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A book launch for a noted Mount Union professor will highlight the annual meeting for the Alliance Area Preservation Society and Haines House Underground Railroad Museum on Monday, April 24 at 6:30 pm at the Rodman Library auditorium.
The University of Mount Union's Dr. Jamie Capuzza will speak about her new book, The Fifth Star: Ohio’s Fight for Women’s Right to Vote. This work highlights Ohio's central role in a century-long battle to earn women the right to vote in the United States.
The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. [REGISTER HERE]
Dr. Capuzza's talk will highlight the early overlap and connections in the abolitionist and suffragist movements in the Alliance area. Both movements were important to the Haines Family, with Sarah Grant Haines noting at the end of her life that she had "hoped to live long enough to see women’s rights recognized in the matter of female suffrage so she could vote once for a Prohibition candidate for president of the United States."
Sarah and her family worked in concert with such figures as Betsy Mix Cowles and Jane Elizabeth Hitchcock Jones, who were not only well-known area abolitionists, but also co-chairs of the first statewide women's rights convention in the U.S., held in May 1850 in nearby Salem.
Dr. Capuzza is a professor of literature and communication arts at Mount Union. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in communication and English at Mount Union in 1985, and went on to earn a Master of Arts degree and doctorate in rhetorical theory and criticism from The Ohio State University. Capuzza has been a member of the Mount Union faculty since 1992.
Along with chairing the Department of Communication, Capuzza has directed the gender studies program at Mount Union. Her work appeared in journals such as Communication Quarterly, Communication Education, Women and Language, and The Journal of Children and Media. Her book, co-edited with Dr. Leland Spencer, Transgender Communication Studies: Histories, Trends, and Trajectories, won three national awards. Capuzza was named Mount Union's Great Teacher in 2010, Gender Scholar of the Year by the Southern States Communication Association in 2018, and she received the Jane Weston Chapman Award in 1998 and the University of Mount Union’s Distinguished Research Award in 2019.
A brief AAPS members meeting will precede Dr. Capuzza's presentation. A book signing will follow, and light refreshments will be served. Copies of Dr. Capuzza's book will be available for sale.