Book Description

This eclectic and carefully organized range of essays-from women's history and settler societies to colonialism and borderlands studies-is the first collection of comparative and transnational work on women in the Canadian and U.S. Wests. It explores, expands, and advances the aspects of women's history that cross national borders. Out of the talks presented at the 2002 "Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West through Women's History," Elizabeth Jameson and Sheila McManus have edited a foundational text for pioneering scholars of this emergent, interdisciplinary field. "We are stepping into unfamiliar territory." This unfamiliar territory is the borderlands of women’s histories traversing the American and Canadian Wests. Specialists in women’s history, settler societies, colonialism, storytelling, education, and native and borderlands studies introduced by Elizabeth Jameson and Sheila McManus pool their distinct contributions toward forging the very first comparative, transnational collection of its kind. "We cannot build bridges across unmapped divides." Sixteen essays arising from the "Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving the West through Women’s History" conference at the University of Calgary comprise this foundational text. One Step Over the Line is not only the map; it is the bridgework to span the transnational, gendered divide—a must for readers who have been searching for a wide, inclusive perspective on our western past. Contributors: Susan Armitage, Jean Barman, Nora Faires, Cheryl Foggo, Margaret D. Jacobs, Elizabeth Jameson, Joan M. Jensen, Cynthia Loch-Drake, Sheila McManus, Laurie Mercier, Mary Murphy, Helen Raptis, Molly P. Rozum, Char Smith, Sylvia Van Kirk, Margaret Walsh