U.S. history as women's history: new feminist essays

Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, Kathryn Kish Sklar

University of North Carolina Press, 1995 - History - 477 pages

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.'State formation, power, and knowledge have not traditionally been understood as the subjects of women's history, but they are the themes that permeate this book. Individually and together, the essays explore how gender serves to legitimize particular constructions of power and knowledge and to meld these into accepted practice and state policy. They show how the field of women's history has moved from the discovery of women to an evaluation of social processes and institutions.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.

What people are saying

Review: US History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays

User Review  - Denise Derocher - Goodreads

Excellently written account of the history that never is talked about...

Review: US History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays

User Review  - Veronica - Goodreads

This is one of the books that got me wondering if perhaps I should be in women's studies and not science.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• STATE FORMATION: 7
• Women Maternalism and Welfare: 63

About the author

Linda K. Kerber is the May Brodbeck Professor of History at the University of Iowa. Among her books are "Women of the Republic" and "Toward an Intellectual History of Women," She has served as the president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Studies Association and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

ALICE KESSLER-HARRIS is Professor of History at Hofstra University where she co-directs the Center for the Study of Work and Leisure.

Kathryn Kish Sklar, Distinguished Professor of History at the State University of New York, Binghamton, is author of Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900.

Bibliographic information

• Title: U.S. history as women's history: new feminist essays; Gender & American culture
• Authors: Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, Kathryn Kish Sklar
• Editors: Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, Kathryn Kish Sklar
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press, 1995
• Original from: the University of Virginia
• Digitized: Jul 24, 2008
• Length: 477 pages
• Subjects: History / Social History; Social Science / Women's Studies; Women; Women/ United States/ History