Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America

Nancy Isenberg

Univ of North Carolina Press, 1998 - History - 319 pages

With this book, Nancy Isenberg illuminates the origins of the women's rights movement. Rather than herald the singular achievements of the 1848 Seneca Falls convention, she examines the confluence of events and ideas_before and after 1848_that, in her view, marked the real birth of feminism. Drawing on a wide range of sources, she demonstrates that women's rights activists of the antebellum era crafted a coherent feminist critique of church, state, and family. In addition, Isenberg shows, they developed a rich theoretical tradition that influenced not only subsequent strains of feminist thought but also ideas about the nature of citizenship and rights more generally.

By focusing on rights discourse and political theory, Isenberg moves beyond a narrow focus on suffrage. Democracy was in the process of being redefined in antebellum America by controversies over such volatile topics as fugitive slave laws, temperance, Sabbath laws, capital punishment, prostitution, the Mexican War, married women's property rights, and labor reform_all of which raised significant legal and constitutional questions. These pressing concerns, debated in women's rights conventions and the popular press, were inseparable from the gendered meaning of nineteenth-century citizenship.

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Review: Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America

User Review  - Miriam - Goodreads

Isenberg's variation on the political history of the antebellum women's movement seeks to "reconceptualize feminist theory of the nineteenth century by examining ways in which church, state, and ...

Contents

• Firstborn Feminism: 1
• Citizenship Understood and Misunderstood: 15
• Visual Politics: 41
• Conscience Custom and Church Politics: 75
• The Political Fall of Woman: 103
• The Bonds of Matrimony: 155
• The Sovereign Body of the Citizen: 191
• Notes: 205
• Bibliography: 273
• Index: 309

About the author

Isenberg is associate professor of history at the University of Northern Iowa.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America; Gender and American Culture
• Author: Nancy Isenberg
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press, 1998
• ISBN: 0807866830, 9780807866832
• Length: 319 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / 19th Century; Political Science / Civil Rights; Social Science / Women's Studies