with her interest in women’s political involvement in 20th century history.
Her Learning Lab experience has taught her how to combine creativity with historical analysis to create a unique project. She has enjoyed working with her mentor and the other Learning Lab interns and learning more about the suffrage movement here in the United States. This fall, Elizabeth will attend the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for her Master’s in Library and Information Science. Her Learning Lab experience will be invaluable as she continues on to a career in library science.
Elizabeth was accepted to present her research at the National Conference of Undergraduate Research (NCUR), which was to be held at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, in March, but was unfortunately cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Research abstract: Interpreting the Essentialist Rhetoric of the Women’s Suffrage Movement at the Centennial
The women’s suffrage movement will be celebrated in 2020, 100 years following the passing of the 19th Amendment granting all American citizens the right to vote, regardless of sex. This achievement can be largely attributed to the popularity of suffragette publications, which were written to be persuasive to men and women alike to gain support for suffrage. The language of these publications relies on gender and racial essentialism to persuade men to support the vote, as suffragettes knew appealing to patriarchy would be their greatest chance in gaining the vote. How did the use of essentialist rhetoric in the suffragette movement appeal to -patriarchy to persuade men to support woman suffrage? A study of the language used in discussing gender, as well as race, in the suffrage movement will uncover how white suffragettes intended to appeal to patriarchy in the United States to gain the right to vote. Utilizing primary sources from the Laura Clay Papers at the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center, I will examine the language of published suffrage literature, including newspapers, pamphlets, and newsletters. These primary sources, ranging from the years 1900-1920, will be entered into a text mining software in order to examine the relationship between essentialist rhetoric and woman suffrage in the United States. It is expected the data will illustrate how public suffrage literature used essentialist concepts to convince men that the power structures of society would be unchanged, even reinforced, if suffrage was granted to white women. A study of suffrage rhetoric and its relationship to essentialism will give a greater insight into how social movements can often reinforce societal power structures in order to meet their specific goals.