Friends of the Library at the College of Charleston
presents
Marjorie J. Spruill
Monday, April 17, 6 pm
School of Science and Math Room 129,
202 Calhoun Street
(Just across from Addlestone Library)
In her new book, Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women’s Rights and Family Values that Polarized American Politics, historian Marjorie J. Spruill reveals how the battle between feminists and their conservative challengers in the 1970s divided the nation as Democrats continued to support the modern women’s movement and Republicans recast themselves, in opposition to feminism, as the party of “family values.”
We cannot fully understand current American politics and social policies without appreciating the events that divided American women in the 1970s and the subsequent polarization of American politics at large. Through the lens of this polarization, Marjorie Spruill traces women’s issues in politics up through the 2016 presidential election, examining how the debate over women’s rights and family values altered national politics, and offering unique, valuable insight on our current political landscape.
Divided We Stand is a crucial and timely analysis of a forty-year-old rift between liberals and conservatives in America, the legacy of which is highly evident in today’s politics and social policies.
Marjorie J. Spruill teaches courses in women’s history, Southern history, and recent American history at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of New Women of The New South and the editor or co-editor of several anthologies, including One Woman, One Vote and The South in the History of the Nation. She is a resident of Folly Beach.
The event is free and open to the public. There will be a book signing after her talk.
For more information go to http://friends.library.cofc.edu/
-Submitted by Carol Lynn Price