Margaret Finnegan

Margaret Finnegan: Historian and Writing Specialist & Editor

Margaret Finnegan is a lecturer at the Writing Center and Criminal Justice Department at California State University Los Angeles. She is the author of the acclaimed monograph Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (Columbia University Press), which explores how American woman suffragists used then new strategies of advertising, merchandising, public relations and mass media to advocate for votes for women. Among other places, her writing has appeared in American Quarterly, L.A. Times, Salon, Pop Matters, Family Fun, College Composition and Communication, the edited collections The Oxford Companion to United States History, Literary Pasadena, and Life as We Know It. Her audio commentaries on silent-era suffrage films are featured in the DVD collection "More Treasures of The Silver Screen" (National Film Preservation Society), which was chosen as one of Time magazine's ten best DVD collections in 2007. She served as a grant proposal panel member in 2008 and 2010 for the National Film Preservation Society, and a grant writer for various organizations. Ms. Finnegan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Scripps College, Claremont, CA in 1987 and received her Ph.D. in U.S. Women’s History at U.C.L.A.