Journal of Women's History articles from June 1997

Journal of Women's History archives from June 1997

Partisan women in the progressive era: the struggle for inclusion in American political parties.
June 22, 1997... This article examines U.S. women's struggles to define their place and role in party politics at the turn of the twentieth century. The historical narrative moves from the establishment of Republican women's clubs in the 1880s...

The end of gender solidarity: the history of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform in the United States, 1929-1933.
June 22, 1997... With the establishment of Prohibition in the United States in 1920, the American public believed that women stood solidly behind the legislation because it would reduce the evils long associated with male drunkenness. The...

"The lady from Ontario": Marjorie Wells Pinney and the struggle for democratic socialism in Ontario.
June 22, 1997... This is a biographical study of Marjorie Wells Pinney, a leading activist in Ontario's democratic socialist party, the CCF/NDP, from the 1940s to the 1980s. I illustrate two things in this article. First, that in her capacity...

Hallelujah lasses in the battle for souls: working and middle-class women in the Salvation Army in the United States, 1872-1896.
June 22, 1997... The Salvation Army is a largely understudied religious movement in late nineteenth-century America. Traditionally, American historians regard the Salvation Army as part of the Protestant response to urban life. Discussions have...

The prayer closet as a "room of one's own:" two Anglican women devotional writers at the turn of the eighteenth century.
June 22, 1997... A reading of the devotional works of two Anglican women from opposite ends of the political spectrum supports the surprising contention that gains in early modern women's roles owe something to the rather staid piety of the...

Subject to change: theories and paradigms of U.S. feminist history.
June 22, 1997... This essay is an abridged and substantially revised translation of an article originally written in German to familiarize a German audience with the development of and the theoretical debates within U.S. women's history. As...

"What! Such things have happened and no women were taught about them:" a nineteenth-century French's woman's view of the importance of women's history.
June 22, 1997... This remarkable meditation on the importance of women's history was published during the Revolution of 1848 by Henriette Wild (dates not known), who signed as "Henriette, artiste." Although she was among the French women...

Writing biographies of women. (20th century feminist biographies)
June 22, 1997... Perhaps ironically, certainly usefully, the time I took completing a biography delayed this review. It is a good thing this essay comes after my book, for actually constructing a biography allowed me to compare these authors' experiences with my...

The Challenge of Feminist Biography: Writing the Lives of Modern American Women.
June 22, 1997... Sara Alpern, Joyce Antler, Elisabeth Israels Perry, and Ingrid Winther Scobie, eds. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. 210 pp. ISBN 0-25-201926 (cl). The Challenge of Feminist Biography collects essays by women historians who have...

All Sides of the Subject: Women and Biography.
June 22, 1997... Teresa Iles, ed. New York: Teachers College Press, 1992. xi + 174 pp. ISBN 0-80-776255-5 (pb); 0-80-776256-3 (cl). Like The Challenge of Feminist Biography, All Sides of the Subject: Women and Biography is a collection of essays by women...

Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women's Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century.
June 22, 1997... Sidonie Smith. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. xii + 226 pp. ISBN 0-25-335286-x (cl); 0-25-320789-4 (pb). The third book under review here, Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women's Autobiographical Practices in the...

Pandora's box: gender and the complicating of modern German history.
June 22, 1997... Does it just seem so in retrospect, or was modern German history a fairly straightforward field in the 1970s and early 1980s? Periodization was easy; one had wars and changes in regime so that dates like 1648, 1871, 1918, 1933, and 1945...

Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950.
June 22, 1997... Atina Grossmann. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. xvii + 304 pp. ISBN 0-19-505672-8. Of the other books under discussion, it is Atina Grossmann's Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform,...

Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany: 1700-1815.
June 22, 1997... Isabel V. Hull. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996. xiii + 467 pp. ISBN 0-8014-3126-3. What happens when we put sex at the center of our historical inquiry? Isabel Hull's impressive new study, Sexuality, State, and Civil...

Taking the Hard Road: Life Course in French and German Workers' Autobiographies in the Era of Industrialization.
June 22, 1997... Mary Jo Maynes. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. xii 263 pp. ISBN 0-8078-4497-7. Class, not sex, is the focus of Mary Jo Maynes's new book, Taking the Hard Road: Life Course in French and German Workers'...

A German Women's Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880-1933.
June 22, 1997... Nancy Reagin. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. xii + 322 pp. ISBN 0-8078-4525-6. It is at this point that Nancy Reagin's book, A German Women's Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1880-1933, best enters...

Cherchez la femme: new books on women and gender in France.
June 22, 1997... How to write women's history? Or should we try, since conceptions of gender, which always signify something beyond themselves, are always changing? I probably speak for most when I say we need it all, let the method fit the subject, and let's...

Women Teachers and Popular Education in Nineteenth-Century France: Social Values and Corporate Identity at the Normal School Institution.
June 22, 1997... Anne T. Quartararo. Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1995. 232 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-87413-545-1 (cl). Women Teachers and Popular Education in Nineteenth-Century France is a monograph in the very best sense of the word. The reader who...

Women and Schooling in France, 1815-1914: Gender, Authority and Identity in the Female Schooling Sector.
June 22, 1997... Shamir Gemie. Keele, England: Keele University Press, 1995. 256 pp. ISBN 1-85331-151-0 (cl) If Quartararo's book has any failing it is that this sense of corporate identity never completely comes alive and she never defines what she means...

Gender and the Politics of Social Reform in France: 1870-1914.
June 22, 1997... Elinor A. Accampo, Rachel G. Fuchs, and Mary Lynn Stewart, eds. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. 272 pp. ISBN 0-8018-5060-6 (cl); 0-08018-5061-4 (pb). In Gender and tile Politics of Social Reform in France, 1870-1914...

Civilization Without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927.
June 22, 1997... Mary Louise Roberts. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 337 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-226-72121-3 (cl); 0-226-72122-1 (pb). A world gone out of control is the subject of Mary Louise Roberts's stimulating and original Civilization...

Federal maternal policy and gender politics: comparative insights.
June 22, 1997... What these three books share is a comparative approach to the origins, content, and trajectory of "maternalist" policies and politics in Western capitalist democracies between 1880 and 1940. Maternalism, as employed by the various authors,...

Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States.
June 22, 1997... Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds. New York: Routledge, 1993. vvi +714 pp. ISBN 0-415-903-14-9 (pb). Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States, edited by Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, is a collection of...

Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in the United States and France, 1890-1920.
June 22, 1997... Alisa Klaus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. viii + 298 pp. ISBN 0-8014-2860-2 (cl). In Every Child a Lion, Alisa Klaus offers a comparative account of the early history of maternal and child welfare policy in the United States and...

Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States.
June 22, 1997... Theda Skocpol. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992. vii + 447 pp. ISBN 0-674-71765-1 (cl). In Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, Skocpol argues that existing scholarship on comparative welfare-state formation has assumed a...