During the first week of the semester, we discussed and critiqued Joan Scott’s article, categories of analysis, and the gender binary between male and female. It is very fitting that in our second to last week—our last monograph—we discuss how the manipulation and change of sex separates from gender; the divergence shows that transsexuality and …
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Storytelling and Nadasen’s Household Workers Unite
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Nadasen, Premilla. Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement. Boston: Beacon, 2015. Oral tradition and storytelling plays a pivotal role in Premilla Nadasen’s book, Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement. As we have seen (or will see) in Tyler’s blog, …
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Imperial Brotherhood Questions
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Imperial Brotherhood John Legg and Henry Clay Adkins Let’s start by chatting with the title. In many cases titles can reflect the book’s larger argument. What are your thoughts on Imperial Brotherhood? Dean’s book hones in on the relationship between masculinity and warfare. What sort of characteristics made political leaders look …
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Gay New York by George Chauncey
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In George Chauncey’s Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, the revitalization of gay history during the pre-World War II era comes to light. This book is vital to the study of gay history and gender studies. Not only does it uncover an entire social network from …
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Gender and Jim Crow
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Generally, when we think about the complicated period of Jim Crow, we think of systems, beliefs, and motivations by white peoples to continually push down the growing rights of African American peoples. Following the turbulent period of Reconstruction, the newly rejoined (but still contested) the United States enacted laws in which segregation policies incessantly degraded …
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White Mother to a Dark Race
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Jacobs, Margaret D. White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and we should honor and acknowledge the resilience of Native peoples in the United States and Canada, as well …
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Confederate Reckoning by Stephanie McCurry
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Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South In Stephanie McCurry’s Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, the ideas and realities of Confederate demise are put under an analytical microscope. McCurry’s primary goal is to demonstrate that internal issues from within the Confederacy played a significant factor in its demise, …
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Riotous Flesh
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Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth-Century America Over the past few weeks, we’ve spent some time discussing the concept of power and how that informs our understanding of gender, women’s studies, and ideas of masculinity. I remember during one of the seminar discussions that we talked about the “civic death” and …
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Abraham in Arms – Discussion Post and Questions
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John Legg Iris Swaney Discussion Post This week’s discussion centers Ann Little’s Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial America into our collective understanding of gender history this semester. After a cursory survey of book reviews on the monograph, Little’s book came out after many considered colonial military history to have faded away. yet, …
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Out of the Shadows: Gender in Colonial and Native America
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This week’s readings, while varied and expansive, examine multiple historiographical gaps and misunderstandings of women during the Colonial, Early Republic, and Jacksonian periods of American history. All three scholars, Theda Perdue, Michelle LeMaster, and Kathleen Brown provide impeccable evidence for new modes of historical inquiry into the American past. If one could determine a common …
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