I developed this project for my Local History course that helped me develop a set of skills that was extremely useful in developing my MA thesis. I started out questioning what happened in the lives of women as a result of the 19th Amendment, which ensured the right of American women to vote. My thesis uses the participation of rural women within the Ohio League of Women Voters in the 1920s to examine how voluntary activism was shaped in Ohio during the first decade after women had the vote. Since my Local History paper needed to be strongly attached to specific place, I decided to make a thesis chapter a case study of how the League of Women Voters fared in reaching the rural women of Wood County, which was dominantly agricultural at the time. Continue reading →

Over the course of the last semesters I have worked on the strike of the AP Parts workers in Toledo, 1984. I found that it provides a fascinating perspective on labor relations and city-industry relations at a time of dramatic transformations in the industrial sector. Continue reading →