On Thursday, April 4th, Dr. Lucia McMahon will share a talk entitled “Educational Opportunities for Women in the Early American Republic.”
In her new book, Mere Equals: The Paradox of Educated Women in the Early American Republic, Lucia McMahon narrates the experiences of educated women in the new nation. Emboldened by access to new educational opportunities, young women envisioned lives of intellectual equality, but they did so in a world marked by continued gender inequality in legal and political realms. Yet in their social and personal relationships, women attempted to live as the “mere equals” of men. Their efforts reveal how early national Americans grappled with both the promises and constraints embedded in their understandings of gender roles and relations.
Dr. McMahon is associate professor of History and assistant chair at the Department of History at William Patterson University.
The talk will be held at 7 pm in Lee Hall room 411.
Sponsored by the Department of History and American Studies, the James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library,
the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and Women’s and Gender Studies.
For more information, please contact Will Mackintosh at wmackint [at] umw.edu