08/16/2024

FLARE August Virtual Program: First Ladies on the Campaign Trail

August 21, 2024 7:00PM - 8:00PM EDT ... Now available on Facebook and YouTube

FLARE August Virtual Program: First Ladies on the Campaign Trail

The name on the top of the presidential ticket is reserved for the candidate alone, but make no mistake--the nominee's spouse is also an important part of the process. Sometimes, their participation is minimal--an effort to present a picture of a united family front. Other potential first ladies are out campaigning on policy and positive reasons to vote their spouse into office. (Think "Vote for Betty's husband"  or Clinton's famous, "You get two for the price of one.")

The panel composed of Paulette Brinka, Janette Kenner Muir, Katie Sibley, and Nancy Kegan Smith explores four powerful spouses as surrogates--Lady Bird Johnson, Rosalynn Carter, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama.  All traveled extensively through their campaigns, sometimes with their husbands, sometimes independently. All drew a certain amount of lightning. All were pillars of support for their husbands, as well as keen monitors of the pulse of the campaign.

Please join us at 7 PM EDT on Wednesday, August 21 at 7:00 pm EDT: View on Facebook or on YouTube.

Panelist Biographies:

Paulette Brinka is an inaugural lifetime FLARE member. She often calls First Ladies Studies her guilty pleasure, a topic she finds endlessly compelling.  An associate adjunct professor at Suffolk County Community College in the field of Communication, she has also worked in broadcasting and local government.  She studied at both Boston University and Hofstra University, loves to write, and loves to travel.

She lives on Long Island, outside of New York City, and has two children, a son and a daughter, both of whom she is immensely proud.

Janette Kenner Muir is the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at George Mason University. In this role she supports the systems and initiatives related to academic success and builds external relationships for the university. Dr. Muir’s academic life focuses in the areas of political communication, civic engagement, and the study of the presidency (from campaigns to spouses). She is an editor of Readings in Political Communication, has been featured in the Harvard International Review, and she edited a volume honoring the life of Jane Blankenship, a leading rhetorical critic of the 20th century, published in the political communication series of Lexington Books. Recent work focuses on Hillary Clinton in A Companion to First Ladies, published by Wiley Blackwell, a chapter on Hillary Clinton in the volume titled Southern First Ladies: Changing America’s Compass edited by Katie Sibley, and she is currently completing a chapter on Hillary Clinton for In Her Own Voice, How First Ladies Use Autobiography to Tell Their Own Stories, edited by Molly Wertheimer.

Katherine A. S. Sibley is Professor of History and Director of American Studies at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.  She is the editor of both Southern First Ladies: Culture and Place in White House History (2021), as well as A Companion to First Ladies (2016).  She is under contract to write Michelle Obama: First Lady and “Mom-in-Chief” with the University Press of Kansas’s first ladies series; her earlier book in that series, First Lady Florence Harding: Beyond the Tragedy and Controversy, appeared in 2009, and led her to write and perform a musical play on Florence Harding’s life, in 2011. She also appeared on CSPAN’s first ladies series to discuss Harding.  Presently, she is developing a new book series on first ladies (and someday, first partners of all genders) which will explore thematic and interdisciplinary aspects of their roles in the office.  In a different vein, she has just co-edited Post-Cold War Revelations on the American Communist Party: Citizens, Revolutionaries and Spies (2021; her earlier books on Soviet-American relations and U.S. history in general include Red Spies in America: Stolen Secrets and the Dawn of the Cold War (2004), The Cold War (1998), the prize-winning Loans and Legitimacy: The Evolution of Soviet-American Relations, 1919-1933 (1996) and a Companion to Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover (2013).

Sibley received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1991 and is a founding member of the First Ladies Association for Research and Education. For more than a dozen years she was a member of the Historical Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of State and continues to serve on the executive committee of the Historians of American Communism. 

Nancy Kegan Smith, FLARE president worked for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as an archivist from 1973 until 2012 when she retired. She started her career as an archivist at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. In that capacity she processed some of Mrs. Johnson’s files including her Beautification files and developed a great respect for Mrs. Johnson and her legacy. In 1989 she co-edited and compiled the book, Modern First Ladies: Their Documentary Legacy. In that same year she moved to Washington, DC, first working for NARA’s Office of Presidential Libraries and later becoming the Director of the Presidential Materials Division, the Division at NARA that advised the White House on Presidential and First Lady’s records and gift issues and moves of Presidential records.

After retirement from the government, Ms. Smith was a consultant to the University of Chicago on the Obama Presidential Library project. Ms. Smith has authored numerous publications and lectures on access to Presidential records, the Presidential Library system and First Ladies and their papers. She currently lectures and writes on First Ladies including Lady Bird Johnson and Michelle Obama. Some of Ms. Smith’s recent actives include: an opinion piece for CNN “Three First Ladies who risked their Lives for Civil Rights” with Dr. Diana Carlin and Anita McBride; a panelist along with Dr. Carlin and Anita McBride for a virtual program of the National Archives Foundation on First Ladies and Civil Rights, two presentations on Mrs. Johnson for the White House Historical Association programs on First Ladies, and a 2020 podcast interview on First Ladies for American POTUS.

She is the co-author with Diana Carlin and Anita B. McBride of two books: U.S. First Ladies: Making History and Leaving Legacies (a college textbook) and Remember the First Ladies: America's History-Making Women.