A museum and a laboratory of Feminism » : dynamiques mémorielles et enjeux politiques au siège du National Woman’s Party, 1930-1960

Between the 1930s and 1960s, the National Woman’s Party (NWP), an American feminist organization, was intensely committed to the preservation of the role it played in past suffragist struggles. In order to assert its place in this activist history, it embarked on a vast historiographical undertaking in which its Washington headquarters, the Alva Belmont House, played a leading role. Indeed, this place of memory can be analyzed as a space where historical knowledge was produced, through specific uses and practices. The mobilization of militant archives and press sources enables us to study the way in which memory is constructed, materialized and transmitted from this site, as well as the issues of power involved. This, in turn, reveals how a social movement can use, or even instrumentalize, the past for political ends.