Severance, Caroline M. Seymour (Caroline Maria Seymour), 1820-1914, The Mother of Clubs, 1830-1980, Caroline Maria Seymour Severance papers, 1830-1980 (bulk 1860-1914). | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
They have been called hags, spinsters, crones, and mammies. They have also, scholars now argue, been quietly holding democracy together for centuries.
That contradiction is the animating tension behind “Old Women, Race, and Power,” a research conference at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino on March 6 and 7, according to the conference program. Convened by historians Corinne Field of the University of Virginia and Kimberly Hamlin of Miami University, and co-sponsored by the USC–Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, it gathers interdisciplinary scholars to address a pointed gap: “Scholars have not yet paid sustained attention to the history and power of older women,” according to the conference organizers.
The Huntington’s description argues that “older women, especially women of color, have long been the bulwarks of democracy — demanding that laws and lawmakers uphold our Constitutional ideals, registering voters, working the polls, building the institutions and infrastructures that sustain democracy.”
Friday’s sessions are scheduled to cover cultural authority, Indigenous elders, and paid and unpaid care work, according to the conference program. Saturday features a panel on old women and politics, with talks by Hamlin, Field, Daniel Horowitz, and Wendy Rouse, according to the conference program, followed by a keynote at 1:30 p.m. from Princeton historian emerita Nell Irvin Painter. The official schedule is subject to change.
“Old Women, Race, and Power” runs Friday, March 6, 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Saturday, March 7, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rothenberg Hall, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. For more call (626) 405-3432 or visit https://www.huntington.org/event/old-women-race-and-power. Tickets: $50 general; $30 Society of Fellows members, Huntington members and Huntington readers; free for students and research fellows, according to The Huntington.
