Feminist Frequencies: Regenerating the Wave Metaphor
IN THE FALL OF 1920, women across the United States, many for the first time, cast ballots in a presidential election. The Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified that August, provided women with a federal guarantee of enfranchisement. This event brought to a triumphant end what schola...
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Published in | Feminist studies Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 658 - 680 |
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Main Author | |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
College Park
Feminist Studies, Inc
22.09.2012
Feminist Studies |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | IN THE FALL OF 1920, women across the United States, many for the first time, cast ballots in a presidential election. The Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified that August, provided women with a federal guarantee of enfranchisement. This event brought to a triumphant end what scholars and activists would later label the 'First Wave of feminism.' On November 2, as women voted either for Republican Warren G. Harding or Democrat James M. Cox, other types of waves were in the air-markers of technological rather than political progress. Radio waves were all the rage in 1920, and November 2 of that year also marked the first commercial broadcast when Pittsburgh station KDKA announced election returns in the presidential contest over a 100-watt transmitter. Art deco buildings and prints endlessly repeated the trope of radio signals, often imagined as a series of expanding rings radiating out from a modernist microphone. However, when women's liberationists of the 1960s recognized their historical predecessors by defining themselves as 'Second Wave feminists,' they were thinking of tides rather than towers, of maritime phenomena rather than Marconi. Adapted from the source document. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0046-3663 2153-3873 2153-3873 |
DOI: | 10.1353/fem.2012.0065 |