Sally Roesch Wagner, Ph.D. File photo.
Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner will present The Rest of the Suffrage Story at 1:30 Sunday,
September 24, at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro

Sally Roesch Wagner PhD, Founder and Executive Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center for Social Justice Dialogue in Fayetteville will be the final speaker for the Peterboro Women’s History Weekend at 1:30 on Sunday, September 24 at the Smithfield Community Center in Peterboro.

Wagner’s program will culminate a weekend of activities related to women’s suffrage, dress reform, and the 19 th C. “domestic sphere” in commemoration of the Centennial of NYS Women’s Suffrage. Wagner will present The Rest of the Story of the Suffrage Movement which relates to Matilda Joslyn Gage’s and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s position in 1880 on women’s voting.

These two co-leaders of the National Woman Suffrage Association were beginning to see differently than Susan B. Anthony, the third co-leader of the organization. Anthony believed the movement should concentrate on getting women the vote. Gage contended that women already had the right to vote – that in a system based on the consent of the governed, the government just needed to protect the right to exercise citizenship, not “give” the right.

The format of the presentation is informal story-telling followed by engagement with the audience designed to draw out insights, contemporary connections and opinions in a safe, respectful environment.
Dr. Wagner serves on the Governor’s New York Suffrage Centennial Commission. Awarded one of the
first doctorates in the country for work in women’s studies (UC Santa Cruz) and a founder of one the
first college-level women’s studies programs in the United States (CSU Sacramento), she has taught
women’s studies courses for 47 years. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member in The Renée
Crown University Honors Program, Syracuse University and the St. John Fisher Executive Leadership
Program and is a Public Scholar with Humanities New York.

Author of numerous women’s history books and articles telling the “untold stories,” Wagner’s recent publications center on the Haudenosaunee influence on the women’s rights movement. Wagner wrote the faculty guide for Not for Ourselves Alone, Ken Burns’ documentary on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and appeared in that film and other PBS women’s history programs. Dr. Wagner was selected as one of “21 Leaders for the 21 st Century” by Women’s E-News in 2015.

The Sunday, September 24 programs begin at 8:30 with registration at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro, and with a Women’s Walk at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark. At 9:30 breakfast snacks at parity costs will be available and at 10:30 Suzanne B. Spring PhD, Academic Director of the Office of Undergraduate Studies at Colgate University, will present Before the Beginning: The Abolition Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement. At 11:30 eight libraries and the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum will launch the CommUNITY read of The Invention of Wings at a luncheon. Following the launch lunch, an action panel will describe pen and voice activities to continue the women’s MOVEment.

Wagner’s presentation is made possible by a Public Scholars Grant from Humanities New York. The Women’s History Weekend is made possible, in part, with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by CNY Arts, and sponsored by a Humanities New York Action Grant. Participants are encouraged to wear 19 th C. bloomers or suffrage outfits. For more information: www.PeterboroNY.org, 315-280-8828, or info@gerritsmith.org.

By martha

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