It took woman’s rights advocates more than 75 years to convince the New York State Legislature to grant women the right to vote in 1917, and Dr. Roxanna Pisiak, a professor of Humanities at Morrisville State College, will explain why in her contribution to the state’s Women’s Suffrage Centennial Celebration, a lecture on “The 19th-Century Upstate Response to Women’s Suffrage,” at Oneida Public Library on Thursday, June 8, at 7:00 p.m.
Based on her original research into the 19th-century Upstate press and the writings of the region’s leading politicians, clerics and intellectuals, Pisiak will reveal the hostility, ridicule and societal hurdles that Upstate suffragettes like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Smith Miller and Matilda Joslyn Gage faced when they publicly advocated for the vote. Not least among their adversaries were educated women shocked by calls for women’s equality with men.
Pisiak has been teaching humanities courses at Morrisville for over 20 years. Her special areas of study include American literature and culture, film and visual communication. She received the S.U.N.Y. Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2009 and Morrisville’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 2005.
As lecturer and commentator, Pisiak has appeared before at the OPL: in “Children at Work: Tales of Madison County Childhood” in March 2006 and in “Scott and Zelda: Genius, Love and Madness in the Jazz Age” in February 2003.
Dr. Pisiak’s appearance at the OPL is made possible by an Action Grant from Humanities New York as part of the OPL’s 2017 Centennial Celebration of Women’s Suffrage in New York State. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“The 19th-Century Response to Women’s Suffrage” is free and open to the public. For more information, stop by the Oneida Library, 220 Broad St., or call (315) 363-3050. The OPL website is www.midyorklib.org/oneida.