Ben’s Book Club: ‘Female Genius’ by Mary Sarah Bilder
Wednesday July 13 2022, 5pm BST/12pm ET. Register here.
Join us for the July instalment of Ben’s Book Club, a quarterly virtual gathering looking at themes relating to Benjamin Franklin, the 18th century, and American history.
This month we will be talking to Mary Sarah Bilder about her latest book ‘Female Genius’ which opens a new window on constitutional history, making it clear that this framing moment did not solely belong to white men.
Through the story of one remarkable woman, Eliza Harriot Barons O’Connor, Mary investigates the shaping of the Constitution alongside the rise of the ‘female genius’ and offers an inspirational transatlantic history of women who believed in education as a political right.
Professor Mary Sarah Bilder teaches in the areas of property, trusts and estates, and American legal and constitutional history at Boston College Law School. Her 2016 book Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention, earned the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy, and was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. Her 2004 The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire won the American Historical Association’s Littleton-Griswold Award.
Buy your copy of ‘Female Genius’ here.
This event is free of charge but please consider making an online donation here to support the work of Benjamin Franklin House.
