UM President’s Lecture to Discuss Women’s Suffrage

MISSOULA – Just over 100 years ago, women finally earned the right to vote in the United States. The next installment of the President’s Lecture Series at the University of Montana will expound on that fact with an expert on women’s political organization and modern voting rights.

Prize-winning journalist and author Elaine Weiss will present “The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote” at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 2, in the University Center Ballroom. The event is UM’s Lucille Speer Lecture and is sponsored in part by the League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women.

A poplar public speaker and frequent media commentator, Weiss has published recent op-eds in The New York Times and been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “CBS Sunday Morning.”

Her highly acclaimed 2018 narrative history – titled the same as her lecture – follows a handful of remarkable women who led their respective forces into battle. It’s an inspiring story of activists winning their own freedom in one of the last campaigns forged in the shadow of the Civil War and the beginning of the great 20th-century battles for civil rights.

Weiss is also the author of “Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army in the Great War,” which is a story of a long-forgotten women’s movement during World War I.

Weiss’ work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harpers and The Christian Science Monitor, as well as reports and documentaries for NPR and “Voice of America.” A MacDowell Colony Fellow and Pushcart Prize Editor's Choice honoree, Weiss lives in Baltimore.

The UM President’s Lecture Series is an opportunity to learn about and discuss ideas and issues that animate public discourse. Learn more about the President’s Lecture Series online. Sign-language interpretation will be provided for this event. To request another disability-related modification, call 406-243-4866.

This lecture honors Lucile Speer, a UM librarian from 1928 to 1968 who later served as a delegate to the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention.

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Contact: Office of the President, UM, 406-243-2734, thepresident@umontana.edu.