Sally Roesch Wagner Receives 2012 Katherine Coffey Award

Written by Mandi Magnuson-Hung

From the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums:

Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner has been selected by the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums as the recipient of its 2012 Katherine Coffey Award.  Dr. Wagner is the executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, New York, a nationally recognized lecturer, author and performance interpreter of women’s rights in history. 

One of the first women to receive a doctorate in the United States for work in women’s studies (UC Santa Cruz), and a founder of one of the country’s first college women’s studies programs, (CSU Sacramento). Dr. Wagner has taught in women’s studies for thirty-nine years. She currently serves as adjunct faculty in the Honors Program at Syracuse University.

Wagner appeared as a “talking head” in the Ken Burns PBS documentary, “Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony” for which she wrote the accompanying faculty guide for PBS.  She was also an historian in the PBS special “One Woman, One Vote” and has been interviewed numerous times on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Democracy Now.”

The theme of her work has been telling the untold stories. Her monograph, She Who Holds the Sky: Matilda Joslyn Gage, reveals a suffragist written out of history because of her stand against the religious right 100 years ago, while Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists documents the influence of Iroquois women on early women’s rights activists.

The Jeanette K. Watson Women’s Studies Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University in 1997, Wagner has been a Research Affiliate of the Women’s Resources and Research Center at the University of California, Davis and a consultant to the National Women’s History Project.

Wagner’s essays have appeared in: Women Public Speakers in the United States, 1800-1925; Indian Roots of American Democracy; Iroquois Women: an Anthology; and Handbook of American Women’s History. Published articles include: National Women’s Studies Association Journal, On the Issues, Northeast Indian Quarterly, Indian Country Today, Hartford Courant, Women’s History Network News, National NOW Times and the Sacramento Bee.

Recent books include: She Who Holds the Sky: Matilda Joslyn Gage (Sky Carrier Press, 2003); Introduction in the reprint of Matilda Joslyn Gage’s 1893 classic Woman, Church and State (Humanity Books, 2002); and Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists (Native Voices, 2001).

The Katherine Coffey Award is given each year by the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums to an individual in the Mid-Atlantic region to recognize distinguished achievement in the museum field.  The 2012 Coffey Award ceremony was held  at the MAAM Annual Meeting on October 9,  in Tarrytown, New York.