Uptake and genre: The Canadian reception of suffrage militancy

Katja Thiemes billede
TitelUptake and genre: The Canadian reception of suffrage militancy
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2006
ForfattereThieme, Katja
JournalWomen's Studies International Forum
Mængde29
Pagination288
Resume

From 1909 onward, the Canadian suffrage debate was heavily influenced by reports on suffrage militancy from Great Britain and the United States. Militancy played an influential role in Canadian suffrage history not through its practice–there was no Canadian militant campaign–but through an ongoing discussion of its meaning. Using Anne Freadman's notions of genre and uptake, this paper analyzes the discursive uptake of suffrage militancy—from news reports on front pages, to commentary on women's pages, to reviews of Emmeline Pankhurst's Canadian speaking engagements. The Canadian debate about militancy is a fertile site for drawing out the roles of genre and uptake in the political positioning of both suffragists and suffrage sceptics. Talk about militancy serves as a way to regulate the uptake of this particular genre of political action, whereby both sides tended to share the optimistic view that Canadian suffragists where not yet in need of militancy.

URLhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539506000173
DOI10.1016/j.wsif.2006.04.007