American Women A Concise History

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.

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 D?az del Castillo Remembers Do?a 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