In her presentation, Wagner will look how many of the issues of today, such equal pay for equal work and women’s reproductive rights, were also those of the early leaders in the women’s suffrage movement.
“Dr. Roesch Wagner is a leader in the field of women’s history. It’s a privilege to have her on campus to share her wisdom,” said Karen M. Kedrowski, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, which is sponsoring the event.
Awarded one of the first doctorates in the country for work in women’s studies (UC Santa Cruz), Wagner is a founder of one the first college-level women’s studies programs in the United States (CSU Sacramento) and is the founder and director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation. She has taught women’s studies courses for 51 years.
A historian of the suffrage movement, Wagner is author of the anthology “The Women’s Suffrage Movement” (2019), an intersectional look at the 19th century woman’s rights movement. Her book “Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists” (2001) documents the often-unrecognized authority of the Native women who inspired the suffrage movement.
Wagner has appeared on the CNN Special Report: Women Represented and CNN’s Quest’s World of Wonder. She has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Smithsonian, Nation and Time Magazine, among others. Her recent articles appeared in the New York Daily News, Ms. Magazine, the National Women’s History Alliance newsletter and National Suffrage Centennial Commission blog. In March 2021, the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian featured the film “Without a Whisper,” which traces Wagner’s research demonstrating the Haudenosaunee influence on the suffrage movement through her friendship with Wakerakats:te, the Mohawk Bear Clan Mother. Wagner also appeared in and wrote the faculty guide for the Ken Burns’ documentary, “Not for Ourselves Alone.”
Wagner’s lecture is sponsored by the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, the Department of Political Science, the League of Women Voters of Ames & Story County, and the Committee on Lectures (funded by Student Government).