Women's America Refocusing the Past

Featuring a mix of primary source documents, articles, and illustrations, Women's America: Refocusing the Past has long been an invaluable resource. Now in its eighth edition, the book has been extensively revised and updated to cover recent developments in U.S. women's history.

Linda K. Kerber is May Brodbeck Professor in the Liberal Arts and Professor of History, Emerita at the University of Iowa.

Jane Sherron De Hart is Professor Emerita of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Cornelia Hughes Dayton is Associate Professor of History at the University of Connecticut.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is Professor of Asian American Studies and History at the University of
California, Irvine.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Gender and the New Women's History

Part I. Early America, 1600-1820

Gender Frontiers
Kathleen M. Brown, The Anglo-Indian Gender Frontier
Jennifer L. Morgan, "Some Could Suckle Over their Shoulder:" European Depictions of Indigenous Women, 1492-1750

European Settlers: Gender Puzzles, Gender Rules
Mary Beth Norton, "Searchers again Assembled:" Gender Distinctions in Seventeenth-Century America
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Ways of Her Household
Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: The Economic Basis of Witchcraft
Ann Little, Captivity and Conversion: Daughters of New England in Canada
Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-Century New England Village

DOCUMENTS
The Trial of Anne Hutchinson, 1637
European Women and the Law: Examples from Colonial Connecticut

Hidden Transcripts within Slavery
Judith Carney, The African Women Who Preceded Uncle Ben: Black Rice in Carolina
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemings-Jefferson Treaty: Paris, 1789

DOCUMENTS
Virginia Establishes a Double Standard in Tax Law
"According to the condition of the mother . . ."
"For the prevention of that abominable mixture . . ."
A Massachusetts Minister's Slave Marriage Vows

Living Through War and Revolution
Linda K. Kerber, Why Diamonds Really are a Girl's Best Friend: The Republican Mother and the Woman Citizen

DOCUMENTS
Philadelphia Women Raise Money Door to Door
Sarah Osborn, "The bullets would not cheat the gallows . . ."
Rachel Wells, "I have Don as much to Carrey on the War as maney . . ."
Grace Galloway, Loyalist

Further Reading

Part II. America's Many Frontiers, 1820-1880

Workplace and Household Scenes
Jeanne Boydston, The Pastoralization of Housework
Stephanie Jones-Rogers, Mistresses in the Making
Thavolia Glymph, Women in Slavery: The Gender of Violence

DOCUMENTS
Eliza R. Hemmingway and Sarah Bagley, Testimony on Working Conditions in Early Factories, 1845
Maria Perkins writes to her husband on the eve of being sold, 1854
Between Nations and On the Borders
Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, Public Mothers: Creole Mediators in the Northern Borderlands
Maureen Fitzgerald, Habits of Compassion: Irish-American Nuns in New York

Intimacy and Disciplining Bodies
Sharon Block, Lines of Color, Sex, and Service: Sexual Coercion in the Early Republic
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America
James C. Mohr, Abortion in America

DOCUMENT
The Comstock Law

Reforming Society
Susan Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship: Debating Women's Anti-slavery Petitions
Gerda Lerner, The Meaning of Seneca Falls, 1848-1998
Rose Stremlau, "I Know What an Indian Woman Can Do": Sarah Winnemucca Writes About Rape on the Northern Paiute Frontier

DOCUMENTS
The Grimké Sisters, Sarah and Angelina, Talk Truth to Power
Keziah Kendall protests coverture
Ellen F. Watkins goes on the lecture circuit
The Declaration of Sentiments, 1848
Married Women's Property Acts, New York State,1848 and 1860
Sojourner Truth's visiting card, 1864

Photo Essay: Women in Public

Civil War and Aftermath
Stephanie McCurry, Women Numerous and Armed: Politics and Policy on the Confederate Home Front
Tera Hunter, Reconstruction and the Meanings of Freedom

DOCUMENTS
A.S. Hitchcock, "Young women particularly flock back & forth . . ."
Roda Ann Childs, "I was more dead than alive"
Reconstruction Amendments
Win Some, Lose Some: Women in Court
The Women's Centennial Agenda, 1876

Further Reading

Part III: Modern America Emerges, 1880-1920

Gender and the Jim Crow South
Glenda Gilmore, Forging Interracial Links in the Jim Crow South
Kim Nielsen, The Southern Identity of Helen Keller

DOCUMENTS
Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors (with an introduction by Patricia A. Schechter)
Mary McLeod Bethune, "How the Bethune-Cookman College campus started"

Women in the West
Peggy Pascoe, Ophelia Paquet, a Tillamook Indian Wife: Miscegenation Laws and the Privileges of Property
Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: From China to San Francisco's Chinatown

DOCUMENT
Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), " . . . this semblance of civilization . . ."

Change Agents
Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and Women's Activism in the Progressive Era
Annelise Orleck, From the Russian Pale to Labor Organizing in New York City
Jennifer Guglielmo, Italian Immigrant Women Anarchists Produce Feminist Theory in Pre-World War I New York and New Jersey

DOCUMENTS
Muller v. Oregon, 1908
Pauline Newman, "We fought and we bled and we died . . ."
Crystal Eastman, "Now We Can Begin"

Empire and Internationalism
Laura Wexler, A Lady Photojournalist Goes to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair
Leila Rupp, Sexuality and Politics in the Early Twentieth-Century International Women's Movement

Suffrage and Citizenship
Rebecca Edwards, Pioneers at the Polls: Woman Suffrage in the West
Ellen Carol Dubois, The Next Generation of Suffragists: Harriot Stanton Blatch and Grassroots Politics

DOCUMENTS
Chinese Exclusion: The Page Act and Its Aftermath
Mackenzie v. Hare, 1915
Equal Suffrage (Nineteenth) Amendment, 1920

Further Reading

Part IV: Storms on Many Fronts, 1920-1945

Sexuality and the Body
Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The Emerging Ideal of Slenderness in American Culture
Vicki L. Ruiz, The Flapper and the Chaperone: Mexican American Teenagers in the Southwest
Cheryl D. Hicks, Mabel Hampton in Harlem: Regulating Black Women's Sexuality in the 1920s
Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Reproduction and the Economy in the Great Depression

DOCUMENT
Margaret Sanger, "I resolved that women should have knowledge of contraception . . ."

Photo Essay: Adorning the Body

Labor and Activism
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South
Devra Anne Weber, Mexican Women on Strike in 1933: The Structure of Memory

Gendering the Nation-State
Nancy F. Cott, Equal Rights and Economic Roles: The Conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1920s
Alice Kessler-Harris, Designing Women and Old Fools: Writing Gender into Social Security Law
Blanche Wiesen Cook, Storms on Every Front: Eleanor Roosevelt and Human Rights at Home and in Europe

Women and War
Valerie Matsumoto, Japanese American Women during World War II
Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Sexual Division of Labor during World War II

Further Reading

Part V. A Transforming World, 1945-2014

Cold War Heteronormativity
Estelle Freedman, Miriam Van Waters and the Burning of Letters
Susan K. Cahn, "Mannishness," Lesbianism, and Homophobia in U.S. women's Sports
Joyce Antler, Imagining Jewish Mothers in the 1950s

Women's Cold War Activism
Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Origins of Feminism in Cold War America
Amy Swerdlow, Ladies' Day at the Capitol: Women Strike for Peace versus HUAC
Michelle M. Nickerson, Politically Desperate Housewives in Southern California
Danielle McGuire, Sexual Violence and the Long Civil Rights Movement

DOCUMENTS
Betty Friedan, "The problem that has no name"
Phyllis Schlafly, "The thoughts of one who loves life as a woman . . ."

Rethinking Family and Sex
Joanne Meyerowitz, Christine Jorgensen and The Story of How Sex Changed
Beth L. Bailey, Prescribing the Pill: The Coming of the Sexual Revolution in America's Heartland
Ji-Yeon Yuh, Korean Military Brides: Cooking American, Eating Korean
Lisa Levenstein, Hard Choices at 1801 Vine: African American Women, Child Support, and Domestic Violence in Postwar Philadelphia

DOCUMENTS
Kay Weiss, "With doctors like these for friends, who needs enemies?"
Roe v. Wade, 1973; Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1992; Carhart v. Gonzales, 2007; Recent Developments
Rethinking Marriage: Loving v. Virginia, 1967; Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965; Defense of Marriage Act, 1996; Goodridge v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 2003; Recent Developments

Gender and the Armed Forces
Margot Canaday, "Finding a Home in the Army: Before 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'"
Elizabeth L. Hillman, The Female Shape of the All-Volunteer Force

DOCUMENTS
Goesaert v. Cleary, 1948
"We were the first American women sent to live and work in the midst of guerrilla warfare. . . ."

Feminisms
Baxandall and Gordon, The Women's Liberation Movement
Judy Wu, The Vietnam War and Global Sisterhood

DOCUMENTS
The Personal is Political
Carol Hanisch, A Critique of the Miss America Protest, 1968
Jennie V. Chávez, Women of the Mexican American Movement, 1972
Editorial Staff, Rodan, Asian Women as Leaders
Combahee River Collective, The Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977

DOCUMENTS
Gender Equality and the Law
Hoyt v. Florida, 1961; Taylor v. Louisiana, 1975
Civil Rights Act, Title VII, 1964
Equal Rights Amendment, 1972
Title IX, Education Amendments of 1972
Frontiero v. Richardson, 1973
Susan Eisenberg, An Electrician Among the Hard-Hatted Women
Meritor Savings Bank v. Mechelle Vinson et al., 1986
Violence against Women Act, 1994, 2000, 2005; 2013

Borders Among Us
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Domésticas Demand Dignity
Ashraf Zahedi, Muslim-American Women After 9/11

DOCUMENTS
Wilma Mankiller and Michael Wallis, A Chief and Her People
Hillary Clinton, Women's Rights Are Human Rights, 1995

Further Reading