Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activism: How Progressive Era Feminists Redefined Who We Are, and What It Means Today [Hardcover]

In Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activism, Wendy Sarvasy recovers the unacknowledged Progressive Era social democratic feminist refounders who used collective political agency to reshape the body politic. Through intersectional activism, or the bridging of different movements, the refounders, who include Ida Wells-Barnett, Rose Schneiderman, and Jane Addams, created an intersectional, social democratic feminist understanding of democracy that allowed them to imagine their full inclusion.

Sarvasy shows how these activists worked to incorporate women by combining political democracy with the creation of a welfare state. They embedded this nation-state project within a new humanitarian transnational level as they evolved their multileveled social citizenship.

Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activismdemonstrates how a theory-activist dynamic played out in experimental socializing spaces and democratic conversations. It offers an inspirational method for intersectional activists today."In this riveting multilayered analysis, Wendy Sarvasy deciphers the vision of American social democracy that feminists in the 1920s envisioned and implemented.... Sarvasy argues that the social democratic roots of American politics can be found through a feminist genealogy of citizenship.... It is an inspiring work based on thorough research, with a dense and multilayered theoretical argument that uses historical and textual analysis."—Socialism and Democracy"The author’s presentation of intersectional feminism in the early twentieth-century is impressive in its reach and depth.... [and] inspiring examples of feminism in action."—Affillia"Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activismtakes readers on a genealogical exploration of the Progressive Era in the United States. The book lays a strong theoretical founlsi