A Reform Against Nature: Woman Suffrage and the Rethinking of American Citizenship, 1840-1920 / Edition 1

by Carolyn Summers Vacca

Overview

Debates over women’s suffrage filled the pages of nineteenth-century articles, speeches, and books. Early natural rights justifications gave way to those based on women’s special characteristics – characteristics used by vehement anti-suffragists to justify women’s exclusion from the polity. These questions over natural rights reappeared in immigration and naturalization debates, which also attracted the print media’s attention. This shift in the rationale for inclusion in the suffrage debates paved the way for a reorientation of American views – from citizenship as a right, to citizenship as a privilege – a view that informed America’s response to questions of immigration and naturalization in the early twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820458113
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	06/03/2004
Series:	American University Studies: Series 9: History , #200
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)

About the Author

The Author: Carolyn Summers Vacca received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Rochester, New York, and has taught at the State University of New York at Brockport and at St. John Fisher College, Rochester, New York. As historian of Monroe County, New York, she has produced publications on local women’s history, including the booklet No Ordinary Women, as well as articles on the local homefront response to World War II.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	1
Chapter 1	Citizenship, Women, and Western Political Traditions	9
Chapter 2	The Early Years: Women's Quest for Inclusion	27
Chapter 3	Enemies from Without and Within	45
Chapter 4	Shifting Ground	65
Chapter 5	Reunion and Re-orientation	87
Chapter 6	Whose Victory?	105
Chapter 7	Women's Nature, Immigrant's Nature: The Triumph of Ascriptivism	127
	Notes	155
	Bibliography	173
	Index	183