Women's History Resources: History

America's Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history. It features a stunning array of personalities, from the women peering worriedly over the side of the Mayflower to feminists having a grand old time protesting beauty pageants and bridal fairs. Courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking, these women shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America.

Here is a new American history. It is full of charmers and cranks, visionaries and lost souls, and amazingly heroic women. The American Women's Almanac shows how women of all races have, individually and together, challenged injustice and pushed aside narrow definitions of womanhood.

Description This important publication is designed to introduce researchers to the opportunities for discovering American women's history and culture at the library of Congress. Covers materials such as textual sources, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs, and other audio or visual material. Intended for academics, advanced graduate students, genealogists, documentary filmmakers, set and costume designers, artists, actors, novelists, photo researchers, and general readers.  

A history of the changing roles and status of women in America from the seventeenth century through the 1980s.

While great strides have been made in documenting discrimination against women in America, our awareness of discrimination is due in large part to the efforts of a feminist movement dominated by middle-class white women, and is skewed to their experiences. Yet discrimination against racialethnic women is in fact dramatically different--more complex and more widespread--and without a window into the lives of racial ethnic women our understanding of the full extent of discrimination against all women in America will be woefully inadequate. Now, in this illuminating volume, KarenAnderson offers the first book to examine the lives of women in the three main ethnic groups in the United States--Native American, Mexican American, and African American women--revealing the many ways in which these groups have suffered oppression, and the profound effects it has had on their lives.

Energized by a wealth of new research into women's history, No Small Courage offers an unprecedented chronicle of American experience, charting women's gradual struggle for social and political independence, from the precolonial era to the present.

More than a generation after the rise of women's history alongside the feminist movement, it is still difficult, observes Catherine Brekus, to locate women in histories of American religion. Mary Dyer, a Quaker who was hanged for heresy; Lizzie Robinson, a former slave and laundress who sold Bibles door to door; Sally Priesand, a Reform rabbi; Estela Ruiz, who saw a vision of the Virgin Mary--how do these women's stories change our understanding of American religious history and American women's history? In this provocative collection of twelve essays, contributors explore how considering the religious history of American women can transform our dominant historical narratives.

First published when women's history was a newly emergent field, Root of Bitterness has achieved the status of a classic in a burgeoning body of literature. Taking three centuries of American women's experience as its province, the volume extends from the unknown voices of slaves and indentured servants to the writings of such well-known women as Jane Addams.

Encompassing both the panoramic story of Black women in America and the intimate, evocative details of the lives of individual women, Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson bring readers a new perspective on a long-neglected area of our history. This inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking narrative offers fresh scholarship and historical presentation as it goes beyond descriptions of codified oppression to present the strength, courage, and resourcefulness of African-American women as individuals and as a collective force for positive change.

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.'

A collection of essays exploring subjects pertaining to women's history, this book considers issues such as waged work, family life, political activism, community building and sexual difference from a multi-cultural perspective.

When and Where I Enter is an eloquent testimonial to the profound influence of African-American women on race and women's movements throughout American history.

Contains scholarly historical essays and primary sources relating to American women's history from 1600-2000.

Studies of the Spanish conquest in the Americas traditionally have explained European-Indian encounters in terms of such factors as geography, timing, and the charisma of individual conquistadores. Yet by reconsidering this history from the perspective of gender roles and relations, we see that gender ideology was a key ingredient in the glue that held the conquest together and in turn shaped indigenous behavior toward the conquerors.This book tells the hidden story of women during the missionization of California. It shows what it was like for women to live and work on that frontier--and how race, religion, age, and ethnicity shaped female experiences. It explores the suppression of women's experiences and cultural resistance to domination, and reveals the many codes of silence regarding the use of force at the missions, the treatment of women, indigenous ceremonies, sexuality, and dreams.

Taking a broad view of the ongoing efforts to attain rights for women, this work provides unique insight into the context of the issues and reveals the range of factors that can influence a particular policy decision. What constitutes "women's rights" depends on whom you ask--or who is in political office at the time. Understandably, women's rights have changed across time as perceptions of women and their roles have changed. What remains consistent regardless of the historic era is that rights assumed by men often must be specifically granted to women. This book presents an overview of women's rights that also addresses specific policy decisions.