Dissertation

RESEARCH TOOL: ZOTERO

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Zotero is an invaluable resource for anyone who is organizing and analyzing research.

Even though I first encountered Zotero during a graduate-level digital history course, it took me another year to fully realize its benefits. When I began conducting research for my dissertation I became completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume and diversity of sources that I had to collect and examine. After three trips to the manuscript room at the Library of Congress produced scattered and indecipherable research notes, I decided to return to my Zotero account. This was probably one of the smartest decisions I ever made as a PhD student, as, to put it simply, I would not have finished my dissertation without the help of Zotero.

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Historical Perspectives on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

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In a recent American Historical Association (AHA) roundtable, historians Ruth Bloch, Naomi Lamoreaux, Alonzo Hamby, and John Fea offer insightful discussions on the historical implications of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores.

Ruth Bloch and Naomi Lamoreaux retrace the history of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on corporate personhood to argue that Justice Samuel A. Alito’s opinion breaks with a long line of decisions that treated for-profit companies as “persons’ under the Constitution only for the purpose of protecting property rights-not the liberties-of individual members.”

As well, Alonzo Hamby discusses the relationship between Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Hobby Lobby. He contends that Hobby Lobby reflects a growing cultural conflict that will continue to divide American society well into the foreseeable future.

John Fea reminds us that corporate personhood has a long history; to this point, he notes that in post-Civil War America the Supreme Court on several occasions affirmed that corporations (primarily railroads) were covered under the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet, he also encourages us to further reflect upon the extent to which a for-profit company can posses a soul and practice a religious conscience. As he puts it, “Religious liberty was an inherently Protestant concept. It stemmed from the belief that people could read the Bible for themselves and draw their own religious conclusions. It has always been a religious idea applied to individual human beings.”

Hobby Lobby also touches upon some of the themes that I examine in my own research. As discussed in other posts, my Ph.D. dissertation looks at the competing civic ideologies embedded in the conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from 1920-1963. Throughout the original ERA conflict, ERA supporters documented the numerous times the Supreme Court had restricted women’s standing under the Fourteenth Amendment (Bradwell v. Illinois 1872; Minor v. Happersett 1874; Mackenzie v. Hare 1915; Goesaert v. Cleary 1947, etc.). Put simply, the Court maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment did not guarantee equal treatment before the law for men and women citizens. For ERA proponents, such rulings denied women their full standing as “persons under the law.” Moreover, amendment proponents insisted that the ERA would remedy this problem by affirming complete constitutional sexual equality and ensuring the full constitutional incorporation of women into the sovereign power of the people.

~Rebecca DeWolf, Ph.D.

 

Revising Dissertation into Book–Project Overview

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Amending Nature: The Equal Rights Amendment and Gendered Citizenship in America, 1920-1963

This study illuminates the ideological contours of the conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from 1920 to 1963. Through a careful analysis of correspondence, public and private utterances, congressional testimonies, and several court cases this study unearths the dueling civic ideologies rooted in the struggle: emancipationism and protectionism. Emancipationists supported the ERA as the necessary conclusion to the Nineteenth Amendment. In short, emancipationists believed that the ERA fulfilled America’s political aspirations, as the amendment would ensure that men and women citizens enjoyed the same basic legal standard. In contrast, protectionists opposed the ERA as a threat to sex-based legal distinctions. From the protectionist perspective, American society rightly affirmed the separate roles of men and women citizens by differentiation in law. In the end, emancipationists and protectionists held different interpretations of the relationship between gender and citizenship. Emancipationists insisted that American political ideals upheld the right of men and women to participate as citizens on the same terms while protectionists maintained that true sexual equity demanded that the law be free to treat citizens differently on account of sex.[i] 

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Dissertation Abstract-AMENDING NATURE: THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT AND GENDERED CITIZENSHIP IN AMERICA, 1920-1963

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This dissertation uncovers the competing civic ideologies embedded in the conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from 1920 to 1963.It identifies these ideologies as emancipationism and protectionism. Emancipationists supported the ERA as the logical and, indeed, necessary outcome of the Nineteenth Amendment. Protectionists, in contrast, opposed the ERA as a threat to sex-based legal distinctions. Through an examination of over-forty different manuscript collections as well as an array of government documents, especially the often-overlooked congressional hearings on the amendment, this study shows that men and women politicians, intellectuals, labor activists, reformers, and government officials all participated in the original ERA conflict. Moreover, the participants not only argued over women’s status; they also contested the nature of American citizenship.

Above all, this study contends that the original ERA conflict created America’s gendered citizenship. In short, the Nineteenth Amendment profoundly changed women’s relationship to the state; however, disparities in men and women’s positions persist even to this day, because protectionists modernized the justification for sex-based differential treatment. To this end, protectionists successfully advanced the contention that their position provided men and women citizens with the appropriate level of equality, which also preserved women’s traditional right to special protection. Ultimately, protectionists effectively refashioned full citizenship status to include separate standards for men and women citizens, but their triumph also created dual meanings for American citizenship that negated the doctrine of universal rights and responsibilities.

-Rebecca DeWolf, Ph.D.