Conference Program
Twelfth Southern Association for Women Historians Conference
Protest, Power, and Persistence: Southern Women Past and Present
June 9-12, 2022
University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
Any questions about the panels should be directed to the Program Committee Co-Chairs, Crystal Feimster (crystal.feimster@yale.edu) and Anne Marshall (amarshall@history.msstate.edu).
Click here to jump to a PDF version of the program.
2:00-6:00 pm Registration – Grand Ballroom Coatroom, Gatton Student Center
4:30 pm Plenary Session – Worsham Cinema, Gatton Student Center
Welcome – Anne Sarah Rubin, SAWH President
Roundtable: Locating the African American Experience in Lexington’s Landscape
Anastasia Curwood, University of Kentucky
Yvonne Giles, Independent Historian
Vanessa Holden, University of Kentucky
6:00 pm Opening Reception – Featuring a bourbon tasting by Buffalo Trace Distillery and the music of Mitch Barrett from Zoe Speaks -- Harris Ballroom & Mezzanine/Great Hall, Gatton Student Center
The reception is hosted with support from the Kentucky Historical Society Foundation, the Filson Historical Society, and the University of Kentucky Department of History.
Friday, June 10
8:00 - 10:00 am Breakfast – Grand Ballroom A, Gatton Student Center
Breakfast is hosted by Transylvania University Department of History.
10:15 am - 12:15 pm Concurrent Sessions
1. Southern Votes for Women Trail
Location: Room 331, Gatton Student Center
Moderator: Judith Jennings, Independent Scholar
Alabama Votes for Women Trail - Alex Colvin, Alabama Department of Archives and History
Florida Votes for Women Trail - Killian O’Donnell, National Collaborative for Women History Sites National Votes for Women Trail, Florida State Coordinator
Kentucky Votes for Women Trail - Marsha Weinstein, National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites
2. Cherokee Women in the 18th and 19th Centuries: Stories of Protest, Power, and Persistence
Location: Room 330AB, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Greg O’Brien, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
“Females from Disparate Cultures Formed Lasting Friendships in the Early Nineteenth Century: Moravian Missionary Anna Rosina Kliest Gambold and Cherokee Convert Margaret Ann (Peggy) Scott Vann Crutchfield” - Rowena McClinton, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
“Baskets of Corn and Vital Intelligence: Cherokee Women’s Power Relationships with Forts Loudoun and Prince George” - Jessica Wallace, Georgia College & State University
“A Study of the 1828 Cherokee Census: Cherokee Women’s Persistence in Historic Gender Roles” - Jamie Myers Mize, University of North Carolina, Pembroke
Comment: Greg O’Brien, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
3. Power and Privilege: White Southern Conservative Women, 1860-1960
Location: Brockman Senate Chamber, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Marjorie Spruill, University of South Carolina
“ ‘Talking Polticks:’ Elite White South Carolina Women and the Secession Crisis” - Melissa DeVelvis, Augusta University
“Mildred Lewis Rutherford and the Role of Women, Whiteness, and the Vote” - Abigail Shimer, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
“‘Chained’ to Jim Crow: The Strange Career of Louise Jones DuBose” - Jennifer Whitmer Taylor, Duquesne University
Comment: Marjorie Spruill, University of South Carolina
4. Southern Women and Food as a Means of Protest and Persistence
Location: Room 330E, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Louis Kyriakoudes, Middle Tennessee State University
“Canning for Freedom: Food Preservation as Civil Rights Work” - Angela Jill Cooley, Minnesota State University, Mankato
“Good Bread, Better Lives: Home Demonstration Agents and Baking Lessons in the South, 1910-1950” - Rebecca Sharpless, Texas Christian University
Comment: Louis Kyriakoudes, Middle Tennessee State University
12:30 - 2:30 pm Lunch (on your own)
2:00-5:00 pm Refreshments – Snacks and drinks available in Grand Ballroom A, Gatton Student Center -- Sponsored by the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies.
2:30 - 4:30 pm Concurrent Sessions
1.“Locating Black Women in Resistance: 1750-1865”
Location: Room 330AB, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Tamika Y. Nunley, Cornell University
“Witnessing Resistance: Enslaved Women’s Narratives in Virginia Slave Court Records” - Sheri Ann Huerta, George Mason University
“Fugitive Women and Defensive Violence in Antebellum Tidewater Virginia” - Kathryn Benjamin Golden, University of Delaware
Comment: Tamika Y. Nunley, Cornell University
2. Passion, Promiscuity, and Parole: Female Crime and Punishment in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century South
Location: Room 330E, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Pippa Holloway, University of Richmond
“A Bloody Chivalry: Southern Newspapers, Murder, and the Making of a Regional Ideology” - Allison Fredette, Appalachian State University
“Curbing the Temptations of the Street: Race, Place, and Surveillance in the Effort to Reform Virginia’s Delinquent Daughters” - Erin N. Bush, University of North Georgia
Comment: Pippa Holloway, University of Richmond
3. Defined, Redefined, and Concealed: Gender and the Civil War Era South
Location: Room 331, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Anne Sarah Rubin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
“ ’Private Rebellion Against Public Convention?’: Disguised Female Civil War Soldiers and the Question of Activism” - Emma Taylor, Queens University Belfast
“The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Song ‘Dixie:’ Failure and Success, Whitewashed and Feminized” - Cheryl Thurber, Independent Scholar
“South Carolinian Ladies and the Impact of the American Civil War: The Evolution of Upper-Class White Women in South Carolina from the Antebellum Years into the Post-Bellum Years” - Annabelle Blevins Pifer, Independent Scholar
Comment: Anne Sarah Rubin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
4. Southern Girlhood: Home, School, and the Archive
Location: Room 330D, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Dorothea Browder, Western Kentucky University
“Sexual Violence and Southern Girlhood During the Civil War” - Cameron Sauers, University of Kentucky
“Burn This Letter: The Fragmentary Archive of Southern Girlhood” - Emily Wells, College of William & Mary
“Expanding Narratives: How Amplifying Girls is Good History” - Tiffany Isselhardt, Kentucky Museum, Western Kentucky University
Comment: Dorothea Browder, Western Kentucky University
5. South or Southwest? Women, Race and Suffrage in Texas
Location: Brockman Senate Chamber, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Rachel Gunter, Collin College
“ ’Not Organizing for the Fun of It’: Suffrage, War, and Dallas Women in 1918” - Melissa Prycer, Independent Consultant and Scholar
“White Women Voters and Mexican Women’s Babies: Suffrage, Citizenship and the Making of the Nation-Family on the Texas-Mexico Border” - Heather Sinclair, Dixie State University
“When Lucy Burns Came to Town: Radical Rhetoric, Suffrage, and Change” - Susan Stanfield, University of Texas at El Paso
Comment: Anya Jabour, University of Montana
4:30-5:00 pm Break
5:00 pm Lexington Excursions -- Choose one of three local tours:
Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate – Visit the Estate and attend the dedication of Madeline McDowell Breckinridge's suffrage marker. Participants should meet the bus for this tour at 4:30 pm at the Wildcat Statue, located on Avenue of Champions between the Gatton Student Center and the Singletary Center.
Town Branch Distillery - A tour and tasting at its new facility in the heart of Lexington's distillery district. Participants in this tour should meet the bus at 5:00 pm in the Gatton Student Center parking lot.
Lexington’s LGBTQ History – A walking tour of downtown Lexington led by Jonathan Coleman, Executive Director, Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation and author of Anywhere, Together: A Queer History of Kentucky (University Press of Kentucky, forthcoming). Participants should meet the tour at the Kentucky Theater, 214 E. Main Street in downtown Lexington.
8:00 pm Graduate Student Reception – Ethereal Brewing Company at Cornerstone Exchange, 401 S. Limestone
Saturday, June 11
8:00 - 10:00 am Breakfast – Gatton Student Center
Breakfast is hosted by Transylvania University Department of History.
8:45 - 10:00 am Workshop
Location: Brockman Senate Chamber, Gatton Student Center
The Power of Visibility in the Undergraduate Classroom: Using Open Access Materials to Highlight Women’s History
Chair: Rebecca Cawood McIntyre, Middle Tennessee State University
Lisa Swart, Middle Tennessee State University
Jae Turner, Middle Tennessee State University
Jennifer Pettit, Middle Tennessee State University
La Shonda Mims, Middle Tennessee State University
10:15-12:15 pm Concurrent Sessions
1. Defending Black Womanhood: African American Female Intellectuals on Black Femininity
Location: Room 330D, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Beverly Greene Bond, University of Memphis
“ ‘Double Jeopardy’: 20th Century Black Female Intellectuals and the Origins of Intersectional Thinking” - Grace London, Auburn University
“Write/Righting Black Femininity in the pages of the A.M.E. Church Review 1884-1924” - Cynthia Patterson, University of South Florida
“Frances Harper’s Poetics of ‘Other’ Possession” - April Logan, Salisbury University
Comment: Beverly Greene Bond, University of Memphis
2. Remembering and Resisting: Violence and Emotion in Post-slavery Testimonies
Location: Room 330E, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Diane Sommerville, Binghamton University, SUNY
“‘Emotional Resistance’ in Formerly Enslaved Women’s Testimony” - Beth Wilson, University of Reading, UK
“Aunt Sallie kilt Marse Jim’: Enslaved women, violence, and memory within the Works Progress Administration Narratives” - Erin Shearer, University of Reading, UK
“Reconstructing Memories of Slavery and Sexuality, 1865-1877” - Elizabeth M. Barnes, University of Reading, UK
Comment: Diane Sommerville, Binghamton University, SUNY
3. Sectionalism, Sanitation, and Suffrage: the Power of Women’s Activism in the Early 20th Century South
Location: Room 335, White Hall Classroom Building
Chair: Minoa Uffelman, Austin Peay State University
“There’s Nothing Quite Like Old Friends: Northern and Southern White Women in the Wake of Suffrage” - Crystal Brandenburgh, Carnegie-Mellon University
“Harnessing Femininity: Black Suffragettes and Club Women’s Fight for Humanity in the Jim Crow South” - Elizabeth Gonzalez, Independent Historian
“Environmentalism, Civic Reform and the Louisville Women’s City Club” - Amy J. Malventano, University of Kentucky
Comment: Minoa Uffelman, Austin Peay State University
4. Southern Women’s Faith-based Social Justice Activism, 1900-2000: An Examination of Women’s Strategies for Effecting Change Within the Limits of a Capitalist, Patriarchal System
Location: Brockman Senate Chamber, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Jennifer Ritterhouse, George Mason University
“Southern Methodist Women, the ‘generous side of Christian faith,’ and the American System of Power, 1940-1990” - Janet Allured, McNeese State University
“Social Gospel, Social Tanakh: The Multi-Decade, Multi-Faith Activism Strategies of the Ladies of Richmond” - Mary Bathory-Vidaver, University of Mississippi
“Cracks in the Veneer: Reverend Helen Crotwell's Use of Power Where the Powerful Least Expect It” - Jennifer Copeland, Executive Director, North Carolina Council of Churches
Comment: Alison Colis Greene, Candler School of Theology, Emory University
5. Rethinking Marriage in the American South
Location: Room 337, White Hall Classroom Building
Chair: Allison Fredette, Appalachian State University
“Secret Longings: How Moravian Women Sought Autonomy Through Marriage in the 18th Century North Carolina Piedmont” - Savannah Flanagan, Virginia Tech University
“Brides on the Border: Confederate Wives Who Navigated the International Border Between Canada and the U.S. During the Civil War to Maintain Marriage and the Confederacy” - Cassy Jane Werking, University of Kentucky
“Marriage in Black, White, and In-Between: How Women Used Marriage to Challenge Jim Crow" - Kathryn Tucker, Troy University
Comment: Allison Fredette, Appalachian State University
12:30-2:30 pm Lunch – Grand Ballroom A, Gatton Student Center
Boxed lunches will be provided to all participants.
Book Signing for New Publications – Exhibit Space, Gatton Student Center
2:00-5:00 pm Refreshments – Snacks and drinks available in Grand Ballroom A, Gatton Student Center -- Sponsored by the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies.
2:30 - 4:30 pm Concurrent Sessions
1. Elastic Ties: Kinship and Black Family Foundations
Location: Room 330D, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Christina L. Davis, Savannah State University
“Intentional Sisters: Hallie Quinn Brown and the Construction of Kin” - Daleah Goodwin, Warren Wilson College
“Music, Motherhood, and a Reclamation of Familial Power” - K.T. Ewing, Tennessee State University
“Ties that Bind: Margaret Murray Washington and the extension of Motherhood” - Sheena Y. Harris, West Virginia State University
Comment: Christina L. Davis, Savannah State University
2. Domestic and Military Dimensions of Women’s Experience during WWII era America
Location: Room 335, White Hall Classroom Building
Chair: Emily Bingham, Bellarmine University
“Constellations of Care: Military Wives and Childcare in the Postwar and Cold War Eras” - Kelley Fincher, George Mason University
“A Lady’s Home: Female Heads of Households in Fort Worth, 1940” - Zsofia Hutvágner, Texas Christian University
“‘The Family at 1208”: University Boarding houses in Early Twentieth Century Texas” - Codee Scott, Texas Christian University
Comment: Melissa Blair, Auburn University
3. Southern Black Women’s Activism in Higher Education
Location: Brockman Senate Chamber, Gatton Student Center
Chair: Candace Cunningham, Florida Atlantic University
“Her Vision for Black Studies: Margaret Walker Alexander and Jackson State College, 1968 – 1978” - D. Caleb Smith, Tulane University
“Sharing Stories from Her Journey: Excerpts from Bertha Maxwell-Roddey: A Modern Day Race Woman and the Power of Black Leadership” - Sonya Ramsey, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
“Before the Sit-Ins: Bennett College for Women and the Spirit of Civic Engagement” - Deidre B. Flowers, Queens College, CUNY
Comment: Candace Cunningham, Florida Atlantic University
4. “By One Vote: Woman Suffrage in the South:” Documentary & Panel Discussion
Location: Worsham Cinema, Gatton Student Center
Moderator: Marjorie Spruill, University of South Carolina
“The South: Nemesis of the Suffrage Struggle in the Nadir” - Marjorie Spruill, University of South Carolina
"Suffrage Showdown in Tennessee: August 1920” - Carole Stanford Bucy, Volunteer State Community College
“African American Women and the Woman Suffrage Movement” - Beverly Greene Bond, University of Memphis
“By One Vote: Woman Suffrage in the South” - Mary Makley, Independent Scholar, and Beth Curley, Nashville Public Television
5. Comparative Histories of the Criminalization of Commercialized Sex
Location: Room 337, White Hall Classroom Building
Chair: Jessica Pliley, Texas State University
“Marked for Life?: A Prison Inspector’s Views on Sex Work and the English Prison System” - Tammy Whitlock, University of Kentucky
“ ’Common Prostitutes’? The Criminalization of Commercialized Sex in New York City, 1901-1913” - Anya Jabour, University of Montana
“Resisting the State: Challenging Legal Control of Prostitution and Regulated Space, 1890-1917” - Leah LaGrone Ochoa, Weber State University
Comment: Jessica Pliley, Texas State University
4:30 - 5:00 pm Break
5:00 - 6:00 pm Plenary Session - Worsham Cinema, Gatton Student Center
From the Archive: An LGBTQ History of Kentucky
Jonathan Coleman, Executive Director, Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation
6:30 pm Dinearound groups will meet at the Gatton Student Center Social Staircase. Advance registration is required.
Sunday, June 12
7:30 - 9:00 am Breakfast – Grand Ballroom A, Gatton Student Center
Breakfast is hosted by Transylvania University Department of History.
9:00 - 11:00 am Concurrent Sessions
1. Beyond “the Movement:” Women’s Civil Rights Activism in the Late Twentieth Century South
Location: Room 333, White Hall Classroom Building
Chair: LeeAnn G. Reynolds, Samford University
“ ’They got us organized moved on’: Rural Black Mothers and Life After Mississippi Freedom Summer” - Pamela N. Walker, Texas A&M, San Antonio
"We Shall Overcome: Chicanas at the Texas State Women’s Meeting, 1977” - Caitlyn Jones, University of Houston
Comment: LeeAnn G. Reynolds, Samford University
2. Trailblazers, Hellraisers, and Radical Citizen Change-makers: Transgressing the Traditional Confines of Southern Womanhood in the 20th century American South
Location: Room 335, White Hall Classroom Building
Chair: Charmayne Patterson, Clark Atlanta University
“Breaking the Nuclear Secrecy in Atomic Appalachia: Erwin Citizens Action Network (ECAN), Nuclear Service (NFS), and Southern Women’s Citizen-Science as Nuclear Resistance, 1974-2017” - Aubrey Underwood, Clark Atlanta University
“Plenty Woman Enough to Act Like a Man: Women, Drinks, Drugs, and Country Music” - Dana Wiggins, Perimeter College/Georgia State University
“All in a Day’s Work: The Radical Pacifism of Jessie Wallace Hughan” - Katherine Perotta, Mercer University Tift College of Education
Comment: Charmayne Patterson, Clark Atlanta University
3. Domestic Power and Knowledge in the Early American South
Location: Room 337 White Hall Classroom Building
Chair: Sara Sundberg, University of Central Missouri
“Material Ministrations: Women, Medicine, and Body Knowledge in the Early American South” - Morgan McCullough, College of William and Mary
“ ‘Not to Deviate from Such Directions’: Republican Recipes and Reformed Domesticity in the Early Republic” - Erica Schumann, Binghamton University
“ ‘They had their women and children concealed’: Mississippian Women and Colonial Violence" - Aubrey Lauersdorf, Auburn University
Comment: Sara Sundberg, University of Central Missouri
4. Exploring Images of Slavery in Antebellum Writing and Culture
Location: Room 339, White Hall Classroom Building
Chair: Crystal Feimster, Yale University
“ ‘I Devoured Everything in the Shape of a Book’: The Literary Activism of Kentucky Abolitionist Mattie Griffith” - Holly M. Kent, University of Illinois-Springfield
“ ‘Goblin Growths in the Great Dismal Swamp’: The Characterization of Enslaved Individuals in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred” - Christy Davenport, Fayetteville Technical Community College
Comment: Crystal Feimster, Yale University
5. New Perspectives on Motherhood in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.
Location: Room 334, White Hall Classroom Building
Chair: Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Kennesaw State University
“ ’The children of her daughters’: The Life and Work of Betsey Bailey, An Enslaved Midwife in Early America” - Sara Collini, Clemson University
“ ’To Hide the Shame of Her Daughter’”: Examining the Double Edged Sword of Enslaved Motherhood and Infanticide” - Signe Fourmy, Villanova University and The University of Texas at Austin
“From one Physician to Another: Print, Pregnancy, and Medical Journals in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.” - Felicity Turner, Georgia Southern University
Comment: Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Kennesaw State University
6. Women in Wartime Appalachia
Location: Room 338, White Hall Classroom Building
Chair: Kathryn Newfont, University of Kentucky
“Faith, Femininity, and Resistance in the Civil War” - Allison Stowers, George Mason University
“The Role of the Woman in the H-Bomb Era” - Tristan Williams, West Virginia University
Comment: Kathryn Newfont, University of Kentucky
