Blouin's Social Mediation and Suffrage Timelines

Hi, everyone.

As promised, here are links to the timelines we examined in class today, along with some of the questions that guided our critical examination of them. I'd like to continue this discussion at the beginning of Thursday's class, as a segueway into Steedman and Jarratt. I have also included the preparation suggestions I made for Thursday's reading.

Today's Activity
Locate and compare the following timelines of Suffrage history:

Laurie Mann’s Timeline of Women’s Suffrage in the United States
“One Hundred Years Towards Suffrage” (hosted by NAWSA)
“A History of the American Suffragist Movement”
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000

Discuss some of the explicit and implicit differences between the timelines and how they represent the movement. Note any interesting patterns or dissonances between them.

Critical Examination Questions
Blouin's key claim seems to be that "'Archives,' ... is beginning to emerge in ... cultural and historical studies as an object of study, not simply as a place where study occurs" (103). How do these timelines reflect that claim?

Following that claim, Blouin cites Jacques Derrida to ask how one can "'prove the absence of archive?'" (104), by which he means "reconcil[ing] deeply held historical beliefs when existing archival evidence seems to point to the contrary or ... to reveal nothing at all" (104). How could the timelines -- or more specifically, the patterns and gaps we notice between them -- prove the absence of their larger archive? What larger gaps or questions do they raise for us?

An alternative question is this: In what way could these timelines -- or more specifically, the patterns and gaps you notice between them -- represent Blouin's "power relationships," "mediation," or "social memory"?

Preparation for Thursday
As you read Jarratt's article and Steedman's first chapter, try to do the following to help you read:

1. summarize the main point of each essay and list the major sources, voices, evidences they use to construct that main point (i.e., how does each author "build her theory," so to speak?)
2. write a brief response to each author in which you tell her (directly) how her essay has either enhanced or complicated your understanding of "history," "historiography," "modernism," or "feminism."

As always, any of the above makes great fodder for your research journal log, as do the questions below.

I look forward to hearing your responses on Thursday!

-Professor Graban