Carrie Chapman Catt Primary Sources, Biographies and Bibliography

Primary Sources

Archives of Women’s Political Communication, Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, Iowa State University
Transcripts of many of Catt’s speeches, as well as scans of the original documents.

Carrie Chapman Catt – Image Gallery Essay, Wisconsin Historical Society
A collection of 100 hand-colored glass lantern slides from Catt’s travels to Asia, Africa and the Pacific Island region, as well as several portraits of Carrie Chapman Catt.

Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Bryn Mawr College
A variety of materials including letters, photographs, political cartoons and memorabilia, with material pertaining both directly to Catt and to the women’s suffrage movement as a whole.

Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Iowa State University
Biographical data, correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, bibliographies, publications, reviews, addresses, awards, scrapbook of tributes, material relating to the Woman’s Centennial Congress and her will.

Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Library of Congress
Approximately 9,500 items, including diaries, correspondence, speeches and articles, subject files, photographs and printed matter.

Carrie Chapman Catt Papers and digital collection, New York Public Library
Correspondence, reports, press releases, minutes, brochures and clippings relating to the Empire State Campaign Committee, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1940 Women’s Centennial Congress and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance. Also, manuscript and printed versions of Catt’s writings and photographs of a 1923 trip to the Panama Canal.

Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Smith College
Papers relating to Catt’s work as president of both the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, as well as material pertaining to her peace activities and photographs taken in Great Britain during World War II, including many of the Women’s Land Army.

Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives
Approximately 766 items from the years 1916-1921, including accounts, correspondence, telegrams, newspaper clippings (reports and political cartoons) and some writings.

Catt materials in the Minnie Fisher Cunningham Papers, University of Houston
Materials written by, to or about Catt housed in the Minnie Fisher Cunningham Papers.

National Nineteenth Amendment Society
The National Nineteenth Amendment Society maintains the Carrie Lane Chapman Catt Girlhood Home and Museum, located near Charles City, Iowa. Their website contains information and resources about Catt and the woman suffrage movement.

Papers of Carrie Chapman Catt in the Woman’s Rights Collection, 1904-1947 and Papers of Carrie Chapman Catt in the Mary Earhart Dillon Collection, 1904-1946, Harvard Library
Biographical material, sketches, letters, writings, articles and speeches by Catt.

Tennessee Virtual Archive
A collection of written materials by and about Catt, relating to women’s suffrage in Tennessee.


Biographies

Fowler, Robert Booth. 1986. Carrie Catt: Feminist Politician. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.

Keller, Kristin Thoennes. 2005. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Voice for Women. Mankato, MN: Compass Point Books.

Levin, Nate. 2006. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Life of Leadership. BookSurge Publishing.

Peck, Mary Gray. 1944. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography. Whitefish, MT: Literary Licensing, LLC.

Somervill, Barbara A. 2002. Votes for Women!: The Story of Carrie Chapman Catt. Greensboro, NC: Morgan Reynolds Pub.

Van Voris, Jacqueline. 1987. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life. New York, NY: The Feminist Press.


Bibliography

The following publications are about or include mention of Carrie Chapman Catt. Access to some of the publications is restricted to paid subscriptions to a journal or database.

Alexander, Adele Logan. 1995. “African Americans in the Suffrage Movement.” In Votes for Women! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation, ed. Marjorie Spruill Wheeler. 86-89. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.

Alonso, Harriet Hyman. 1989. “Suffragists for Peace During the Interwar Years, 1919-1941.” Peace and Change. 14 (3): 243-262.

Amidon, Kevin S. 2007. “Carrie Chapman Catt and the Evolutionary Politics of Sex and Race, 1885-1940.” Journal of the History of Ideas. 68 (2): 305-328. Accessed April 17, 2019. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30136020.

Baker, Jean H., Robert Booth Fowler, and Spencer Jones. 2002. “Carrie Chapman Catt and the Last Years of the Struggle for Woman Suffrage: ‘The Winning Plan’.” In Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited. 130-142. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib,ip&db=nlebk&AN=144018&site=ehost-live&custid=s8875136.

Behn, Beth A. 2012. “Woodrow Wilson’s Conversion Experience: The President and the Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment.” Open Access Dissertations. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Accessed July 27, 2020. doi.org/10.7275/e43w-h021.

Beyer, Jeanette. 1924. “Homemaker as Citizen – Is Woman Suffrage A Failure?” The Iowa Homemaker. 4 (2): 13. Accessed June 4, 2021. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/homemaker/vol4/iss2/14.

Birdsell, David S. 1993. “Kenneth Burke at the Nexus of Argument and Trope.” Argumentation and Advocacy. 29 (4): 178-185. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A14842007/AONE?u=iastu_main&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=8cf3d859.

Botting, Eileen Hunt, Christine Carey Wilkerson, and Elizabeth N. Kozlow. 2014. “Wollstonecraft as an International Feminist Meme.” Journal of Women’s History. 26 (2): 13-38. Accessed October 8, 2020. doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2014.0030.

Brandenburgh, Crystal. 2021. “‘These Women Surely Mean Business:’ The Endurance of Progressive Reformers in the Interwar Women’s Peace Movement.” SHGAPE Blog, September 28. https://www.shgape.org/these-women-surely-mean-business.

Brown, Kathryn M. 2010. The Education of the Woman Citizen, 1917-1918. Graduate thesis. Bowling Green State University. Accessed July 28, 2021. https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=bgsu1277150212&disposition=inline.

Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. 1989. “The Coming of Woman Suffrage: The Orator, the Organizer, and the Agitator.” In Men Cannot Speak for Her. 164-171. Westport: Greenwood Press, Inc.

Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs, and David S. Birdsell. 1993. “Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), Leadership for Woman Suffrage and Peace.” In Women Public Speakers in the United States, 1800-1925. 321-338. Westport: Greenwood Press, Inc.

Candeloro, Dominic. 1979. “The Single Tax Movement and Progressivism, 1880-1920.” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 38 (2): 113-127. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3486892.

Catt, Carrie Chapman. January 18, 1916. Carrie Chapman Catt to Maud Wood Park. New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Clevenger, Ima Fuchs. 1955. Invention and Arrangement in the Public Address of Carrie Chapman Catt. PhD thesis. The University of Oklahoma.

Cohen, Philip N. 1996. “Nationalism and Suffrage: Gender Struggle in Nation-Building America.” Signs. 21 (3): 707-727. Accessed December 3, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3175176.

Croy, Terry Desch, and Carrie Chapman Catt. 1998. “The Crisis: A Complete Critical Edition of Carrie Chapman Catt’s 1916 Presidential Address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 28 (3): 49-73. Accessed April 17, 2019. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3886380.

Cruickshank, Sandra. 1960. “She Cleared the Way for Women’s Rights.” The Iowa Homemaker. 40 (6): 11, 14. Accessed June 4, 2021. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/homemaker/vol4/iss2/14.

Cutright, Emilee L. 2015. “Intertwining Discourse: An Examination of Suffrage and Antisuffrage Rhetoric.” Honors Theses. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Damousi, Joy, Kim Rubenstein, and Mary Tomsic. 2014. Diversity in Leadership: Australian Women, Past and Present. Canberra: The Australian National University Press.

Daniels, Doris. 1979. “Building a Winning Coalition: The Suffrage Fight in New York State.” New York History. 60 (1): 58-80. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23169971.

Delahaye, Claire. 2014. “‘The Perfect Library’ Carrie Chapman Catt and the Authoritative Historiography.” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/67415.

Dennehy, Michelle. 2008. “The Development of Literature in the Suffrage Movement: Western Successes from Eastern Lessons, 1848-1911.” History in the Making. 1 (5). Accessed July 28, 2021. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=history-in-the-making.

Dudden, Faye E. 2011. “Conclusion.” In Fighting Chance: The Struggle Over Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction America. 189-198. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Accessed April 17, 2019. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib,ip&db=nlebk&AN=375077&site=ehost-live.

Dumenil, Lynn. 2017. The Second Line of Defense. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Durnford, Stephanie L. 2005. “We shall fight for the things we have always held nearest our hearts”: Rhetorical Strategies in the U.S. Woman Suffrage Movement. Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, and Professional Papers. Accessed July 28, 2021. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6255&context=etd.

Egge, Sara. 2019. “Ethnicity and Woman Suffrage on the South Dakota Plains.” In Equality at the Ballot Box: Votes for Women on the Northern Great Plains, eds. Lori Ann Lahlum and Molly P. Rozum. 218-239. Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press.

Eicher-Catt, Deborah. 2020. “Responding to an Emergency Call: Carrie Chapman Catt, Women’s Suffrage, and the Crisis of a Nation.” The Pennsylvania Communication Annual. 76 (2): 13-32.

Enoch, Jessica. 2020. “The Feminist Civics Lesson of ‘19: The Musical’.” Quarterly Journal of Speech. 106 (3): 242-252. Accessed December 4, 2020. doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2020.1785632.

Erickson, John. 2009. The Archetypal Pro-Feminist: George Catt and the Contradictory Experiences of Power and Invisibility. Honors thesis. University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

Fanning, Richard W. 1990. “Peace Groups and the Campaign for Naval Disarmament.” Peace and Change: A Journal of Peace Research. 15 (1): 26-45.

Fazzi, Dario. 2017. “Eleanor Roosevelt’s Peculiar Pacifism: Activism, Pragmatism, and Political Efficacy in Interwar America.” European Journal of American Studies. 12 (1): 1-18.

Finneman, Teri. 2019. “Covering a Countermovement on the Verge of Defeat: The Press and the 1918 Social Movement against Woman Suffrage.” American Journalism. 36 (1): 124-143. Accessed March 31, 2021. doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2019.1572416.

Franzen, Trisha. 2008. “Singular Leadership: Anna Howard Shaw, Single Women and the US Woman Suffrage Movement.” Women’s History Review. 17 (3): 419-434. Accessed December 4, 2020. doi.org/10.1080/09612020801924563.

Geçgil, Emine. 2015. “Moderation vs. Militancy: The Rhetoric of American Suffrage Movement.” International Conference on Knowledge and Politics in Gender and Women’s Studies. 326-332. Ankara: Middle East Technical University. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325569175_Moderation_vs_Militancy_The_Rhetoric_of_American_Suffrage_Movement.

Gerber, Matthew G. 2016. “Agitation in Amsterdam: The International Dimension of Carrie Chapman Catt’s Suffrage Rhetoric.” Speaker and Gavel. 53 (1): 27-41.

Gordon, Ann D. 1995. “Woman Suffrage by Federal Amendment.” In Votes for Women! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation, ed. Marjorie Spruill Wheeler. 18-21. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.

Graham, Sara Hunter. 1996. Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy. 124-127, 198-199. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Green, Elna. 1997. “The Ratification Contest.” In Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question. 171-181. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Gunter, Rachel Michelle. 2020. “Immigrant Declarants and Loyal American Women: How Suffragists Helped Redefine the Rights of Citizens.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 19: 591-606. Accessed December 4, 2020. doi.org/10.1017/S153778142000033X.

Heider, Carmen. 2012. “Farm Women, Solidarity, and the Suffrage Messenger: Nebraska Suffrage Activism on the Plains, 1915-1917.” Great Plains Quarterly. 32 (2): 113-130.

Hobbs, Emily. 2015. Anna Howard Shaw: Rhetorically Creating Twentieth-Century Womanhood. Graduate thesis. The Pennsylvania State University.

Hurwitz, Edith F. 1978. “Carrie C. Catt’s ‘Suffrage Militancy’.” Signs. 3 (3): 739-743. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173202.

Huxman, Susan Schultz. 2008. “Passing the Torch of Women’s Rights: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna Howard Shaw, and Carrie Chapman Catt.” In Vol. 5 of The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Reform, eds. Martha Watson and Thomas R. Burkholder, 355-384. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Huxman, Susan Schultz. 2000. “Perfecting the Rhetorical Vision of Woman’s Rights: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna Howard Shaw, and Carrie Chapman Catt.” Women’s Studies in Communication. 23 (3): 307-336.

Johnson, Joan Marie. 2015. “Following the Money: Wealthy Women, Feminism, and the American Suffrage Movement.” Journal of Women’s History. 27 (4): 62-87. Accessed December 4, 2020. doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2015.0038.

Johnson, Joan Marie. 2017. “Following the Money: Funding Woman Suffrage.” In Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1870-1967. 19-49. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Johnson, Joan Marie. 2017. “Unequal Women Working for Women’s Equality: Power and Resentment in the Woman Suffrage Movement.” In Funding Feminism: Monied Women, Philanthropy, and the Women’s Movement, 1870-1967. 50-78. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Katz, David Howard. 1973. Carrie Chapman Catt and the Struggle for Peace. PhD diss. Syracuse University.

Keating, James. 2016. “‘An Utter Absence of National Feeling’: Australian Women and the International Suffrage Movement, 1900-14.” Australian Historical Studies. 47 (3): 462-481. Accessed December 4, 2020. doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2016.1194441.

Klapper, Melissa R. 2010. “‘Those by Whose Side We Have Labored’: American Jewish Women and the Peace Movement Between the Wars.” The Journal of American History. 97 (3): 636-658. Accessed January 20, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40959937.

Knapp, Betsy, and Mary Ann Guyol. 1960. “Learning by Doing with the League of Women Voters.” Journal of Social Issues. 16 (1): 57-65.

Lake, Marilyn. 1994. “Personality, Individuality, Nationality: Feminist Conceptions of Citizenship 1902-1940.” Australian Feminist Studies. 9 (19): 25-38. Accessed October 8, 2020. doi.org/10.1080/08164649.1994.9994723.

Lefeber, Emily. 2020. Nothing Comes to Her Who Sits and Waits: The League of Women Voters and Citizenship After Woman Suffrage, 1920-1940. Honors thesis. The University of Iowa.

Logan, Ann Holt. 1974. “Themes Expressed in the Rhetoric of Two Women’s Rights Movements.” Electronic Theses and Dissertations. South Dakota State University. Accessed on July 28, 2021. https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5765&context=etd.

Maddux, Kristy. 2009. “Winning the Right to Vote in 2004: Iron Jawed Angels and the Retrospective Framing of Feminism.” Feminist Media Studies. 9 (1): 73-94. Accessed March 31, 2021. doi.org/10.1080/14680770802619516.

Manolescu, Beth Innocenti. 2007. “Shaming in and into Argumentation.” Argumentation. 21: 379-395. Accessed December 4, 2020. doi.org/10.1007/s10503-007-9059-6.

Marcellus, Jane. 2010. “Southern Myths and the Nineteenth Amendment: The Participation of Nashville Newspaper Publishers in the Final State’s Ratification.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. 87 (2): 241-262.

Martyn, Marguerite. March 27, 1919. “Women of Every Type at Suffrage Convention.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 71 (213): 3.

Miller, Georgianna Oakley. 2009. The Rhetoric of Hysteria in the U.S., 1830-1930: Suffragists, Sirens, Psychoses. PhD diss. The University of Arizona.

Miller, Joe C. 2015. “Never A Fight of Women Against Men: What Textbooks Don’t Say about Women’s Suffrage.” The History Teacher. 48 (3): 437-482. Accessed June 4, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24810524.

Miller, Vanessa. August 24, 2019. “Professor Resigns After ‘Prohibited’ Conduct.” The Gazette. 8.

Neuman, Johanna. 2016. “The Faux Debate in North American Suffrage History.” Women’s History Review. 26 (6): 1013-1020. Accessed June 7, 2021. doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2016.1265052.

“Non-Partisan League of Women Favored.” March 25, 1919. The St. Louis Star. 33 (149): 2.

Noun, Louise Rosenfield. 1993. “Carrie Lane Chapman Catt and her Mason City Experience.” The Palimpsest. 74 (3): 130-144. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest/vol74/iss3/6.

Opheim, Teresa. 1981. “The Woman’s World: Carrie Lane Chapman in the Mason City Republican.” The Palimpsest. 62 (5): 130-139. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest/vol62/iss5/2.

Osborn, Eleanor Raye. 1994. The Ladies Have Spoken: Recurring Tensions in the Discourse of the Presidents of the League of Women Voters. Master’s thesis. San Jose State University.

Perkins, Sarah. 2021. The Vote: Gender Identification in the Women’s Suffrage Movement Through the Rhetoric of Carrie Chapman Catt. Master’s thesis. Liberty University.

Prescott, Heather Munro, and Lauren MacIvor Thompson. 2020. “A Right to Ourselves: Women’s Suffrage and the Birth Control Movement.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 19: 542-558. Accessed March 31, 2021. doi.org/10.1017/S1537781420000304.

Risjord, Norman K. 2005. “Carrie Chapman Catt: Progressivism and Women’s Suffrage.” In Representative Americans: Populists and Progressives. 195-216. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Rupp, Leila J., and Verta Taylor. 1999. “Forging Feminist Identity in an International Movement: A Collective Identity Approach to Twentieth-Century Feminism.” Signs. 24 (2): 363-386. Accessed December 4, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3175646.

Schott, Linda. 1996. “‘Middle-of-the-Road’ Activists: Carrie Chapman Catt and the National Committee of Cause and Cure on the War.” Peace and Change. 21 (1): 1-21.

Schultz, Jamie. 2016. Moments of Impact: Injury, Racialized Memory, and Reconciliation in College Football. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Accessed December 4, 2020. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspxdirect=true&AuthType=shib,ip&db=nlebk&AN=1097890&site=ehost-live.

Schultz, Jamie. 2007. “‘Stuff from Which Legends Are Made’: Jack Trice Stadium and the Politics of Memory.” The International Journal of the History of Sport. 26 (6): 715-748. Accessed April 15, 2020. doi.org/10.1080/09523360701264993.

Sharer, Wendy B. 2001. Rhetoric, Reform, and Political Activism in U.S. Women’s Organizations, 1920-1930. PhD thesis. The Pennsylvania State University.

Snider, Christy Jo. 2005. “Patriots and Pacifists: The Rhetorical Debate about Peace, Patriotism, and Internationalism, 1914-1930.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs. 8 (1): 59-83. Accessed July 28, 2021. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/184297/pdf.

Soukup, Paul A. 2020. “Woman Suffrage and Communication.” Communication Research Trends. 39 (3): 4+. Accessed December 4, 2020. https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=iastu_main&id=GALE|A636428565&v=2.1&it=r.

“Suffragists to Continue Fight for U.S. Law.” March 25, 1919. The St. Louis Star. 33 (149): 1.

Threlkeld, Megan. 2015. “Citizenship, Gender, and Conscience: United States v. Schwimmer.” Journal of Supreme Court History. 40: 154-171. Accessed March 31, 2021. doi.org/10.1111/jsch.12071.

Turner, Kathleen J. 1974. The Woman’s Rights Movement, 1848-1885: Issues and Argument. Honors thesis. University of Kansas. Accessed July 28, 2021. https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/26536/turner_1974_ba.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

Walker, Lynne. 2006. “Locating the Global/Rethinking the Local: Suffrage Politics, Architecture, and Space.” Women’s Studies Quarterly. 34 (½): 174-196. Accessed October 8, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40004748.

Wallace, D. D. 1896. “The South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1895.” The Sewanee Review. 4 (3): 348-360. Accessed November 25, 2020. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27527896.

Weber, Charlotte. 2001. “Unveiling Scheherazade: Feminist Orientalism in the International Alliance of Women, 1911-1950.” Feminist Studies. 27 (1): 125+. Accessed December 4, 2020. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A76519752/AONE?u=iastu_main&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=a03879ea.

Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill. 1995. “The Woman Suffrage Movement in the South.” In Votes for Women! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation. 38-39. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.

Yasutake, Rumi. 2015. “Hawaiian Nationalism, American Patriotism, and Re-franchising Women in Post-Annexation Hawai’i, 1912-1920.” The Journal of Konan University. Faculty of Letters. 165: 119-126.

Yasutake, Rumi. 2017. “Re-Franchising Women of Hawai’i, 1912-1930 The Politics of Gender, Sovereignty, Race, and Rank at the Crossroads of the Pacific.” In Gendering the Trans-Pacific World: Diaspora, Empire and Race, eds. Catherine Ceniza Choy and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu. 114-139. Leiden: Brill.

Yasutake, Rumi. 2020. “Women in Hawai’i and the Nineteenth Amendment.” Journal of Women’s History. 32 (1): 32-40. Accessed December 4, 2020. doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2020.0004.