Monday Lecture Series – January 2023
2023-01-09 13:00 - 14:30 (America/New_York) | National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, 17 Madison Street, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
January 9, 2023: Carol Faulkner, PhD, Professor of History and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University – Topic: Marriage Reform in Nineteenth-Century America
“Marriage Reform in Nineteenth-Century America” – This presentation explores the centrality of the “marriage question” to nineteenth-century social movements. Feminists, abolitionists, spiritualists, and communitarians criticized the institution of marriage as legalized prostitution or legalized adultery. In its place, they proposed a variety of alternatives, from consent to liberal divorce to free love. While marriage reformers are often dismissed as the scandalous fringe of social movements, they helped advanced the view that marriage should be about love.
Carol Faulkner is Professor of History and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. She received her BA from Yale University, and her PhD from SUNY Binghamton. This presentation is drawn from her recent book, Unfaithful: Love, Adultery, and Marriage Reform in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). She is also the author of Women’s Radical Reconstruction: The Freedmen’s Aid Movement (2004) and Lucretia Mott’s Heresy: Abolition and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (2011). She is the co-editor of The Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott, Interconnections: Gender and Race in American History, and Lucretia Mott Speaks: The Essential Speeches and Sermons (University of Illinois Press, 2017).

EGISTRATION INFORMATION
Individual virtual lecture is available for $30 each with a limited number of viewers.
Click HERE to register for an individual lecture

Monday Lecture Series – March 2023
2023-03-13 13:00 - 14:30 | National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, 17 Madison Street, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
March 13, 2023: Mallory Szymanski, Assistant Professor of History, Alfred University-Topic: Discerning Doctors from Quacks: the art, science, and social practice of men’s sexual health in late-nineteenth century United States
Men in the late-nineteenth century found themselves exhausted by the increasing demands of round-the-clock factory work and a fast-paced urbanizing society. New categories of ‘nervous disease’ emerged to reckon with range of symptoms men experienced, including anxiety, fatigue, indigestion, sexual debility, and many more. Panicked that they were irreparably damaged, and unsure about how to admit it, men often suffered in silence rather than see a doctor. Meanwhile, a vibrant marketplace of patent medicines and specialists promised to cure even the most embarrassing symptoms and to restore a man’s vigor. Sick men found it difficult to discern the so-called quacks from the formally trained physicians, or to relate to highly educated elites inside intimidating clinics. Reminiscent of the confusion caused by contradictory media messaging in the Covid-19 pandemic, this talk addresses the question about men in the late-19th century: which sources provide accurate medical information, and how does one decide?
This talk explores two unexpected places men could find such information: evening lectures at the local YMCA and popular novels by neurologist S. Weir Mitchell. Focused on engendering trust, these sources encouraged men to see doctors as confidants, confessors, and friends.

Bio
Mallory Szymanski is an assistant professor of history at Alfred University. She is a gender historian who writes about medicine and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is an assistant producer for the podcast Sexing Historyand co-editor at Clio and the Contemporary.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Individual virtual lecture is available for $30 each with a limited number of viewers.
Click HERE to register for an individual lecture

Monday Lecture Series – April 2023
2023-04-03 13:00 - 14:30 | National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, 17 Madison Street, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
April 3, 2023: Theresa McCarthy, PhD, Associate Professor, University at Buffalo –Topic: Haudenosaunee women’s leadership in contemporary times
Theresa McCarthy is an Onondaga nation, Beaver clan citizen of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario. She is the author of In Divided Unity: Haudenosaunee Reclamation at Grand River which won the 2017 Native American and Indigenous Studies Association’s Best First Book Prize. Theresa’s research and teaching interests reside in the areas of Haudenosaunee citizenship/clans, Haudenosaunee/Six Nations land rights and sovereignty, Haudenosaunee languages and intellectual traditions, Haudenosaunee women, the historiography of anthropological research on the Iroquois, Haudenosaunee temporalities, queer Haudenosaunee studies, linguistic research methodologies, and community-based/applied research. Theresa has published articles in American Indian Culture and Research Journal and Histories of Anthropology Annual. She recently worked on a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council- funded archival project that digitized and repatriated an extensive collection of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century ethnographic material collected from Six Nations community members. She also worked as a co-producer on an educational documentary about the 2006 Haudenosaunee land reclamation near Caledonia, Ontario. For these, and other contributions, Theresa is recognized as Associate Professor /Iakorihonnién:ni of Indigenous Research at Six Nations.
Theresa is currently a UB Inclusive Excellence Faculty Fellow and she is Co-Chair of the Indigenous Inclusion Sub-Committee of the UB Inclusive Excellence Leadership Council. She is also the Principal Coordinator for the UB Haudenosaunee-Native American Studies Research Group, which she co-founded with the late Barry White (Seneca), and the late Bob Antone (Oneida) in 2008. A longtime advocate for the revitalization of Indigenous languages, Theresa has worked on reinstating Haudenosaunee language courses at UB, and on building relationships with nearby Haudenosaunee communities in support of Indigenous language learning. She is both grateful and proud to be living and working here on Seneca Nation territory.
REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Individual virtual lecture is available for $30 each with a limited number of viewers.
Click HERE to register for an individual lecture

Monday Lecture Series – May 2023
2023-05-08 13:00 - 14:30 | National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, 17 Madison Street, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
May 8, 2023: Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, Department of History, Case Western Reserve University – Topic: Dressed for Freedom: The Politics of Fashion in American History
Title: Dressed for Freedom: The Politics of Fashion in American History
Description: What is the connection between fashion and women’s rights? How pockets, skirts, and bras became a political statement? How does fashion function in our political system? This talk will examine how fashion became a tool to express and challenge gender, race, and class identities and how women used it to advance their political agendas – from the suffragists to today’s politicians. Celebrating the publication of the recent book: Dressed for Freedom: The Fashionable Politics of American Feminism, the talk will reveal the importance of clothing and appearance in struggles for freedom and equality and why clothes matter.

Einav Rabinovitch-Fox teaches U.S and women’s and gender history at Case Western Reserve University. Her research examines the connections between fashion, politics, and modernity, and the cultural aspects of social movements. Her recent book, Dressed for Freedom: The Fashionable Politics of American Feminism explores women’s political uses of clothing and appearance to promote feminist agendas during the long 20th century. Her writing has been published in academic journals and books including the Journal of Women’s History, the International Journal of Fashion Studies, American Journalism: Journal of Media History, as well as The Washington Post, The Conversation, Public Seminar, and History News Network. You can follow her on twitter @DrEinavRFox

REGISTRATION INFORMATION
Individual virtual lecture is available for $30 each with a limited number of viewers.
Click HERE to register for this individual lecture

Monday Lecture Series – June 2023
2023-06-12 13:00 - 14:30 | National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, 17 Madison Street, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
June 12, 2023: Aisha Pierre, Curator of Interpretation, National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House – Topic: Deep in the Archives
Curator of Interpretation, Aisha Pierre, has been working closely with our museum’s collection! She will be showcasing and celebrating some of the objects she has found since joining us in August of 2021.
Aisha has a BA in History from Rhode Island College (18′) and a MA in Museum Studies from Syracuse University (21′). She loves working with history through museum collections and loves the opportunity to share some of the incredible pieces from the collection with others.

“Making Headlines: The NAWSA National Press Bureau” Monday Lecture Series
2024-03-11 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
Join the Anthony Museum for our Monday Lecture on March 11, 2024, featuring Arien Rozelle, M.S., APR, Assistant Professor at St. John Fisher University, as she shares, “Making Headlines: The NAWSA National Press Bureau.” Reservations are available for in-person attendance with a boxed lunch for $35, or virtually for $30.

June Monday Lecture Series
2024-06-10 13:00 - 14:00 | NY
Join us Monday, June 10 at 1 pm for our final Monday Lecture Series presentation of the 2023-2024 season! This month’s lecture, “Enforcing Gender at the Polls: Transing Voters and Women’s Suffrage before the American Civil War,” is presented by Andrew Wender Cohen, Professor of History at Syracuse University and Senior Research Associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, and Carol Faulkner, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of History at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Before Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in 1872, individuals deemed women by society dressed in men’s clothes and went to the polls, defying the gender divide that characterized the nineteenth-century American electoral system. Based on more than seventy newspaper articles, and twenty-eight distinct cases, this presentation explores the significance of these illicit voters for American democracy and debates over women’s suffrage in the decades before the Civil War.
Registration for in-person and zoom attendance is still available. Click HERE to register.

FEMINIST CHANGE-MAKERS: ROCHESTER’S TOPFREE SEVEN presented by Jennifer Lloyd, Ph.D.
2024-09-11 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
In the summer of 1986 seven Rochester woman attracted national attention when they were arrested for taking off their tops and baring their breasts at a picnic in Cobbs Hill Park. Their purpose was to challenge a New York law that allowed men but not women to go top free, arguing that the law was discriminatory. In the subsequent trial the judge ignored their claim of discrimination and instead ruled that their protest was an act of free of speech. He failed to address the law’s inequality. The women persisted with their challenge and at a larger picnic in 1989 ten women were arrested for being topless. This time they argued on the grounds of unequal treatment, which failed, and they were convicted. Their aim all along had been to challenge the law’s constitutionality in a higher court through an appeal, which their conviction allowed them to do. Their appeal was upheld, and their convictions overturned, although the law was never repealed. This talk will tell the full story.
REGISTRATION INFORMATION
$250 in-person season pass
$225 virtual season pass
$35 in-person individual lecture
$35 virtual individual lecture

Nursing Specialty Tour
2024-10-08 16:00 - 17:00 | Susan B. Anthony House, 17 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
Rochester, New York was the birthplace of professional nursing, and Susan B. Anthony worked alongside many women to establish nursing as a recognized profession. Learn more about the Susan B. Anthony and others who fought this fight, how they did it, and what it means for us today on this special tour!

Radical: Susan B. Anthony, Spiritualism, and Women’s Rights in Lily Dale, New York
2024-10-19 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
Lily Dale, New York, was founded at the apex of the fight for women’s suffrage in the United States, and unsurprisingly that struggle was in the hearts and on the minds of the radical feminists who co-founded this fascinating intentional Spiritualist community. Spiritualism’s Place: Reformers, Seekers, and Seances in Lily Dale reveals the role that the radical (and conservative) women’s rights activists like Susan B. Anthony, Anna Howard Shaw, and others played in Lily Dale–and the role that Lily Dale played in Progressive-era politics, including suffrage and Temperance. As an intentional community devoted to Spiritualist beliefs and practices, Lily Dale brings together multiple strands in the social and religious history of New York and the United States over the past 150 years: feminism, social reform, utopianism, and new religious movements.
In this event the authors of Spiritualism’s Place will discuss the intersections of women’s rights, radical religion, and Temperance in New York. As a nexus of Progressive-era change, Lily Dale is a fascinating case study, a place and moment in these histories, and Spiritualism’s Place captures the vibes and the venue.
Copies of the book, Spiritualism’s Place, will be available to purchase at the Museum Store and the book signing will follow the presentation.
Members $25 SOLD OUT
Member Special $50 (includes your reservation and book) SOLD OUT
Non-Members $30 SOLD OUT
Member – Virtual $25
Non-Member – Virtual $30
Click HERE to make your reservation. Space is limited!

Trailblazer: How Katharine Bement Davis Advanced Women’s Equality in the Workplace, at the Polls, and in the Bedroom
2024-12-11 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
Join us for our December Guest Lecture Series presentation, “Trailblazer: How Katharine Bement Davis Advanced Women’s Equality in the Workplace, at the Polls, and in the Bedroom,” by Anya Jabour, Ph.D. Jabour is the Regents Professor of History at the University of Montana.
About the presentation:
Katharine Bement Davis (1860-1935) was a true trailblazer. One of the first women in the US to earn a PhD, she went on to become the first superintendent of New York’s Reformatory for
Women at Bedford Hills. Subsequently, she became the first female Commissioner of Corrections for New York City, where she quelled a riot and instituted reform. She spent the final decade of her career directing the Bureau of Social Hygiene, a privately funded think tank committed to combating commercialized sex and curbing the spread of sexually transmitted infections. While there, she conducted research for the first comprehensive study of female sexuality.
But Dr. Davis did not only blaze new trails for herself. At every stage of her career, she also advanced equality for women as a group. At the Bedford Reformatory, she provided educational
and recreational opportunities for the inmates; she also hired a cohort of highly educated women to work as physicians and psychologists. While she tackled what one colleague called “a man’s job” as Commissioner of Corrections, she also advocated women’s voting rights as an officer of the national suffrage organization. Finally, by publishing the results of her extensive study of women’s sexual desires and experiences, she redefined the parameters of “normal” female sexuality.
Based on extensive research in Katharine Davis’s personal papers, institutional records, and historic publications, this presentation about an important—but overlooked—figure in US history will highlight how she advanced women’s equality in the workplace, at the polls, and in the bedroom.

“Mistress of the Market: White Women and the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Slave Trade.”
2025-01-08 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
Join the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House for our January Guest Lecture Series presentation, “Mistress of the Market: White Women and the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Slave Trade,” by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers. Jones-Rogers is an Associate Professor of History. She specializes in African-American history, the history of slavery, and women’s and gender history. She is the author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (2019), which won prizes from the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, the Southern Association for Women’s Historians, the Southern Historical Association, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the Organization of American Historians. Jones-Rogers was also the first African-American and the third woman to win the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History since the award’s inception in 1980. And in 2023, she received the Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world. She is currently at work on her second book, “Women of the Trade,” which reorients our understanding of the British Atlantic slave trade by centering the lives and experiences of English, African, and Afro-English women in its telling.

Feminists for Nursing
2025-05-14 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
The Civil War and developments in the 19th Century made it possible for a new profession to open to women: nursing. Susan B. Anthony and other early feminists (they did call themselves that!) pushed for the advancement of the profession and for the recognition it deserved. Join us as Deborah L. Hughes, President & CEO, explores the connections between some early feminists and the Nursing Profession as we know it today.
Register here to attend in person or virtually.

Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York
2025-06-11 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
Barbara Weisberg will present on her book, Strong Passions: A Scandalous Divorce in Old New York. The book describes a case from 1862, in which Mary Strong stunned her husband, Peter, by confessing to a two-year affair with his brother. Peter sued Mary for divorce for adultery―the only grounds in New York―but not before she accused him of forcing her into an abortion and having his own affair with the abortionist. She then kidnapped their young daughter and disappeared.
Register here.

"It’s in the Water-Women’s Rights and the Erie Canal"--a collaboration with Corn Hill Navigation
2025-09-10 16:00 - 17:30 | Corn Hill Navigation: Sam Patch
The Anthony Museum is pleased to be participating in Corn Hill Navigation’s Unlocking the Past Speaker Series on Sam Patch: Navigating the Erie Canal during the first 200 years.
This series takes an in-depth dive into the values, customs, ideas, and creativity that were sparked by the opening of the Erie Canal and the impact this waterway had on the individual and on the collective society of upstate NY and beyond. We will have educational presentations along with hands on art cruises to create a better understanding of what travelers did during long days flowting along the canal.
Join Deborah L. Hughes, President & CEO of the Anthony Museum, for “It’s in the Water-Women’s Rights and the Erie Canal.”
About the presentation:
The western NY canals run right through the 19th Century, merging and connecting a unique flow of religious fervor, free thought, and social reform. The waterways carried and connected the people and their ideas, and spurred the momentum for abolition, women’s rights, religious ideas, and social change. Join us as we explore this theme and some of the remarkable characters.
To register, visit: Sam Patch Speaker Series | Corn Hill Waterfront and Navigation

Serenity Sutherland, "Visualizing the History of Women's Scientific Networks"
2025-10-08 13:00 - 14:30 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
Join us on Wednesday, October 8 at 1 p.m. when Dr. Serenity Sutherland, Associate Professor of communication studies at SUNY Oswego, will give a talk entitled “Visualizing the History of Women’s Scientific Networks.”
The talk will be presented in-person and is available virtually.
Register here.

“Racism and Anti-Racism: Some Lessons from Susan B.”
2025-11-12 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
Join us for our Guest Lecture in November 2025, as Deborah L. Hughes, President & CEO, National Susan B. Anthony Museum, & House explores “Racism and Anti-Racism: Some Lessons from Susan B.” Attend in person, or virtually. For reservations and more information about this presentation and our Guest Lecture series, visit Guest Lecture Series

"The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of World War II Resistance Hero Rose Valland"
2025-12-10 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
On December 10, our Guest Lecturer will join us on zoom to present, “The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of World War II Resistance Hero Rose Valland”
Join other guests in person in the Anthony Museum Carriage House, or choose the virtual option. For more information and to make a reservation, visit our Guest Lecture page.

The Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom
2026-01-14 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
Join us for a presentation by Sarah L.H. Gronningsater, author of The Rising Generation: Gradual Abolition, Black Legal Culture, and the Making of National Freedom. To register, visit our Guest lecture Series page.

Julie Aronson, PhD, Curator of American Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum
2026-03-11 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
We welcome Julie Aronson, PhD, Curator of American Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum, to be our featured guest lecturer in March. Dr. Aronson will be presenting via zoom from Chicago. We were introduced to Dr. Aronson when the Anthony Museum acquired a sculpture by noted artist Bessie Potter. Dr. Aronson is the author of Bessie Potter Vonoh: Sculptor of Women, Ohio University Press.

“Lighting the Way: The Adventurous Career of Pioneering Architect Anne Graham Rockfellow”
2026-04-08 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
Brandt is a project architect at Bero Architecture. He serves as the chair of the Town of Irondequoit Historic Preservation Commission; is a Trustee and member of several committees of The Landmark Society of Western New York; and is a member of the Young Urban Preservationists.
To register to attend in person or virtually, or to learn more about this year’s series, visit our Guest Lecture Series page.

“Kate Gleason, Rochester’s Renaissance Woman”
2026-05-13 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
On May 13, Kenneth Frederick, PhD, returns to the podium to share another fascinating program about another one of Rochester’s influential women. To register to attend in person or virtually, or to learn more about this lecture and others, visit our Guest Lecture Series page.

Fighting for Equality: World War I and American Women’s Struggle for Suffrage
2026-06-10 13:00 - 14:00 | Anthony Museum Carriage House, 19 Madison St, Rochester, NY, 14608, United States
To register to attend in person or virtually, visit our Guest Lecture Series page.
