Contains primary source material.

"The time has come to define feminism; it is no longer possible to ignore it." The Century Magazine, 1914 In this landmark addition to scholarship, Nancy F. Cott, author of The Bonds of Womanhood, offers a new interpretation of American feminism during the early decades of this century--a period traditionally viewed as on in which women won the right to vote and then lost interest in feminist issues. Cott argues instead that his period was a time of crisis and transition from the nineteenth-century "woman movement' to the beginning of modern feminism. Many of the issues that are central to women today, says Cott, were firmly articulated in the early decades of this century. For example, the problem of defining sexual equality so as to recognize sexual difference between men and women, the ambiguous potential of a movement seeking individual freedoms for women by mobilizing sex solidarity, and the tensions involved in attaining full expression in work and love are all enduring elements of feminism seized upon by women of the 1910s and 1920s. First discussing how feminism was indebted to its predecessors, Cott shows that increasing heterogeneity and diverse loyalties among women in the early twentieth century contradicted the premise of the nineteenth-century "cause of woman" (the singular noun symbolizing the unity of the female sex). From this crisis emerged feminism, championing individual variability and refuting the premise that a singular "woman" existed. Cott focuses on the suffrage-campaign milieu in which feminism arose, giving particular attention to the character and role of the National Woman's Party from its militant suffrage days to its advocacy of the equal right amendment in the 1920s. Against prevailing interpretations of the decline of women's political activities after 1920, Cott counterposes the swelling numbers in women's voluntary associations and their political efforts. She also analyzes the pitfalls that awaited women who tried for effectiveness in the male-dominated political parties. She sets the controversy over the equal rights amendment in new context, discussing the full dimensions of the conflict as not merely over personalities, tactics, or class loyalties, but as a signal example of the modern problem of capturing sexual equality and sexual difference in law. The book explores the irony-strewn path of women who as aspiring professionals and political actors attempted to put into practice the feminist intent to replace the abstraction "woman" with, instead, "the human sex." This history--the story of women who first claimed the name feminists--builds an essential bridge between the presuffrage period and today.

Chicana Feminist Thought brings together the voices of Chicana poets, writers, and activists who reflect upon the Chicana Feminist Movement that began in the late 1960s. With energy and passion, this anthology of writings documents the personal and collective political struggles of Chicana feminists.

This collection of twenty-four original essays by leading scholars in American women's history highlights the most recent important scholarship on the key debates and future directions of this popular and contemporary field. Covers the breadth of American Women's history, including the colonial family, marriage, health, sexuality, education, immigration, work, consumer culture, and feminism. Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic. Includes expanded bibliography of titles to guide further research.

This text permits the original work of radical feminists to speak for itself. Comprised of pivotal documents written by US radical feminists, the book contains both unpublished and previously published material.

An anniversary edition of the first full study of Mexican American women in the twentieth century, with new preface

The true stories of those bold women who espoused feminism in the world of academia and forever changed our educational system and culture. In the patriarchal halls of 1970s academe, women who spoke their minds risked their careers. Yet intrepid women—students, faculty, administrators, members of the community—persisted in collaborating on women’s studies programs. In doing so, they created a movement that altered paradigms, curricula, teaching styles, and content across disciplines. In these original essays “we hear the voices of feminists exhilarated by the opportunities and challenges of creating women’s studies programs in American colleges and universities, nurtured by the women’s movement of the 1970s,” from young graduate students and newly hired faculty to tenured professors in search of ways to improve their students’ capacities to learn, veteran academics at last witnessing change, and even a few administrators (Library Journal). In all of these programs, these “founding mothers” grappled not only with issues of gender, but with those of class, race, and sexuality in a decade infused with political unrest and questioning, when civil rights and anti-war activism, as well as feminism, shaped academic worlds.

"The best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" (The New York Times Book Review); an instant classic straight from the front lines. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

Indian, European, and African women of seventeenth and eighteenth-century America were defenders of their native land, pioneers on the frontier, willing immigrants, and courageous slaves. They were also - as traditional scholarship tends to omit - as important as men in shaping American culture and history. This remarkable work is a gripping portrait that gives early-American women their proper place in history.