When Pennsylvania men went to the polls in 1915 to decide if women in the state should have the right to vote, they were weighing many issues, including questions about immigrants and temperance, the roles of men and women in society, and the progress of the states out west that had already enfranchised women. This course begins by looking at what was happening in the suffrage struggle nationwide in the early years of the twentieth century. It then shifts the focus to the 1915 Pennsylvania referendum and explores what happened in this state. Finally, the course concludes with an examination of Pennsylvania’s efforts to help ratify the nineteenth amendment in 1920 and how women (and which women) exercised their new rights. The course includes diverse stories about the many women — young and old, white and black, urban and rural, Protestant and Catholic — who were involved in the fight for the vote (as well as some who fought against it).

Instructor: Cathleen D. Cahill, Walter L. Ferree and Helen P. Ferree Professor in Middle-American History at Penn State, is the author of two books: Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) and Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869–1933 (UNC 2011). Dr. Cahill has given talks at many venues, including the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and the National Portrait Gallery. Her work has also been excerpted in Ms. Magazine, Time, and The New York Times. She is also the steering committee chair for the Coalition for Western Women’s History. She taught at the University of New Mexico for fourteen years before moving to State College in 2017.