Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence

Carol Berkin
GSAS '72
Presidential Professor of History, Emerita
Baruch College & The Graduate Center, CUNY

09/21/22
For decades historians reconstructed the American revolutionary struggle as an exclusively male endeavor. Yet the years of fighting took place on farms, in towns and cities where women worked and lived.

In this talk, Prof Carol Berking repopulates the revolutionary stage, adding women of all races and social classes, telling the stories of white women's participation in the prewar protests and their roles as propagandists, boycotters, spies, messengers, saboteurs, and even soldiers. It also looks at the choice of loyalties by Native Americans and African Americans who interpreted the ideals of the revolution-- liberty, freedom, and independence-- and pondered whether the British offered them a better opportunity to achieve these ideals than the patriot's cause. And finally, it examines the impact of white women's participation in the war on the long-held gender assumptions of 17th and 18th century America.

Time is allocated for Q&A.

свернуть