Kathryn A. Nicholas, "Reexamining Women’s Nineteenth-Century Political Agency: School Suffrage and Office-Holding," Journal of Policy History 30 (July 2018): 452-489.

Author: Kathryn A. Nicholas

Title: "Reexamining Women’s Nineteenth-Century Political Agency: School Suffrage and Office-Holding,"

Publisher: Journal of Policy History 30 (July 2018): 452-489.

Kathryn A. Nicholas earned her Ph.D. from the University of Washington and her research focuses on women’s role in U.S. politics relating to public education. She presented an earlier version of this article at the June 2014 Policy History Conference held in Columbus, Ohio. In the article abstract, Nicholas wrote: "Frequently conflated, suffrage and public office holding are actually two different, yet related, citizenship rights." Kentucky's laws are mentioned several times in the article - with dates included in a useful chart of all the states - and contextualized in the larger story of a national push for public schools. The article contributes to the larger scholarship by problematizing our understanding of the woman suffrage movement as a single charge toward the federal amendment. Nicholas used state and territorial legislative records to provide an overview of the national picture of partial suffrage and reinforced the position that long before1900 women's political agency included the right to hold public education offices.