Ellen Carol DuBois — Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Fight for Women's Rights
Historian Ellen Carol DuBois presents her definitive biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, tracing the suffragist's advocacy and contradictions at the NYPL.
Why we picked this
DuBois has spent decades on Stanton's archives and this biography doesn't flinch from the contradictions — the reproductive rights advocacy alongside the nativist arguments. That honesty is what makes it worth hearing in person.
Historian Ellen Carol DuBois presents her biography Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life, a work that treats one of America’s most consequential activists with the seriousness and complexity she deserves. DuBois draws on extensive archival research and Stanton’s own writings to trace a life that reshaped American law and politics.
The biography covers Stanton’s advocacy for reproductive rights, marriage reform, and challenges to religious hierarchies, while also examining her conflicts with Black reformers and her support of nativist ideas — the kind of contradictions that most popular accounts of the suffrage movement tend to smooth over. In conversation with legal scholar Julie Suk, DuBois explores what Stanton’s full record means for how we understand the roots of American feminism.
Free admission at the NYPL Schwarzman Building. Also available virtually.