U.S. History As Women's History


Book Description

This outstanding collection of fifteen original essays represents innovative work by some of the most influential scholars in the field of women's history. Covering a broad sweep of history from colonial to contemporary times and ranging over the fields of legal, social, political, and cultural history, this book, according to its editors, 'intrudes into regions of the American historical narrative from which women have been excluded or in which gender relations were not thought to play a part.' The book is dedicated to pioneering women's historian Gerda Lerner, whose work inspired so many of the contributors, and it includes a bibliography of her works. The contributors include: Linda K. Kerber on women and the obligations of citizenship Kathryn Kish Sklar on two political cultures in the Progressive Era Linda Gordon on women, maternalism, and welfare in the twentieth century Alice Kessler-Harris on the Social Security Amendments of 1939 Nancy F. Cott on marriage and the public order in the late nineteenth century Nell Irvin Painter on 'soul murder' as a legacy of slavery Judith Walzer Leavitt on Typhoid Mary and early twentieth-century public health Estelle B. Freedman on women's institutions and the career of Miriam Van Waters William H. Chafe on how the personal translates into the political in the careers of Eleanor Roosevelt and Allard Lowenstein Jane Sherron De Hart on women, politics, and power in the contemporary United States Barbara Sicherman on reading Little Women Joyce Antler on the Emma Lazarus Federation's efforts to promulgate women's history Amy Swerdlow on Left-feminist peace politics in the cold war Ruth Rosen on the origins of contemporary American feminism among daughters of the fifties Darlene Clark Hine on the making of Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia




Restoring Women's History Through Historic Preservation


Book Description

This essay collection draws upon work presented at three national conferences on women and historic preservation held at Bryn Mawr College in 1994, Arizona State University in 1997, and at Mount Vernon College in 2000.




The Age of Reform


Book Description

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and preeminent historian comes a landmark in American political thought that examines the passion for progress and reform during 1890 to 1940. The Age of Reform searches out the moral and emotional motives of the reformers the myths and dreams in which they believed, and the realities with which they had to compromise.




Women's Oral History


Book Description

Women's Oral History: The "Frontiers" Reader is an essential guide to the practice of gathering and interpreting women's oral accounts of their lives. During the 1970s, whenøwomen's history was just developing, the lack of historical information about women's lives was glaring. Oral history quickly emerged as a vital and necessary tool for documenting the lives and experiences of women, who rarely recorded it for themselves?much less for posterity. Standard models of practicing oral history, however, were inadequate to the job of organizing and interpreting women's lives, and new models that addressed the distinctiveness of the lives of women?in all of their diversity?were needed. As one of the earliest journals devoted to feminist scholarship in the United States, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies was in the vanguard of the emerging field of women's oral history when it published its first landmark issue on the subject in 1977. Three subsequent issues exploring the evolving field has secured Frontiers' reputation at the forefront of women's oral history. Women's Oral History includes nineteen essays, each addressing the particularity of women's lives and experience. The collection provides both "how to" interview guides and examples of current research in sections covering basic methodology and rationale; the myriad uses of women's oral history; and discoveries and insights gained from oral history applications. The essays raise thought-provoking questions, glean original insights about the lives of women and the practice of history, and call for women to write and record their own histories.




Women Our History


Book Description

Re-examining history from a female perspective, this book celebrates the numerous important roles women have played in culture and society that are less often told. Includes evocative images, this gloriously illustrated ebook reveals the key events in women's history - from early matriarchal societies through women's suffrage, the Suffragette movement, 20th-century feminism and gender politics, to recent movements such as #MeToo and International Women's Day - and the key role women have had in shaping our past. Learn about the everyday lives of women through the ages as well as the big names of women's history - powerful, inspirational, and trailblazing women such as Cleopatra, Florence Nightingale, Emmeline Pankhurst, Eva Peron, and Rosa Parks - and discover the unsung contributions of lesser-known women who have changed the world, and the "forgotten" events of women's history. Placing women firmly centre stage, Women - Our History shows women where they have come from, and, in celebrating the achievements of women of the past offers positive role models for women of today




Aspasia


Book Description

Aspasia is an international peer-reviewed yearbook that brings out the best scholarship in the field of interdisciplinary women's and gender historyfocused on - and produced in - Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. In this region the field of women's and gender history has developed uevenly and has remained only marginally represented in the "international" canon.




Reproduction


Book Description

From contraception to cloning and pregnancy to populations, reproduction presents urgent challenges today. This field-defining history synthesizes a vast amount of scholarship to take the long view. Spanning from antiquity to the present day, the book focuses on the Mediterranean, western Europe, North America and their empires. It combines history of science, technology and medicine with social, cultural and demographic accounts. Ranging from the most intimate experiences to planetary policy, it tells new stories and revises received ideas. An international team of scholars asks how modern 'reproduction' - an abstract process of perpetuating living organisms - replaced the old 'generation' - the active making of humans and beasts, plants and even minerals. Striking illustrations invite readers to explore artefacts, from an ancient Egyptian fertility figurine to the announcement of the first test-tube baby. Authoritative and accessible, Reproduction offers students and non-specialists an essential starting point and sets fresh agendas for research.




Selling Women's History


Book Description

Only in recent decades has the American academic profession taken women’s history seriously. But the very concept of women’s history has a much longer past, one that’s intimately entwined with the development of American advertising and consumer culture. Selling Women’s History reveals how, from the 1900s to the 1970s, popular culture helped teach Americans about the accomplishments of their foremothers, promoting an awareness of women’s wide-ranging capabilities. On one hand, Emily Westkaemper examines how this was a marketing ploy, as Madison Avenue co-opted women’s history to sell everything from Betsy Ross Red lipstick to Virginia Slims cigarettes. But she also shows how pioneering adwomen and female historians used consumer culture to publicize histories that were ignored elsewhere. Their feminist work challenged sexist assumptions about women’s subordinate roles. Assessing a dazzling array of media, including soap operas, advertisements, films, magazines, calendars, and greeting cards, Selling Women’s History offers a new perspective on how early- and mid-twentieth-century women saw themselves. Rather than presuming a drought of female agency between the first and second waves of American feminism, it reveals the subtle messages about women’s empowerment that flooded the marketplace.




The British Women's Suffrage Campaign


Book Description

This book brings together twelve chapters from feminist historians from around the world to offer new perspectives on aspects of the campaign for women’s suffrage in Britain. Although the focus is on Britain, this volume signals how the women’s suffrage campaign in Britain embraced both national and global aspects. The historical developments and structures that affected women’s lives and suffrage struggles were not limited to national contexts. Early chapters focus on particular individuals both well and lesser known, including Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst, as well as Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, Lady Isabel Margesson and Isabella Ford. Later chapters highlight the interrelationship between the British movement and suffrage campaigns across the globe with reference to Austria, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and the USA. The chapters deal with issues around strategies, social class, employment, religion, nationalism, empire and race and explore complex issues about women’s roles in campaigning for their democratic right to the parliamentary vote. Offering the reader a broad view of the British women’s suffrage movement, this is the ideal volume for students of women’s and political history in both its national and international contexts.




Book Review Digest


Book Description