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Dissertation Information for Margaret Mary Finnegan

NAME:
- Margaret Mary Finnegan

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (1995)

ADVISORS:
- Regina Morantz-Sanchez

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: "So much color and dash": Fighting for woman suffrage in the age of consumer capitalism

Abstract: This dissertation explores the cultural context in which moderate American woman suffragists practiced the art of politics. Drawing from women's history, cultural history, art history, cultural studies, cultural anthropology, feminist theory, and film studies, it shows a group of activist women struggling to adapt to an increasingly urban, commercial, consumer-capitalist order. This adaptation often translated into appropriation. Particularly during the 1910s, suffragists incorporated this order's characteristic traits--including advertising, publicity, mass merchandising, and mass entertainment--into their fight for the franchise. They likewise replicated its commercial aesthetic and mimicked its language of consumer rights and desire. But suffragists also reworked this cultural milieu to fit their ideology. When consumer-capitalist industries extolled women's public presence, suffragists used this approbation to expand the boundaries of woman's space. When advertisers celebrated modern notions of personality, suffragists followed suit, creating idealized performing selves epitomizing the worthy woman voter. And when department stores, manufacturers and a changing society made consumption central to women's lives, suffragists turned their shopping roles into arguments and excuses for granting them the vote.

By conjoining commercial and political culture, suffragists contributed to a growing dialogue about American politics in an age of mass culture and consumerism. They also helped inaugurate new ideas about public and private life, gender relationships, citizenship, and consumer and political identity. These beliefs sometimes legitimized early feminist demands, including voting rights, greater public freedom and responsibility, and more respected marriage roles. In exchange for these privileges, however, suffragists deferred to, and collaborated with, an expanding form of cultural authority that categorized women according to commodity access, economic means, stage-managed personality, and consumer identity. Finally, they incorporated politics into an increasingly hegemonic, corporate, consumer-capitalist way of seeing. As a consequence, these reformers helped redefine liberalism, democracy, and citizenship to fit the logic of an unequal and hierarchical consumer culture.

MPACT Scores for Margaret Mary Finnegan

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2009-02-01 19:40:54

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Students under Margaret Mary Finnegan

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None