In Contending Forces (1900), her best-known novel and her only work of fiction published in book form during her lifetime, Pauline Hopkins uses the conventions of the sentimental romance as she seeks to encourage social change. In its pages we encounter noble heroes and virtuous heroines, exotic settings, unsavory villains, melodramatic scenes, and a star-crossed love affair. Both an extraordinarily detailed examination of black life in nineteenth-century America and a richly textured and engrossing piece of fiction, Contending Forces remains one of the most important works produced by an African-American before World War I.

Born into an educated free black family in Portland, Maine, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930) was a pioneering playwright, journalist, novelist, feminist, and public intellectual, best known for her 1900 novel Contending Forces: A Romance of Negro Life North and South. In this critical biography, Lois Brown documents for the first time Hopkins's early family life and her ancestral connections to eighteenth-century New England, the African slave trade, and twentieth-century race activism in the North. Brown includes detailed descriptions of Hopkins's earliest known performances as a singer and actress; textual analysis of her major and minor literary works; information about her most influential mentors, colleagues, and professional affiliations; and details of her battles with Booker T. Washington, which ultimately led to her professional demise as a journalist. Richly grounded in archival sources, Brown's work offers a definitive study that clarifies a number of inconsistencies in earlier writing about Hopkins. Brown re-creates the life of a remarkable woman in the context of her times, revealing Hopkins as the descendant of a family comprising many distinguished individuals, an active participant and supporter of the arts, a woman of stature among professional peers and clubwomen, and a gracious and outspoken crusader for African American rights.

Pauline E. Hopkins (1859-1930) came to prominence in the early years of the twentieth century as an outspoken writer, editor, and critic. Frequently recognized for her first novel, Contending Forces, she is currently one of the most widely read and studied African American novelists from that period. While nearly all of Hopkins's fiction remains in print, there is very little of her nonfiction available. This reader brings together dozens of her hard-to-find essays, including longer nonfiction works such as Famous Men of the Negro Race and The Dark Races of the Twentieth Century, some of which are published here for the first time in their entirety. Through these works, along with two juvenile essays from the 1870s, a personal letter, and two speeches, readers encounter a voice that is committed to constructing an international discourse on race, recovering the militant abolitionist tradition to combat Jim Crow, celebrating black political participation during and after the Reconstruction era, articulating the connections between race and labor, and insisting on equal rights for women. Hopkins's writing will challenge contemporary scholars to rethink their understanding of black activism and modernity in the early twentieth century.

The soldiers who occupied Germany after the Second World War were not only liberators: they also brought with them a new threat, as women throughout the country became victims of sexual violence. In this disturbing and carefully researched book, the historian Miriam Gebhardt reveals for the first time the scale of this human tragedy, which continued long after the hostilities had ended. Discussion in recent years of the rape of German women committed at the end of the war has focused almost exclusively on the crimes committed by Soviet soldiers, but Gebhardt shows that this picture is misleading. Crimes were committed as much by the Western Allies – American, French and British – as by the members of the Red Army. Nor was the suffering limited to the immediate aftermath of the war. Gebhardt powerfully recounts how raped women continued to be the victims of doctors, who arbitrarily granted or refused abortions, welfare workers, who put pregnant women in homes, and wider society, which even today prefers to ignore these crimes. Crimes Unspoken is the first historical account to expose the true extent of sexual violence in Germany at the end of the war, offering valuable new insight into a key period of 20th century history.

Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest (19902-1903) is a novel by African American author Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. Originally published in The Colored American Magazine, America’s first monthly periodical covering African American arts and culture, Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest is a groundbreaking novel that addresses themes of race and colonization from the perspective of a young girl of mixed descent. As white settlers moved westward across North America, they not only displaced the indigenous population, but brought into contact peoples from opposite ends of Earth. On an island in the middle of Lake Erie, White Eagle—recently displaced after the dissolution of the Buffalo Creek reservation—has built a home for himself and his African American wife. Adopting her son Judah, White Eagle establishes a life for his family apart from the prejudices and violence of American life. A daughter, Winona, is born soon after, and grows to be proud of her rich cultural heritage. When two white hunters stumble upon the island, however, and when White Eagle is soon found dead, his family is left to the mercy of an uncaring, hostile nation. Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest is a heartbreaking work of historical fiction from a true pioneer of American literature, a woman whose talent and principles afforded her the vision necessary for illuminating the injustices of life in a nation founded on slavery and genocide. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins’ Winona: A Tale of Negro Life in the South and Southwest is a classic work of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

First published in May 1900, the Colored American Magazine provided a pioneering forum for black literary talent previously stifled by lack of encouragement and opportunity. Not only a prolific writer for the journal, Pauline Hopkins also served as one of its powerful editorial forces. This volume of her magazine novels, which appeared serially in the journal between March 1901 and November 1903, reveals Hopkins' commitment to fiction as a vehicle for social change. She weaves important political themes into the narrative formulas of nineteenth-century dime-store novels and story papers, which emphasize suspense, action, complex plotting, multiple and false identities, and the use of disguise. Offering both instruction and entertainment, Hopkins' novels also expose the limitations of popular American narrative forms when telling the stories of black characters.

"A product of literary recovery at its very best. These carefully researched essays help us to see how gender marginalized black intellectuals who happened to be women." -- Claudia Tate, George Washington University The Unruly Voice explores the literary and journalistic career of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, a turn-of-the-century African American writer who was editor in chief of the Colored American Magazine, though it was not acknowledged on the masthead. Hopkins wrote short fiction, novels, nonfiction articles, and a play believed to be the first by an African American woman. Versatile and politically committed, she was fired when the magazine was bought by an ally of Booker T. Washington's who disliked her editorial stands and unconciliatory politics. Even though more than a thousand pages of Hopkins's works have been brought back into print, The Unruly Voice is the first book devoted exclusively to her writings and the significance she holds for readers today. Contributors explore the social, political, and historical conditions that informed her literary works.

Where are the women? In traditional historical and scholarly accounts of the making and fighting of wars, women are often nowhere to be seen. With few exceptions, war stories are told as if men were the only ones who plan, fight, are injured by, and negotiate ends to wars. As the pages of this book tell, though, those accounts are far from complete. Women can be found at every turn in the (gendered) phenomena of war. Women have participated in the making, fighting, and concluding of wars throughout history, and their participation is only increasing at the turn of the 21st century. Women experience war in multiple ways: as soldiers, as fighters, as civilians, as caregivers, as sex workers, as sexual slaves, refugees and internally displaced persons, as anti-war activists, as community peace-builders, and more. This book at once provides a glimpse into where women are in war, and gives readers the tools to understood women’s (told and untold) war experiences in the greater context of the gendered nature of global social and political life.

Mars must be fed. His tools of war demand huge quantities of fodder, fuel, ammunition, and food. All these must be produced, transported, and distributed to contending forces in the field. No one can doubt the importance of feeding Mars in modern warfare, and it takes no great effort to recognize that it has always been a major aspect of large scal