ABSTRACT
American women's lives were in transition: a "New Woman" had emerged and American women were taking on greater public roles on a variety of fronts. A rhetoric of "separate spheres" for women and men suggested that women and men occupied different spaces, but this was not the reality for most American women. American women's lives were in motion. The maps created by American women as part of their social activism were "in motion" too. They shared information about how and where to cycle and drive, creating maps for these purposes and circulating these maps. American women missionaries worked to educate their at-home supporters on the geography of their mission countries, providing basic reference maps and urging over and over again the use of maps. Like suffrage materials, the geographies and maps being created and circulated by American women in the Progressive Era were always in process, in motion.
