17 October 2019 | 5:00 pm | Telus 150, Telus Building | Lecture & Reception
Laurel Ulrich's backgrounder on her lecture topic "Liberty: Slavery and Women's Rights in Philadephia, 1790":
Last spring the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia invited me to participate in planning an exhibit commemorating the centennial of the passage of woman suffrage in the United States. I was surprised. Most histories of the woman suffrage movement begin with the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. What did the American Revolution have to tell us about the long struggle for women's rights? This lecture is a partial answer to that question. It explores the use of Philadelphia in 1792 of the revolutionary icon of Lady Liberty to promote the anti-slavery movement and a growing demand for women's rights. My talk is both a close reading of an intriguing early painting and an exploration of the entanglement of race and gender in the struggle for equality in the United States, a struggle that continues today.
Laurel Ulrich grew up among the sagebrush of Idaho, developing a fascination with New England history. She is a groundbreaking historian of colonial America and the history of women, as well as being the 300th Anniversary University Professor Emerita of Harvard University. Her approach to history is described as a tribute to "the silent work of ordinary people", with her second book, A Midwife's Tale (1990) awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Ulrich pushed boundaries and made insights that resonate -- seen in the title of her fifth book: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History (2007). You will find this assertion reproduced on bumper stickers and tee-shirts.
Teacher, mentor, and active member of the LDS church, Laurel's most recent book A House Full of Females (2017) examines women's experiences in the early years of the Mormonism.
All welcome. Please rsvp at: https://forms.gle/Ev8eQps2QD92Rxtt6.