Past Conferences on Women’s History
Past Conferences on Women’s History
A catalog of previous years subjects and speakers of the Diane and Adam E. Max Conference on Women’s History
2025 Conference
Courtroom, Classroom, and Culture: Women’s Lives as Battlegrounds
Sunday, March 2, 2025
The Diane and Adam E. Max Conference on Women’s History is a cornerstone of The New York Historical’s Center for Women’s History. Inaugurated in 2016, before the bricks and mortar of our Center were even set, the Max Conference has brought together historians, journalists, and public intellectuals to discuss a wide range of topics, ranging from care work to constitutional law over the last nine years.
This year, the tenth annual Max Conference considers the current historical moment in which vastly different understandings of gender, bodily autonomy, and women’s rights have provoked conversations about power and politics. To mark the occasion, we take a long view of three sites where the history of women’s lived experiences has become politicized: the courtroom, the classroom, and the stage. We take a step back to ask how, where, and why is women’s history up for debate? From the courtroom, the classroom, and the cultural sphere: what can we learn from these battle sites?
Confirmed Panelists include: Irin Carmon, Chase Strangio, Melissa Murray, Alice Kessler-Harris, Ansley Erickson, Samantha Futrell, Leslie Hayes, Hilary Hallett, Jane Kamensky, Rhae Lynn Barnes, Nicole Hemmer, and Alex Wagner.
Schedule
12:00-12:15pm: Welcome
Valerie Paley, Sue Ann Weinberg Director of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library and Founding Director of the Center for Women’s History; Anna Danziger Halperin, Director of the Center for Women’s History
12:15-1 pm: Gender and the Supreme Court
Ann and Andrew Tisch Supreme Court Lecture
From Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to the United States v. Skrmetti case currently on the docket, the last few years have seen the Supreme Court frequently step into debates on sex and gender, wielding women’s history as precedents that dramatically impact the lives of women and LGBTQ+ individuals. How have historians, legal scholars, and law practitioners sought to influence the court?
Panelists:
Chase Strangio, Co-Director, American Civil Liberties Union LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project
Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center, NYU Law School
Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor Emerita of American History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Columbia
Moderator:
Irin Carmon, Senior Correspondent, New York Magazine; co-author, Notorious RBG
1-1:30 pm: Break
1:30-2:15 pm: Classrooms Under Attack
This panel brings together educators, journalists, and historians who have investigated classroom battles concerning sex and gender across time. What topics have been deemed acceptable to teach in American classrooms? Which stories have been left out, or intentionally excluded?
Panelists:
Ansley T. Erickson, Associate Professor of History and Education Policy, Teachers College, Columbia University; Director, Teachers College Center on History & Education.
Samantha Futrell, 2024 National Council for the Social Studies Secondary Teacher of the Year, President, Virginia Council for the Social Studies
Leslie Hayes, Vice President for Education, The New York Historical
Moderator:
Salonee Bhaman, Center for Women’s History
2:15-2:45 pm: Break
2:45-3:30 pm: Popular Culture Wars
The stories we tell about history shape the past and its lessons in our collective imagination. This panel considers how decisions made in Washington have reverberated through our culture — from FBI investigations and Hollywood blacklists to Congressional committees and fights over funding. What can the censorship battles of the past tell us about potential future controversies? What opportunities and challenges do creators face in developing nuanced representations of women in history, and in conveying historical narratives?
Panelists:
Jane Kamensky, President, Thomas Jefferson Foundation
Rhae Lynn Barnes, Assistant Professor of History, Princeton University
Salamishah Tillet, Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University Newark, Director of the New Arts Justice Initiative
Moderator:
Hilary A. Hallett, Mendelson Family Professor & Director of American Studies, Professor of History, Columbia University
3:30-4 pm: Break
4-4:45 pm: Keynote
In our current historical moment–with vastly different understandings of gender, bodily autonomy, and women’s rights provoking conversations about power and politics–women’s history feels more political now than ever, but is it? What is new about this moment or are there historical parallels that we can learn from? Taken together, what is at stake in these battles in the courts, classrooms, and in pop culture?
Nicole Hemmer, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University
Alex Wagner, Host of Alex Wagner Tonight, MSNBC
5-6:30 pm: Reception
All of the panels of the Max Conference will be available for viewing with autocaption on the Museum's YouTube channel at a later date.
Lead support for the Center for Women's History programs provided by Joyce B. Cowin, Diane and Adam E. Max, Jean Margo Reid, and the Mellon Foundation.
2024 Conference
On and Off the Clock: Reconsidering Women’s Work
According to the CDC, two out of every three caregivers in the United States are women. This imbalance became painfully clear as COVID-19 lockdowns decimated women’s workforce participation while dramatically increasing demands on professional and informal care workers. The crisis of lockdown brought into focus the ways that “care” has long been coded as work done by women– assumed to be rooted in instinct rather than skill. Over centuries, this gendered assumption has relegated the work of caring for the young, aging, sick, and disabled to the background of public life and obscured the ways that race, class, and power have coerced or compelled some women to bear the brunt of caring. Yet, the work of caring–whether it is paid or unpaid, enslaved or free, performed by mothers or other caregivers–underpins the economy and is essential for continued human survival.
Drawing on the Center for Women’s History current exhibition, Women’s Work, the ninth annual Diane and Adam E. Max Conference on Women’s History explores how we understand “care.” Across three linked panels, we probe what “care” means, who does the work of caring, and what services get pushed to the margins by our current social policy framework. The conference will culminate with a keynote conversation on reproductive care.
2023 Conference
Keeping the Faith: Sex, Gender, and Religion
Looking at the divisions fracturing society today, many Americans point to organized religion as a restrictive force regulating and limiting gender roles. Yet, faith-based communities have also provided avenues for women and LGBTQ+ individuals to pursue leadership opportunities and to push for broader gender equality from within their traditions—complicating any simple views of religion and partisanship.
The eighth annual Diane and Adam E. Max Conference on Women’s History explores how women and LGBTQ+ people have shaped and transformed not only their own faith but also the religious lives of their communities throughout our nation’s history. Our in-person panels and virtual programs throughout Women’s History Month in March will feature contemporary practitioners, faith-based activists, and scholars of religion in conversation about activism and leadership for and by women and LGBTQ+ communities.
Believing in the Common Good: Women, Religion, and Economic Justice
Featuring: Rev. Pat Bumgardner, Rev. Jennifer Jones-Austin, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Rev. Dr. Katharine Henderson (moderator)
Watch a recording >
Challenging Tradition: Gender and Religious Leadership
Featuring: Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Ret. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Dr. Ann Pellegrini (moderator)
Watch a recording >
Keynote Conversation: Reproductive Justice After Dobbs
Featuring: Rev. Latishia James “Rev. Pleasure”, Andrea Salwen Kopel, Rev. Katey Zeh, Irin Carmon (moderator)
Watch a recording >
Religion and Gender: The Good, the Bad, and the Future
Featuring: Mitchell Gold, Rev. David Gushee, Katherine Stewart (moderator)
Watch a recording >
2022 Conference
Title IX at 50: Women’s Fight for Access and Equity
Explore the turbulent and diverse history of women’s organizing and activism around Title IX, the federal civil rights law that protects people from discrimination based on sex that was passed 50 years ago in 1972.
Activists have long been the driving force behind the enactment and enforcement of Title IX, which emerged from decades of political organizing by women in higher education and women’s civil rights groups. The statute—which covers a broad scope of American educational life from K-12 to higher education—became a new tool to challenge governmental and educational institutions to give women greater access to education. Sports and sexual harassment quickly became flashpoints, raising questions about how access is tied to safety, bodily integrity, and resources.
Fifty years after its passage, Title IX carries a powerful legacy of women’s activism against systemic sexism and for equal access to education. This anniversary is an opportunity to discuss the multiple interpretations of Title IX—and its limitations—and to consider how to ensure a more just future.
Keynote Conversation: Billie Jean King & Jessica Luther
Watch a recording >
Creating Title IX: Activists’ Fight for Equal Education
Featuring: Margaret Dunkle, Marcia Greenberger, Holly Knox, Sherry Boschert (moderator)
Watch a recording >
Fighting Sexual Harassment and Abuse with Title IX
Featuring: Alexandra Brodsky, Clarissa Brooks, Naomi Man, Irin Carmon (moderator)
Watch a recording >
2021 Conference
Breaking News, Breaking Barriers: Women in American Journalism
Our virtual 2021 conference features a mix of pre-recorded keynote conversations and live panels held via Zoom beginning in March 2021. Today, as we scrutinize the production, polarization, and power of news, the Center for Women's History explores the complex history of women in journalism from the 19th century to the present day.
Keynote Discussion: What I Saw at the Revolution: A Conversation with Lesley Stahl and Peggy Noonan
Watch a recording >
Keynote Discussion: She Said, and the World Listened: Breaking News in the #MeToo Era
Megan Twohey is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter with theNew York Time sand co-author of the book SHE SAID: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement. She discusses how to report on these topics with sensitivity and fairness withNew York magazine senior correspondent Irin Carmon, whose reporting in theWashington Post on allegations against television host Charlie Rose ended his career.
Watch a recording >
Panel Discussion: Women in Journalism Since the "Good Girls Revolt"
Lynn Povich, author of the autobiographical The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace, in conversation with columnist Rebecca Traister, author ofGood and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger, about the dynamic relationship between women’s activism and journalism over the past 50 years.
Watch a recording >
Panel Discussion: The Women’s Pages: A Hard Look at "Soft News"
Julie Golia (moderator) is the Curator of History, Social Science, and Government Information at the New York Public Library (NYPL). Jean M. Lutes is a professor of English at Villanova University. Kathy Feeley is the associate dean of the college of arts and sciences and professor of history at the University of Redlands. Ayelet Brinn is a historian of American Jewish culture at the Katz Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Watch a recording >
Panel Discussion: Writing Great Women for the Public: Intergenerational Storytelling
Michelle Duster, scholar and author of Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells, and New York magazine’s Irin Carmon, author of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, join us to discuss the challenges and rewards of translating monumental figures and cultural icons like Wells and Ginsburg to public, intergenerational, audiences.
Watch a recording >
2020 Conference
From Suffrage to Power: Reflections on Women’s Citizenship
On the centennial of suffrage, the Center for Women’s History explores the struggles for women’s equality in all their forms and complexity, from the beginnings of the abolitionist and suffrage movements through the present.
Welcome:
Louise Mirrer, president and CEO, New-York Historical Society
Valerie Paley, director of the Center for Women’s History and senior vice president and chief historian, New-York Historical Society
Special Greetings:
U.S. Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, 12th Congressional District, New York
Introductory Keynote Address:
Adele Logan Alexander, George Washington University and author of Princess of the Hither Isles (2019)
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Panel Discussion: Radical Origins: Abolition, Suffrage, and the Civil War
Martha S. Jones, Johns Hopkins University and author of Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018)
Manisha Sinha, University of Connecticut and author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (2016)
Lisa Tetrault, Carnegie Mellon University and author of The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898 (2014)
Moderator: Stephanie McCurry, Columbia University and author of Women’s War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War (2019)
Panel Discussion: Suffrage and Citizenship: The Road to the 19th Amendment
Brenda J. Child, University of Minnesota, former president of the Native American & Indigenous Studies Association, and author of My Grandfather’s Knocking Sticks: Ojibwe Family Life and Labor on the Reservation (2014)
Treva Lindsey, Ohio State University and author of Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C. (2017)
Lauren Santangelo, Princeton University and New-York Historical Society, and author of Suffrage And The City: New York Women Battle For The Ballot (2019)
Brent Staples, New York Times and 2019 Pulitzer Prize recipient for editorial writing
Moderator: Linda Greenhouse, Yale Law School and Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law, Senior Research Scholar in Law, Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence and author of Just a Journalist: On the Press, Life, and the Spaces Between (2017)
Afternoon Keynote Address:
Brittney Cooper, Rutgers University and author of Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (2018)
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Panel Discussion: Full Freedom for Women? The 1960s and Beyond
Keisha N. Blain, University of Pittsburgh and author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (2018)
Blanche Wiesen Cook, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY and author of the three-volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1992-2016)
Premilla Nadasen, Barnard College and author of Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement (2015)
Vicki Ruiz, University of California, Irvine and author of From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (10th anniversary edition, 2008)
Moderator: Rebecca Traister, New York magazine and author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger (2018)
Panel Discussion: Marching Forward: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future
Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO, National Women’s Law Center
Kate Clarke Lemay, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution and curator and author of Votes for Women: A Portrait Of Persistence (2019)
Mae Ngai, Columbia University and author of The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America (2010)
Moderator: Irin Carmon, New York magazine and CNN contributor and co-author of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2015)
2019 Conference
Ninety-Nine Years Since Prohibition
The fourth annual conference focused on the history of Prohibition, 100 years after the ratification of the 18th Amendment, which banned the sale and consumption of alcohol in the United States.
Morning Keynote Address:
Lisa McGirr, Harvard University, author of The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Educational Initiatives:
Women and the American Story: A Women’s History Curriculum Guide for Grades 6-12
Mia Nagawiecki, Vice President for Education, New-York Historical Society
Women Have Always Worked: A Massive Open Online Course in Women’s History
Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor Emerita of American History, Columbia University and Chair of the Scholarly Advisory Board of the Center for Women’s History
Panel Discussion: Women, Temperance and Reform
Richard Chused, New York School of Law, co-author of Gendered Law in American History
Crystal Feimster, Yale University, author of Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching
Lori Ginzberg, Penn State University, author of Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States
Julie C. Suk, Professor of Sociology and Dean for Master’s Programs at The Graduate Center, CUNY
Moderator: Alice Kessler-Harris, Columbia University and New-York Historical Society
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Panel Discussion: Rewriting the Rules
Marni Davis, Georgia State University, author of Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition
LaShawn Harris, Michigan State University, author of Sex Workers, Psychics and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy
Daniel Hurewitz, Hunter College, CUNY, author of Stepping Out: Nine Walks Through New York City’s Gay and Lesbian Past
Moderator: Nancy Mirabal, University of Maryland, College Park, author of Suspect Freedoms: The Racial and Sexual Politics of Cubanidad in New York City, 1823-1957
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Afternoon Keynote Address:
Senator Liz Krueger, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, New York State Senate
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Panel Discussion: Enforcing the Law
Cheryl Hicks, University of Delaware, author of Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935
Linda Gordon, NYU, author of The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition
Andrea J. Ritchie, attorney and activist, author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
Moderator: Irin Carmon, Journalist, Washington Post, MSNBC, and author of The Notorious RBG
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Panel Discussion: Last Call: Reflections on the History of Prohibition
Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
Lisa McGirr, Harvard University, author of The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
Moderator: Nick Juravich, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Women's History, New-York Historical Society
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
2018 Conference
Sex and the Constitution
Leading scholars of history and law explore the ways in which the U.S. Constitution has defined, protected, and regulated the rights and freedoms of sexuality, marriage, and reproduction throughout our nation’s history.
Keynote address:
Geoffrey Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago, author of Sex and the Constitution, 2017
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Panel Discussion: Governing Bodies: Sex in the Constitution
Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Nadine Strossen, John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law, New York Law School; Former President, American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008)
Robert C. Post, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Panel Discussion: Changing Precedents: The Law and Sex throughout History
Nancy Cott, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, Harvard University
Estelle Freedman, Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. History, Stanford University
Deborah Gray White, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History, Rutgers University
Moderator: Reva Siegel, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Panel Discussion: Sex and Equality in the Age of Trump
Virginia Espino, Oral historian and lecturer, University of California at Los Angeles; Filmmaker, “No Más Bebés”
Katherine Franke, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO, National Women’s Law Center
Moderator: Irin Carmon, Journalist (Washington Post, MSNBC) and Author (The Notorious RBG, 2015)
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
Panel Discussion: Reflecting on "Sex and the Constitution"
Geoffrey Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago
Amy Adler, Emily Kempin Professor of Law, New York University
Watch a recording on our Facebook page >
2017 Conference
Reproductive Rights in Historical Context
The second annual Diane and Adam E. Max Conference on Women's History focused on the history of reproductive justice, including the fluctuating legal and cultural status of contraception throughout American history, the evolution of obstetrics and gynecological medicine, and the role of race and class in the birth control movement.
2016 Conference
Sweat Equity: Women in the Garment Industry
The first annual Diane and Adam E. Max Conference on Women's History explored the garment industry and its historical impact on women, and was organized in memory of Jean Dubinsky Appleton, daughter of veteran labor organizer David Dubinsky.
