Conférencières plénières

Claire Delahaye, Maîtresse de Conférences en Études américaines, Université Gustave Eiffel, LISAA.

Claire Delahaye est maîtresse de Conférences en Études américaines à l’Université Gustave Eiffel et membre du laboratoire de recherches LISAA. Agrégée d’anglais et ancienne élève de l’ENS de Lyon, elle a soutenu une thèse à la Sorbonne Nouvelle sur le président Woodrow Wilson et le mouvement pour le droit de vote des femmes aux États-Unis (Wilson contre les femmes, Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2012). Elle a publié plusieurs travaux sur l'histoire suffragiste, dont l'ouvrage coécrit avec Béatrice Bijon, Suffragettes et Suffragistes en Grande-Bretagne et aux États-Unis, chez ENS Éditions (Lyon, 2017). Ses recherches actuelles portent sur les questions politiques de la mémoire et sur l’histoire comme enjeu de pouvoir pour les anciennes suffragistes entre 1920 et 1960. Ses récentes publications incluent en 2020 le chapitre intitulé « Diffuser le combat suffragiste : réécriture de l’histoire et mémoire publique », dans l’ouvrage collectif Femmes à l'œuvre dans la construction des savoirs. Paradoxes de la visibilité et de l’invisibilité, dirigé par Caroline Trotot, Claire Delahaye et Isabelle Mornat (dir.), et « Commemorating the History of the Nineteenth Amendment: The National Woman’s Party and the Politics of Memory in the 1920s », dans l’ouvrage collectif Suffrage at 100: Women and American Politics Since 1920, dirigé par Stacie Taranto and Leandra Zarnow (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).

Marjorie J. Spruill, Distinguished Professor Emerita from the University of South Carolina, is known for her work on women and politics from the woman suffrage movement to the present. 

Spruill is the author or editor of numerous books on woman suffrage including One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, the companion volume to the PBS documentary “One Woman, One Vote.”  A revised and expanded Second Edition was published by NewSage Press in July 2021, including new material about the role of the American South and white supremacy in the suffrage story and the international context of the U.S. suffrage movement. In a new concluding chapter, “A Century of Woman Suffrage,” Spruill brings the story up to the present, including the fight of women of color to use the right to vote granted through the Nineteenth Amendment, the impact of the civil rights and women’s rights movements, and the crucial role of women as voters, organizers, and candidates in today’s politics.  

Marjorie Spruill’s other works on woman suffrage include New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (Oxford University Press) and several edited volumes including VOTES FOR WOMEN! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation (University of Tennessee Press). 

A consultant for many documentaries and exhibits, Spruill was an advisor and “talking head” in the 2020 documentary “By One Vote: Woman Suffrage in the South,” produced by Nashville Public Television. Recently she served as a consultant for South Carolina Educational Television for a three-part documentary on suffragists in South Carolina entitled “Sisterhood: SC Suffragists—Moving Forward https://www.scetv.org/sisterhood-sc-suffragists  Earlier she served as a consultant to HBO for its movie “Iron Jawed Angels.” 

In preparation for the celebration of the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, Spruill was an advisor to the National Archives for its exhibit, “Rightfully Hers.” She wrote an article, “Nemesis: The South and the Nineteenth Amendment,” published by the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, discussing how the South and white supremacy almost stopped the Nineteenth Amendment. She served as an advisor to the group Monumental Women that sponsored the statue of suffragists erected in New York’s Central Park and between 2019 and 2021 gave countless presentations on woman suffrage and politics. She currently a member of the South Carolina Archives and History Commission and the Scholars Advisory Council of the National Women’s History Museum. At present, she is part of a committee selecting the women who will be honored on 25 cent coins.  

In 2017, Spruill published Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women’s Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics (Bloomsbury). In it she describes the rise of the modern women's rights movement to a peak period of success and the development of a powerful antifeminist movement as conservative women organized in opposition. The focus is on the U.N. International Women’s Year program of the 1970s, and the U.S. National Women’s Conference in 1977 where tensions between feminists and conservative women intensified. More broadly, Spruill describes the major role of these mutually dependent but antagonistic women’s movements in the transformation of American political culture, as the nation’s two major political parties chose sides between them, the Democrats continuing to support women’s rights and the Republicans casting their party as pro-life and the champion of “family values.” The Nationpraised Divided We Stand as “Fascinating…Evokes two movements, two equal mobilizations, struggling over the role of women in America.” The Wall Street Journal described the book as “crucial to understanding American politics over the past 40 years.” Speaking of Divided We Stand, Gloria Steinem stated, “…we will gain courage, knowledge, and tactics from reading about the historic National Women’s Conference and the following decades of meetings, struggles, and campaigns that allowed women to decolonize our minds and begin to express ourselves as unique human beings.”

 Earlier, Spruill published a two-volume anthology, Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives, co-edited with Elizabeth Payne and Martha Swain (University of Georgia Press).

She is also co-editor with Valinda W. Littlefield and Joan Marie Johnson of a three-volume anthology, South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times (University of Georgia Press). In addition, co-edited a two-volume textbook, The South in the History of the Nation with historian William A. Link (Bedford: St. Martin’s).  

Spruill’s work has been supported by fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and received research awards from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation and the American Association for University Women (AAUW). She spent a year at the National Humanities Center. Spruill was elected as President of the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH) and as a member of the Executive Committee of the Southern Historical Association (SHA). She served on the Editorial Board of the SHA’s Journal of Southern History and the British Association of American Studies (BAAS) Journal of American Studies. The Society of American Historians tapped her for membership in 2018. She has long been active in the Organization of American Historians and its Distinguished Lectures Series. She has been invited to lecture in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Mexico, Portugal and across the United States.

 A native of Washington, N.C., she earned a B.A. with Honors from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; a M.A.T. from Duke University; and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History from the University of Virginia. During her career she taught at the University of Southern Mississippi, Vanderbilt (where she was an Associate Provost), and the University of South Carolina. Married to historian Don H. Doyle, she has two sons, two step-daughters, and three grandchildren. Recently retired, she lives in Folly Beach, SC where she continues to write, lecture, and consult about women’s history.