Sherry Smith presents Bohemians West with the Institute on California and the West
January 28, 2021 | 12:00 pm
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The opening years of the twentieth century saw a grand cast of radicals and reformers fighting for a new America, seeking change not only in labor picket lines and at women’s suffrage rallies but also in homes and bedrooms. In the thick of this heady milieu were Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, two aspiring poets and political activists whose love story uncovers a potent emotional world underneath this transformative time.
Self-declared pioneers in free love, Sara and Erskine exchanged hundreds of letters that chartered a new kind of romantic relationship, and their personal affair frequently intersected with their deeply engaged political lives. As Sara’s star rose in the suffrage movement (including an automobile trip she took across the country in 1915 carrying a petition with thousands of signatures demanding Congress pass the Nineteenth Amendment), she began to ask questions about her own power in her relationship with Erskine. Charting a passionate and tumultuous relationship that spanned decades, Bohemians West offers a deeply personal look at a dynamic period in American history.
About the Speaker
Sherry L. Smith
Sherry L. Smith is a University Distinguished Professor of History (Emerita) at Southern Methodist University. A historian of the American West and Native America, Smith’s award-winning books include Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power and Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880–1940, both published by Oxford University Press. She is a former president of the Western History Association and received the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellowship at the Huntington Library, which supported research for Bohemians West. Smith has also been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and Yale University. She lives in Moose, Wyoming, and Pasadena, California. Visit her website at sherrylsmith.com.
