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Cover

American Women

A Concise History

Author Susan Ware

Publication Date - 30 July 2021

ISBN: 9780197522349

288 pages
Paperback
6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches

In Stock

American Women: A Concise History offers the most succinct narrative approach to US Women's History, enriched by primary sources, color maps, and photos that offer students the most accessible and engaging introduction to the history of American women.

Description

Susan Ware's concise and lively American Women presents "women as a force in history." Paying homage to historian Mary Ritter Beard's pathbreaking scholarship from the 1930s and 1940s, this conceptual framework highlights the contributions, recognized and unrecognized, that women have made to the American experience. Without downplaying the historical constraints and barriers blocking women's advancement, Ware's narrative emphasizes women as active agents rather than passive victims in a variety of contexts throughout U.S. history.

The goal of American Women is to give the reader familiarity with the main currents and themes of American history through engagement with the specific history of its women. This dual focus is necessary because it is impossible to write about women in isolation from men or unaffected by broader events and trends. And yet women's stories link to larger themes at the same time they often challenge them. With women's stories fully integrated into the broader national story, the end result is a richer understanding of American history in all its complexity, including its transnational and global dimensions.

Features

  • Highlights the diversity and intersectionality of American women's experiences as continually shaped by factors such as race, class, religion, geographical location, age, sexual identity and gender expression, among others.
  • The narrative never loses sight of the "real" women who make American history happen. These flesh-and-blood historical actors enrich and complicate the traditional story while confirming that women have been central to American history from the start.
  • Draws attention to those moments when differences between women, such as white slaveholding women and black female slaves, or native-born social workers and their immigrant clients, call out for contrasting perspectives.
  • Without downplaying the historical constraints and barriers blocking women's advancement, the text continually emphasizes women as active agents rather than passive victims in a variety of contexts throughout U.S. history.
  • Links women's stories to larger themes, while at the same time often challenging them. For example, traditional markers such as the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II are not necessarily the most useful concepts for organizing women's history and thus have not been deployed here. With women's stories fully integrated into the broader national story, the end is a richer understanding of American history in all its complexity, including its transnational and global dimensions.
  • Each chapter includes four primary-source excerpts ("Documenting American Women").
  • Vivid, full color design includes over 70 illustrations.
  • Concise format and low price makes American Women ideally suited for a variety of course settings.
  • The text is also available as an enhanced eBook that includes quizzes, flashcards, "Closer Look" videos, and other learning resources.
  • A course cartridge with PowerPoint slides and a test-item file is available to adopters at www.oup.com/he/ware1e

About the Author(s)

Susan Ware is the author and editor of numerous books on twentieth-century U.S. history and biography. Educated at Wellesley College and Harvard University, she has taught at New York University and Harvard.

Table of Contents

    List of Maps and Figures
    Introduction
    Acknowledgments
    About the Author

    Chapter 1: In the Beginning: North America's Women to 1750
    Origin Stories
    Documenting American Women: The Origin Myth of the Acoma Pueblo
    Gender Frontiers
    Documenting American Women: Bernal Díaz del Castillo Remembers Doña Marina
    Gender and Race in the Early Settlements
    Documenting American Women: The Legal Foundations of Slavery
    The Daily Contours of Women's Lives
    Documenting American Women: Salem Witchcraft
    Transatlantic Connections

    Chapter 2: Independence Gained and Lost in an Expanding Republic, 1750-1850
    Revolutionary Legacies
    Documenting American Women: Abigail Adams's Revolutionary Call
    Populating a Continent That Was Already Populated
    Documenting American Women: Cherokee Women's Petition, 1818
    Documenting American Women: Eulalia Perez Remembers Mexican California
    The Broad Shadow of Slavery
    Documenting American Women: Harriot Jacobs on "The Trials of Girlhood" for Enslaved Women

    Chapter 3: Freedom's Ferment, 1830-1865
    "The Lady and the Mill Girl"
    Documenting American Women: Lowell Mill Girls
    The Female World of Benevolence and Reform
    The Intertwined Origins of Abolition and Women's Rights
    Documenting American Women: Maria W. Stewart Speaks on the "Woman Question" in Boston, 1832
    Women's Civil Wars
    Documenting American Women: Susie King Taylor's Reminiscences of her Service as an Army Nurse
    Documenting American Women: A White Southern Woman     Reflects on Daily Life during the Civil War

    Chapter 4: Reconstruction and Beyond, 1865-1890
    Reconstructing a Fractured Nation
    Documenting American Women: Anna J. Cooper's "A Voice from the South"
    The Multicultural West
    Documenting American Women: Mary Tape Challenges the San Francisco Board of Education, 1885
    The Women's West
    Documenting American Women: The Burden of Rural Women's Lives
    Broader Educational Opportunities for Women
    Claiming Citizenship
    Documenting American Women: Mormon Women's Protest, 1886

    Chapter 5: Expanding Horizons, 1890-1920
    Working Women
    Documenting American Women: The Story of a Glove Maker
    Modern Women in the Making
    Documenting American Women: Frances Willard Learns to Ride a Bicycle
    Progressive Era Reform
    Documenting American Women: Josephine St. Ruffin Pierre Spearheads the Black Women's Club Movement
    The Final Push for Suffrage
    Documenting American Women: What Margaret Sanger Thought Every Girl Should Know

    Chapter 6: Modern American Women, 1920-1960
    New Dilemmas for Modern Women
    Documenting American Women: The Harlem Renaissance
    Making Do in the Great Depression
    Documenting American Women: The New Deal Comes to Northern New Mexico
    A World at War
    Documenting American Women: Japanese Relocation
    The 1950s: The Way We Were?
    Documenting American Women: Claudette Colvin, Unsung Heroine of the Civil Rights Movement

    Chapter 7: Feminism and Its Discontents, 1960-1992
    The Revival of Feminism
    Documenting American Women: Dolores Huerta and the Grape Boycott
    Not So Fast, Sisters
    Documenting American Women: Conservative Complaints about Title IX
    Legislative Landmarks
    Documenting American Women: A Hmong American Immigrant Story
    A Shift to the Right
    Documenting American Women: Global Feminism

    Chapter 8: Our Bodies, Our Politics, 1992-2020
    "The Year of the Woman" Just Keeps Happening
    Women in the Military
    Documenting American Women: Sexual Assaults in the Military
    The Changing Terrain of Sex and Gender
    Documenting American Women: The First Time Jennifer Finney Boylan Said, "I'm Trans"
    Changing American Families
    Documenting American Women: Why Is "Having It All" Just a Women's Issue?
    Jobs and Justice
    Documenting American Women: Black Women's Lives Matter
    2020: A Moment of Reckoning

    Appendix: The Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Conference, 1848
    Glossary
    Credits
    Index

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