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4 books match the query 'Beasley, Maurine H.'

cover of First Ladies and the Press: The Unfinished Partnership of the Media Age

First Ladies and the Press

The Unfinished Partnership of the Media Age

Maurine H. Beasley

Northwestern University Press, 2005

At her first press conference, Eleanor Roosevelt, uncertain of her role as hostess or leader, passed a box of candied grapefruit peel to the thirty-five women journalists. Nearly sixty years later, Hillary Clinton, an accomplished professional woman and lawyer, tried to mollify her critics by handing out her chocolate-chip cookie recipe. These exchanges tells us as much about the social—and political—roles of women in America as they do about the relation of the first lady to the press and the public. Looking at the personal interaction between each first lady from Martha Washington to Laura Bush and the mass media of her day, Maurine H. Beasley traces the growth of the institution of the first lady as a part of the American political system. Her work shows how media coverage of first ladies, often limited to stereotypical ideas about women, has not adequately reflected the importance of their role.
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cover of Front Pages, Front Lines: Media and the Fight for Women's Suffrage

Front Pages, Front Lines

Media and the Fight for Women's Suffrage

Edited by Linda Steiner, Carolyn Kitch, and Brooke Kroeger

University of Illinois Press, 2020

Suffragists recognized that the media played an essential role in the women's suffrage movement and the public's understanding of it. From parades to going to jail for voting, activists played to the mass media of their day. They also created an energetic niche media of suffragist journalism and publications.

This collection offers new research on media issues related to the women's suffrage movement. Contributors incorporate media theory, historiography, and innovative approaches to social movements while discussing the vexed relationship between the media and debates over suffrage. Aiming to correct past oversights, the essays explore overlooked topics such as coverage by African American and Mormon-oriented media, media portrayals of black women in the movement, suffragist rhetorical strategies, elites within the movement, suffrage as part of broader campaigns for social transformation, and the influence views of white masculinity had on press coverage.

Contributors: Maurine H. Beasley, Sherilyn Cox Bennion, Jinx C. Broussard, Teri Finneman, Kathy Roberts Forde, Linda M. Grasso, Carolyn Kitch, Brooke Kroeger, Linda J. Lumsden, Jane Marcellus, Jane Rhodes, Linda Steiner, and Robin Sundaramoorthy

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cover of One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression

One Third of a Nation

Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression

Lorena Hickok

University of Illinois Press, 1981

Between 1933 and 1935, Lorena Hickok traveled across thirty-two states as a "confidential investigator" for Harry Hopkins, head of FDR's Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Her assignment was to gather information about the day-to-day toll the Depression was exacting on individual citizens. One Third of a Nation is her record, underscored by the eloquent photographs of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and others, of the shocking plight of millions of unemployed and dispossessed Americans.
 
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cover of Women of the Washington Press: Politics, Prejudice, and Persistence

Women of the Washington Press

Politics, Prejudice, and Persistence

Maurine H. Beasley

Northwestern University Press, 2012

Winner, 2012 Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award

Women of the Washington Press argues that for nearly two centuries women journalists have persisted in their efforts to cover politics in the nation’s capital in spite of blatant prejudice and restrictive societal attitudes. They have been held back by the difficulties of combining two competing roles – those of women and journalists. As a group they have not agreed among themselves on feminist goals, while declaring that they aspire to be seen as professional journalists, not as advocates of a particular ideology. Still, they have brought a different perspective to the news, as they have fought hard to prove that they are capable of covering political issues just like male journalists. Over the years women have networked with each other and carved out areas of expertise – such as reporting of politically-oriented social events and coverage of first ladies – that men disdained, while they pressed to gain entrance to sex-segregated institutions like the National Press Club. Attempting to merge the personal and the political, they have raised issues like sexual harassment that men journalists left untouched. At a point today where they represent about half of accredited correspondents, women still face shifting barriers that make it difficult to combine the roles of both women and journalists in Washington, but they are continuing to broaden the definition of political journalism.

 

 

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