With the theorists precision and the historians ear, Wendy Sarvasy reclaims a remarkable group of Progressive Era Anglo, Black, and Jewish feminists, including Jane Addams, Mary Church Terrell, and Rose Schneiderman. These intersectional activists became refounders of democracy by envisioning a welfare state that merged social service, womens economic independence, equal citizenship, and cosmopolitanism. By constructing cross-class and cross-race conversations, Sarvasy offers conceptual and organizing tools for our own refounding moment. Here is intersectionality at its most powerful.-Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Making the Woman Worker: Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 19192019 Refounding Democracy through Intersectional Activism is the first comprehensive study to establish the important role played by Progressive Era social democratic feminists-African American, immigrant Jewish, and white Protestant native-born-in defining American democracy today. Sarvasy is masterful in the genealogical method she applies, drawing on historical literature and primary sources in her study of these women. The intersectional practice of the social democratic feminists is closely examined, as is their theory-activist dynamic, with both offering significant conceptual contributions. This book provides fascinating reading for those interested in American democracy and its political thought and, since the reconfiguring of politics by these feminists extended from the local to the global, for scholars of international relations and transnational history.-Molly Cochran, Reader in International Relations, School of Law and Social Sciences, at Oxford Brookes University, and author of Normative Theory in International Relations: A Pragmatic Approach "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 authors presentation of intersectional feminism in the early twentieth-century is impressive in its reach and depth.... [ and] inspiring examples of feminism in action."-Affillia
