CANCELED – Women’s History Month Presentation: “You Have to Start a Thing” – Early Women in N.C. Governance

UPDATED MARCH 12 – This event is CANCELED.

Public historians Catherine Amos and Katherine Calhoun Cutshall will present a lecture, “You Have to Start a Thing” – Early Women in N.C. Governance, at noon on Tuesday, March 17, in the Highsmith Student Union Mountain Suites. This event, part of UNC Asheville’s observance of Women’s History Month, is free and open to everyone.

About the lecture

In 1894, Asheville became the birthplace of the women’s suffrage movement in North Carolina when Helen Morris Lewis formed the Equal Suffrage Association of North Carolina, the first of its kind in the state. This talk will explore how Helen Morris Lewis, Lillian Exum Clement Stafford, and Leah Arcouet Chiles could all be viewed as iterations of an emerging figure that was emblematic of this zeitgeist of women’s advancement–The New Woman.

These women were elected to public offices that previously had been exclusively held by men, before most of the women had even obtained the right to vote. Their political and public success did not exist in a vacuum, however. Through the lens of so-called “New Women” like Helen Morris Lewis, Lillian Exum Clement, and Leah Arcouet Chiles, this presentation will explore the idea of Asheville and Buncombe County as an environment that produced progressive and professional women, and the suffrage movement in North Carolina.

About the presenters

Catherine Amos is a local historian and UNC Asheville alumna, class of 2017. After receiving her Bachelor’s degree in history with a focus on women & gender identity in early 20th-century Germany, she joined the Biltmore Company as a Historic Interpreter. Catherine has been working in the field of public history since 2014, with four and a half years of experience as a Historic Interpreter, both at Vance Birthplace State Historic Site and the Biltmore Estate. Her background includes internship work with the Department of Historic Preservation and Collections at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, UNC Asheville’s Center for Diversity Education, and Biltmore’s Museum Services team.

Katherine Calhoun Cutshall is a proud alumnus of UNC Asheville where she earned her BA in History (2016) and an MA in Liberal Arts and Sciences (2019). Katherine began her career in local history at the Vance Birthplace State Historic Site researching the lives of enslaved people of Buncombe County, and has served on the African American Heritage Commission of Asheville and Buncombe County, and as the Assistant Director of the Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center. Today, she is the collections manager and lead archivist of the North Carolina Collection at Pack Memorial Library. Her research interests include the enslaved people and women of Buncombe County and the long term history and effects of tourism on the local economy.

Building accessibility information is available here.

More Women’s History Month Events at UNC Asheville

March 19 – Lecture: Molasses Catches More Flies Than Vinegar: Woman Suffrage in Western North Carolina, presented by Sharon Baggett Withrow, former director of education and Smith-McDowell House Museum and WNC Historical Association (MA, public history, NC State)

• North Carolina’s woman suffrage movement was born in the mountains. This talk will explore how suffragists and their supporters in Western N.C. used existing preconceptions and power structures to win the right to vote. Noon, Highsmith Student Union, Mountain Suites.

March 31 – Lecture: Women’s Liberation through a Different Prism: The View from Austin, presented by University of Texas at Austin Associate Professor of History Laurie Green, author of Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle

• Green launched the intergenerational Austin Women Activists Oral History Project at the University of Texas, which has brought together students of today and women activists in the 1960s and 1970s, along with faculty and staff from different parts of the university. The project has resulted in a digital oral history collection, a film, and other productions that call some of the now-familiar narratives of the Women’s Liberation Movement into question. Her talk will be based, in part, on this collaborative endeavor. 6 p.m., Highsmith Student Union, Mountain Suites.

For more information, please contact Caitlin Manely in UNC Asheville’s Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, cmanely@unca.edu or 828.251.6634.