This week-long professional development seminar offers educators an in-depth exploration of the women’s suffrage movement and the arduous struggle for the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The program combines content-rich lectures, dynamic discussions, and lesson demonstrations with hands-on engagement with primary sources. This program is intended for social studies teachers as well as those of disciplines across the curriculum.
Participants will explore the suffrage movement from its 19th-century origins to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, analyzing the varied strategies, influential leaders, and grassroots activism that sustained the struggle across generations. Special emphasis will be placed on the contributions of activists like Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, Lucy Stone, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Lucy Burns, their different organizations, and the internecine battles that occasionally erupted in the pursuit of the right to vote.
A highlight of the seminar will be a day of field study. Teachers will visit the Alice Paul Institute at Paulsdale in Mount Laurel, New Jersey— the childhood home of Alice Paul, a leading suffragist, strategist for the Equal Rights Amendment, and founder of the National Woman’s Party. The group will also tour the Princeton University Suffrage Archives, where rare documents, correspondence, and ephemera provide direct insight into the organizing, rhetoric, and lived experiences of suffragists. These site visits will give educators a tangible connection to the movement’s history and a deeper appreciation for the individuals who fought to expand American democracy.
By the end of the week, participants will leave with a deeper understanding of history as well as practical, ready-to-use classroom strategies and materials that help students think critically about voting rights, civic engagement, and the ongoing pursuit of equality.
Please note: For the field study day, participants should be prepared to walk significant distances, including up to one mile at a time, as part of the program. Some historic sites and other locations included in the itinerary may not be fully ADA compliant due to the age of the buildings and may lack elevators or other accessibility features.
Speaker:
Lisa Tetrault
Professor Tetrault specializes in the history of gender, race, and American democracy, with a focus on social movements and memory.
Her first book, The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898 won the Organization of American Historians’ inaugural Mary Jurich Nickliss women’s history book prize. She is currently at work on two book-length projects. The first, A Celebrated But Misunderstood Amendment, is a genealogy of the Nineteenth Amendment, which supposedly gave women the right to vote. Focusing not on the movement, it focuses on the long life of the amendment itself.
The second, Enter Woman Suffrage: A New History of Reconstruction, 1865-1878, investigates the broad and frequent debates about women’s voting, most of which are unrecognized, during the Reconstruction Era. Tetrault also lectures on the U.S. suffrage movement, broadly construed, and is active as a public historian. In 2019, she delivered the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s Votes for Women Exhibit keynote address. She currently serves as an historical consultant for the National Constitution Center’s Nineteenth Amendment Exhibit, the Woodrow Wilson House’s Women’s Suffrage Initiative, the PBS American Experience documentary “The Vote,” and Ancestry.com’s new Women’s Suffrage Project.
Typically scheduled from Sunday through Friday in the summer, Founding Forward’s week-long teacher seminars are hosted at Union League Liberty Hill a 300+ acre private conference center and golf course in suburban Philadelphia. Each seminar has a single theme and consists of content-focused talks by highly regarded scholars (morning and afternoon) interspersed each day with activation sessions featuring either lesson demonstrations from master teachers and presentation from resource providers like Retro Report or Periodic Presidents. Finally, each seminar includes an out-of-classroom field study to historic sites, archives, and museums.
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