MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

How did late nineteenth-century American suffragists pursue women’s enfranchisement against the backdrop of American imperial expansion into Southeast Asia? How did they subsequently develop arguments on national issues such as citizenship, self-determination, and political capacity? What do suffragists’ travel narratives reveal about their contact with other lands and peoples, the impact of U.S. colonial policies, and their pursuit of women’s rights? In this presentation, I will discuss the unpublished travel writings on the Philippines produced by American suffragist, Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1900-1904, and from 1915-1920. She embarked on a world tour from 1911-1912 to investigate the position of women of color within their respective societies and to help organize and form new auxiliaries to the International Women Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). In her letters, Catt shares her experiences and gives meaning to her various travails, including details on her colorful travels aboard ships and rickshaws, her feelings of astonishment and wonder at majestic landscapes, her visits to hospitals and schools established by the American colonial state, and her various encounters with and insights on local women. At the beginning of her sojourn, Catt supported the imperial agenda promoted by the federal government. By the time her world tour ended in 1912, she advocated for Philippine independence and worked toward strengthening efforts in attaining women’s rights and peace on a global scale. Clearly, travel not only afforded Catt an opportunity to transgress prescribed political and social spheres; it also allowed her to witness and confront the paradoxes in American colonial policy and to complicate the meanings of self-determination, race, political capacity, and national belonging even as she and other suffragists worked toward women’s political empowerment.