URI student creates podcast to educate community on women’s suffrage for honors project

Senior communication and gender and women’s studies double major Emma Hayes shares her findings on women’s suffrage and women’s history. PHOTO CREDIT: uri.edu

University of Rhode Island student Emma Hayes intersected her education, internship and involvement to dive deeper into women’s suffrage and is now sharing that experience with the world.

Hayes is a senior double majoring in communication studies and gender and women’s studies at URI. She is also a student in the honors program, which she said is where her interest in women’s suffrage was piqued. 

She took a suffrage honors course in the fall of 2020, which was the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, with Professor Kathleen McIntyre. One year later, McIntyre asked Hayes to do an independent research study with her researching African American Suffragists. 

Hayes is currently working on her honors project, sponsored by McIntyre, which will be a series of five podcast episodes. The series, titled “Sex, Suffrage and Scandalous Ladies,” covers topics including suffrage, the temperance movement and race and sports and reproductive rights, according to Hayes.

Each episode tackles a different theme and Hayes tries to tell the stories of underrepresented women in history, McIntyre said. 

The podcast will be out on YouTube in May and Hayes has done everything from the research, planning, recording and marketing herself, according to McIntyre.

“The goal is to tell stories of activists that average listeners may not have heard of,” Hayes said. “I want to shed light on stories we don’t often hear about because they are equally important as the ones we do hear.”

Hayes also wants to inspire people on a local level and said that while many people think of activists as people that dedicate their lives to change, anyone can do their own work and help change the world.

In addition to her school work, Hayes has an internship at the Providence Preservation Society. Instead of placing a focus on the preservation of the buildings, Hayes works to preserve the stories of the people who lived in them, according to herself.

“We often forget that neighborhoods are not just made up of the buildings, but the community that lives there,” Hayes said. “It is important to tell their stories as well.”

At the internship, Hayes writes blog posts and goes to the outskirts of Providence to capture the less covered areas through Instagram reels.

“My favorite part is watching her swing big,” McIntyre said. “She could have looked for an internship here which may have been easier, but she applied in Providence and she got it which is really exciting.”

Hayes also had the opportunity to be featured in a commercial for the Suffrage Centennial Lecture Series hosted by URI that celebrated the 100 years of the Nineteenth Amendment last spring.

Hayes notes that her intentional double major has been very helpful with her overlapping interests throughout her time at URI and while she doesn’t have a set plan after graduation, she wants to continue to work as an activist.

“ I think when you’re doing activism and trying to learn about systems of power, you need to be able to know how to communicate that with others to raise awareness,” Hayes said.