NOTICE: “Front Pages, Front Lines: Media and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage”

“The centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment encourages a fresh rethinking of the history of the women’s suffrage movement, to which this volume is a welcome addition. Special kudos for its sustained attention to racial and regional diversity, as well as its broad chronological sweep.”-–Susan Ware, author of Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote

U OF ILLINOIS PRESS FLYER for  FRONT PAGES FRONT LINES

Chapter summaries and short videos with all the authors here. 

FRONT PAGES, FRONT LINES:

MEDIA AND THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

The press, women, and the long road to the Nineteenth Amendment

Suffragists recognized that the media played an essential role in the women’s suffrage movement and the public’s understanding of it. From parades to going to jail for voting, activists played to the mass media of their day. They also created an energetic niche media of suffragist journalism and publications.

This collection offers new research on media issues related to the women’s suffrage movement. Contributors incorporate innovative approaches to social movement, media theory, and historiography while discussing the vexed relationship between the media and debates over suffrage. Aiming to correct past oversights, the editors curate essays on overlooked topics like the participation of African American and Mormon-oriented media, coverage of black women in the movement, suffrage-related historiography, suffragist rhetorical strategies, elites within the movement, suffrage as part of broader campaigns for social transformation, and how views of white masculinity influenced press coverage.

Contributors: 

Maurine H. Beasley, Sherilyn Cox Bennion, Jinx C. Broussard, Teri Finneman, Kathy Roberts Forde, Linda M. Grasso, Carolyn Kitch, Brooke Kroeger, Linda J. Lumsden, Jane Marcellus, Jane Rhodes, Linda Steiner, and Robin Sundaramoorthy

Linda Steiner is a professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and a coauthor of Women and Journalism. Carolyn Kitch is a professor of journalism and media & communication at Temple University and the author of Pennsylvania in Public Memory: Reclaiming the Industrial Past. Brooke Kroeger is a professor of journalism at New York University and the author of The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote.