Transnational, Queer Feminist: Remembering Harriet Noble, Indiana's Prominent Suffragette, 1851-1919
Date of Award
5-1-2023
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Honors Thesis
Department
History
First Advisor
Vivian Deno
Second Advisor
Zachary Scarlett
Abstract
Historians play a vital role in questioning mainstream narratives and understanding bias; there are seldom public conversations about the varying historical accounts of events or the power behind controlling the story. The common narrative of the woman’s suffrage movement begins with the 1848 Seneca Falls convention and centered around respectable women requesting the ballot, including familiar figures such as Susan B. Anthony. This excludes radical, transnational, queer, feminists; in Indiana, this woman is Harriet Noble. By framing Noble’s relation to the suffrage movement through the analysis of qualitative, narrative-based archival research at archives in Indiana, Washington D.C., and England a better understanding of her contributions can be developed. I hypothesize that Noble's time in England becomes pivotal to her emergence as a public clubwoman fighting for suffrage. Noble’s activism in Indiana and beyond greatly influenced the political participation of women in this era and rewrites the mainstream history of the suffrage movement to include queer and transnational relationships.
Recommended Citation
Gifford, Emma Katherine, "Transnational, Queer Feminist: Remembering Harriet Noble, Indiana's Prominent Suffragette, 1851-1919" (2023). Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection. 686.
https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ugtheses/686