Event

Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution

The perfect exemplar of a radical new idea in the English-speaking world during the 1780s—the Age of the Constitution—was Eliza Harriot Barons O’Connor and her position on the female genius. She was a pathbreaking educator who delivered a University of Pennsylvania lecture attended by George Washington, in which she argued that women had equal capacity and deserved an equal education and political representation. In recovering this pioneering life, Female Genius makes clear that America’s framing moment did not belong solely to white men.