Sewanee Professor Melody Lehn has published a new book entitled One Hundred Years of Women Debating the Equal Rights Amendment: An Anthology, 1923-2023. The culmination of a years-long project in conjunction with co-editor, Professor Camille Lewis of Furman University, this timely edited collection of primary texts comprehensively surveys women’s arguments about the ERA from its inception through the present day.
Together and apart, these texts reveal the nuanced, complicated, and sometimes contradictory ways that women have contemplated the question of whether we need the ERA. As this next generation forges ahead to keep the ERA alive, we are left to wonder: Will women remain divided on the ERA? Will it take another century to see it enshrined in the U.S. Constitution? The ERA debate, nevertheless, persists.
In the spring of 2025, Dr. Lehn is teaching a seminar on The Rhetoric of the Equal Rights Amendment Debate which closely examines the long debate about the ERA by engaging primary texts by, about, and for American women. In so doing, the ERA debate provides a site for studying broader questions about women’s rights in relation to a host of political, economic, religious, and social issues.
Dr. Lehn's academic training is in rhetorical studies, with an emphasis on public address, rhetorical criticism, and rhetorical pedagogy. More information about her life and work is available here.
Her latest book, One Hundred Years of Women Debating the Equal Rights Amendment, is available for purchase from Peter Lang press here.
