10/14/2002

Contact: K.E. Schwab  -- 724-738-2199;  e-mail: karl.schwab@sru.edu  

NATIONAL SCHOLAR ON WOMEN’S HISTORY TO OUTLINE POWER
OF IROQUOIS WOMEN IN SELECTING TRIBAL CHIEFS DURING SRU VISIT  

          SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. –Nationally acclaimed scholar in women’s history Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner will discuss her new book “Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists” when she addresses the Slippery Rock University community at 11:30 a.m. Oct. 31.  

          The free lecture will be presented in the university’s Spotts World Culture Building Auditorium. The visit is sponsored by SRU’s Women’s Studies Program, the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, the Multicultural Center and the department of sociology, anthropology and social work.  

          Wagner’s work details the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy where women have the responsibility of nominating and counseling the chiefs – and alone have the authority to remove chiefs. Wagner reports the status of Iroquois women remains superior to that of women in the United States while pointing to how the Native American culture was absorbed by women’s rights leaders in the U.S. Her lecture will outline how 19^th -century suffragists came to understand the authority held by the Iroquois women and the influence they had on the social justice work of Matilda Joslyn Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.

          Wagner, who appeared in Ken Burns’ PBS documentary “Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony,” on PBS’ “One Woman, One Vote,” and on National Public Radio’s “Democracy Now,” brings 30 years of scholarship and study to her talk. She has written numerous books and articles on the 19^th -century women’s rights movement and serves as executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Fayetteville. N.Y.

          Those with questions should contact Dr. Jace Condravy at 724-738-2623.

PN, PgN, WPN, PR