The Dear-Bought Heritage


Book Description

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.




Out to Work


Book Description

First published in 1982, this pioneering work traces the transformation of "women's work" into wage labor in the United States, identifying the social, economic, and ideological forces that have shaped our expectations of what women do. Basing her observations upon the personal experience of individual American women set against the backdrop of American society, Alice Kessler-Harris examines the effects of class, ethnic and racial patterns, changing perceptions of wage work for women, and the relationship between wage-earning and family roles. In the 20th Anniversary Edition of this landmark book, the author has updated the original and written a new Afterword.




Women Have Always Worked


Book Description

A classic since its original publication, Women Have Always Worked brought much-needed insight into the ways work has shaped female lives and sensibilities. Beginning in the colonial era, Alice Kessler-Harris looks at the public and private work spheres of diverse groups of women—housewives and trade unionists, immigrants and African Americans, professionals and menial laborers, and women from across the class spectrum. She delves into issues ranging from the gendered nature of the success ethic to the social activism and the meaning of citizenship for female wage workers. This second edition adds artwork and features significant updates. A new chapter by Kessler-Harris follows women into the early twenty-first century as they confront barriers of race, sex, and class to earn positions in the new information society.




The War for Independence and the Transformation of American Society


Book Description

The War fo Independence had a substantial impact on the lives of all Americans, establishing a nation and confirming American identity. The War for Independence and the Transformation of American Society focuses on a conflict which was both civil war and revolution and assesses how Americans met the challenges of adapting to the ideals of Independence and Republicanism. The war effected political reconstruction and brought economic self sufficiency and expansion, but it also brought oppression of dissenting and ethnic minorities, broadened the divide between the affluent and the poor and strengthened the institution of slavery. Focusing on the climate of war itself and its effects on the lives of those who lived through it, this book includes discussion of: *Recruitment and Society *The Home Front *Constraints on Liberty *Women and family during the war years *African Americans and Native Americans The War for Independence is a fascinating account of the wider dimension to the meaning of the American Revolution.







Liberating Women's History


Book Description

Papers furnishing a review and critique of past work in women's history are combined with selections delineating new approaches to the study of women in history and empirical studies considering ideological and class factors.




Women in Christian History


Book Description

For much of Christian history, the role of women in the life of the church both local and universal has been downplayed, overlooked, or simply denied. Such a state of affairs of course also denies the testimony of the church's Scriptures regarding the key role women played in Jesus' own ministry and that of the early church. It denies or deliberately overlooks the significant role of women in the life of the church throughout the church's history, down to and including the present day. In recent years such denial of the significant place of women in Christian history of course has been addressed. But nowhere is there available a more comprehensive bibliography than the present one compiled by Carolyn Blevins. The reach of Blevins's bibliography is wide, from the earliest church to present times, across every ethnic and national boundary, and throughout virtually every segment of the church, Catholic and Protestant and stripes in between or beyond. This is in many ways but a beginning place. Yet with the help of Blevins's good work, students, teachers, researchers, historians, and all other seekers after the significant place of women in Christian history, have indeed a place to make a good beginning.







Laboring for Freedom


Book Description

This text examines the concept of freedom in the context of American labour history. Nine essays develop themes in this history which show that liberty of contract and inalienable rights form two contradictory traditions concerning freedom.