Meneese Wall’s Suffrage Art Prints and Notecards

Meneese Wall, a graphic artist and designer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has created a series of signed art prints and notecards to commemorate and celebrate the upcoming 2020 centennial of the 19th Amendment’s passage.

Inspired by historical events, people, quotes and memorabilia from the suffrage movement, Meneese’s graphic illustrations are paired with text that give historical context to her work. To date, Meneese has featured the likes of Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, and pro-suffrage journals like The Suffragist and The Woman Voter, and she continues to create new pieces throughout the lead-up to the centennial.

To learn more about Meneese and her work, visit her website here and her artwork catalogue here.  Meneese encourages communication, so you can email her at meneese@meneesewall.com.

Meneese has graciously allowed this website to feature 17 of her suffrage pieces:

The Suffrage Postcard Digital Humanities Project: Images of Masculinity and Fatherhood in Pro- and Anti-Suffrage Postcards of the Early 20th Century

The Suffrage Postcard Project is a digital archive of suffrage-related postcards mostly from the United States in the early 20th century.

The project “looks at illustrations and images of masculinity and fatherhood that circulated in early twentieth-century pro- and anti-suffrage postcards.”

The website features hundreds of individual postcards, as well as collections of postcards on the same theme.

In addition, the Suffrage Postcard Project features a bibliography of reading materials on the visual history of the suffrage and feminist movements.

The project is the creation of Dr. Kristin Allukian, an Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Florida, and Dr. Ana Stevenson, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, South Africa.

Explore the entire website here.

The Male Madonna and the Feminine Uncle Sam: Visual Argument, Icons, and Ideographs in 1909 Anti-Woman Suffrage Postcards

Abstract:

In 1909, at the height of the woman suffrage controversy and during the golden age of postcards, the Dunston-Weiler Lithograph Company of New York produced a twelve-card set of full-color lithographic cartoon postcards opposing woman suffrage. The postcard images reflect, and depart from, verbal arguments concerning woman suffrage prevalent during this period. They reflect arguments against suffrage that highlighted the coarsening effect the vote would have on women. The postcards also present an argument that was absent in the verbal discourse surrounding suffrage: that men (and the nation) would become feminized by woman suffrage. Accordingly, these postcards offer a productive location in which to explore how the icons of the Madonna and Uncle Sam, as well as non-iconic images of women, were deployed to reiterate the disciplinary norms of the ideographs of <woman> and <man>.

You can purchase a copy of this article via Taylor & Francis Online. College and public libraries are also likely to have access; check WorldCat to see if there’s one near you.

Digital Exhibit: Arkansas Women’s Suffrage Centennial

This virtual exhibit is part of the Arkansas Women’s Suffrage Centennial, a project that “commemorates the 100th anniversary of the right to vote for women in Arkansas by promoting events, encouraging research and education programs related to women’s suffrage, and helping to preserve the history of women’s suffrage within the state.”

The exhibit features a number of galleries, which include information as well as photographs and original documents from the suffrage era and focus on topics ranging from African-American suffragists to suffrage fashion.

Of particular interest is the exhibit’s media gallery, which features documents, cartoons, drawings, and photographs and includes this delightful suffrage fashion gallery.

Online Exhibit: Motherhood, Social Service and Political Reform: Political Culture and Imagery of American Woman Suffrage

This online exhibit, “Motherhood, Social Service and Political Reform: Political Culture and Imagery of American Woman Suffrage,” follows women’s long road to the vote, focusing on the “distinct female political culture and imagery” of the suffrage movement.

The exhibit allows you either to take an in-depth look at the history of women’s suffrage or to take a shorter tour through an image gallery. The in-depth journey provides commentary, photographs, and documents of the history of the movement, including an exploration of how themes of domestic life and motherhood were used to advance movement goals. The image gallery contains 50 images of pamphlets, posters, and other paraphernalia used to rally support for the movement.

An updated image exhibit, “Creating a Female Political Culture,” curated by Edith P. Mayo and the National Women’s History Museum and released in January 2017, presents many of the same images from the bigger exhibit in slideshow format, with a main image and detailed text description on each slide.

Suffrage Teaching Resources From the National Archives

DocsTeach, a National Archives-sponsored website of resources for teaching history, is designed to provide information and lesson plans for teachers. It may also be useful for students and others looking for primary sources on women’s rights and suffrage, however.

Likely the most useful resources for teachers are two teaching activities specifically related to suffrage. These include learning objectives, detailed lesson instructions, and extension activities. There is one lesson for high school students and one for middle schoolers. Note: There are nine more suffrage teaching activities available to those who register with the site. Registration is free and open even to those who aren’t teachers.

Additionally, the site contains:

• Nearly 200 high-quality primary sources pertaining to women’s rights
• Two dozen primary sources that explicitly pertain to women’s suffrage

Nearly all the documents include thorough citations and are copyright-free/public domain (although it’s worth looking at the Archives’ accessible and straightforward legal page before you use material from the site).

Some of the highlights include:

• A petition—sponsored by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony—asking Congress to enact a law giving US women the right to vote
• An 1888 joint Congressional resolution proposing a constitutional amendment extending voting rights to property-holding widows and spinsters—whom Elizabeth Cady Stanton half-jokingly described to Congress as “industrious, common-sense women … who love their country (having no husbands to love) better than themselves.”
• A 1917 letter in which National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage President Alice Wadsworth urges Congressman Charles E. Fuller to vote against the proposed 19th Amendment, which ultimately granted US women the right to vote. (You can view a NAOWS pamphlet opposing women’s voting rights here.)

How Were Suffragettes Treated by the Media?

In this Bustle article, J.R. Thorpe dissects how suffragettes were treated by the media of their time. Using primary sources from the era, Thorpe argues that suffragettes were depicted as neglectful, violent, and disgusting, and further were accused of war-mongering and inciting the downfall of society.

For more primary materials, such as postcards and posters, depicting suffragettes see The Suffrage Postcard Project and American Women Suffrage Postcards.

The Suffrage Postcard Project

The Suffrage Postcard Project is a digital humanities initiative by Kristin Allukian, assistant professor of English at the University of South Florida and Ana Stevenson, a postdoctoral research fellow in the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, South Africa.

This impressive compilation of images from the suffrage era is unique in its highlighting of representations of masculinity, manhood, and fatherhood—such as “Mother’s Got the Habit Now,” a print depicting a suffragette dressed in her husband’s clothing—instead of primarily focusing on representations of women.

From the site:

This project looks at illustrations and images of masculinity and fatherhood that circulated in early twentieth-century pro- and anti-suffrage postcards and utilizes a range of digital tools including Omeka, ImagePlot, Gephi, Tableau Public, and Iconclass to explore how feminist digital humanities practices engender new visual historical narratives of masculinity and manhood.

The primary goal of The Suffrage Postcard Project is to provide an easy-to-search archive for research and teaching on the suffrage era. The site provides options to browse images by title or creator, or to browse collections like this delightful Cats and Suffrage Collection. Images are downloadable and citations are provided.

The Ann Lewis Women’s Suffrage Collection

The Ann Lewis Women’s Suffrage Collection is a privately owned collection of over 1,200 postcards, books, periodicals, and more on the suffrage era.

Readers can browse the following collections:

• Postcards and stamps
• Buttons and ribbons
• Manuscripts
• Books
• Periodicals
• Memorabilia

Each item includes a detailed description, permissions, and citation information.

Some gems from the site include this 1924 clipping from The Literary Digest declaring suffrage a failure and this 1915 postage stamp labelled, “Votes for Women, Pennsylvania.”

About the collector (from the website):

Ann F. Lewis was Senior Advisor to the 2008 Presidential Campaign of Hilary Rodham Clinton. She served as White House Communications Director for President Bill Clinton; as Vice President for Planned Parenthood Federation of America; as Political Director of the Democratic National Committee; and as Chief of Staff to then Congresswoman, now Senator Barbara Mikulski. Lewis has been a visiting lecturer at Brandeis University, and at the Annenberg School of the University of Pennsylvania. She was one of the founding members of the National Women’s Political Caucus.

The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign 1907-1914

Deemed too artistic for political history, too political for art history, the visual history of the campaign for women’s suffrage in Britain has long been neglected. In this comprehensive and pathbreaking study, Lisa Tickner discusses and illustrates British suffragists’ use of spectacle—the design of banners, posters, and postcards, the orchestration of mass demonstrations, etc.—in an unprecedented propaganda campaign.

A limited preview of a review of The Spectacle of Women and full-text access options is available through JSTOR.

Google Books offers a limited preview of the book. It is also available for sale through online sellers such as Amazon.com and through academic libraries (both as an e-book and in print). You can check WorldCat to see if there a library with access near you.