Grand Old Women: How Abolitionists and Feminists Transformed Aging in America

A Talk by Dr. Corinne Field

Thursday, March 14 | 6:00 PM ET

Virtual Event | Free

Grand Old Women provides a collective biography of women who redefined aging in the 19th-century United States. Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Frances Harper were central advocates for abolition and women’s rights, but advancing those causes meant that these women needed to age in public. Despite the persavie social stigma against old women and old maids, these women openly embraced oldness and, in doing so, created a new blueprint for the ways in which women could age.

Dr. Corrinne Field is an Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at the University of Virginia. Her research forcuses on the political significance of chronological age and life stage in U.S. history. Field is the author for The Struggle for Equal Adulthood: Gender, Race, Age, and the Fight for Citizenship in Antebellum America (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). Dr. Field was a Library Company 2021-22 NEH Postdoctoral Fellow.

Sponsored by The Davida T. Deutsch Program in Women’s History

Closed captioning will be provided. If you require any accessibility accomodations or would like help registering for this event, please contact events@librarycompany.org or call 215-546-3181 x. 144