On Monday 19 May 2025 Jeanine Quené (Roosevelt Institute for American Studies) will be the ninth speaker for our 2024-2025 Seminar Series on Modern American History, organized in cooperation with the Sciences Po Center for History (CHSP) in Paris.
Lecture title: The (Un)changing Nature of U.S. Women’s Conservatism in the Long Twentieth Century
Lecturer: Jeanine Quené
Date: Monday 19 April 2025 from 17:00 to 18:30 CEST
Location: Online
Please register here before Friday 16 May.
Jeanine Quené is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) in Middelburg, the Netherlands. She earned her PhD in American History from the University of Cambridge in 2023, with research partially conducted at Yale University as a Fox Fellow. Her dissertation explored how conservative women in the early twentieth century used the concept of ‘civilization’ to unify seemingly contradictory goals into a coherent sociopolitical vision. Her current research broadens this scope to examine the evolution of women’s conservatism throughout the twentieth century, with particular attention to the central role of anti-egalitarian politics.
In the early 1920s, Alma White, a fundamentalist bishop from New Jersey, spoke out about the danger of the “modern woman,” arguing that her “laxity in conduct and dress” caused widespread crime and corruption. Sixty years later, Phyllis Schlafly similarly criticized second-wave feminism, contending that by attempting to “think, act, talk and react” like men, women’s liberationists incited societal disarray. Why did these women’s rhetoric remain so consistent, despite the dramatic changes between their eras? This presentation traces the continuity and evolution of women’s conservatism across the twentieth century, with a specific focus on the early decades. By examining conservative women’s activism in the Progressive Era and beyond, it argues that, despite changing historical contexts, their worldview has consistently rested on anti-egalitarian politics embedded within a moral framework.
Click here for the official invitation.
