In the fall of 1994 Susan Smith, a young mother from Union, South Carolina, reported that an African American male carjacker had kidnapped her two children. The news sparked a multi-state investigation and evoked nationwide sympathy. Nine days later, she confessed to drowning the boys in a nearby lake, and that sympathy quickly turned to outrage. Smith became the topic of thousands of articles, news segments, and media broadcasts -- overshadowing the coverage of midterm elections and the O. J. Simpson trial. The notoriety of her case was more than tabloid fare, however; her story tapped into a cultural debate about gender and politics at a crucial moment in American history. In Gendered Politics in the Modern South Keira V. Williams uses the Susan Smith case to analyze the "new sexism" found in the agenda of the budding neoconservatism movement of the 1990s. She notes that in the weeks after Smith's confession, soon-to-be Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich made statements linking Smith's behavior to the 1960s counterculture movement and to Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" social welfare programs. At the same time, various magazines declared the "death of feminism" and a "crisis in masculinity" as the assault on liberal social causes gained momentum. In response to this perceived crisis, Williams argues, a distinct code of gender discrimination developed that sought to reassert a traditional form of white male power. In addition to consulting a wide variety of sources, including letters from Smith written since her incarceration, Williams contextualizes the infamous case within the history of gender politics over the last quarter of the twentieth century. She reveals how the rhetoric, imagery, and legal treatment of infanticidal mothers changed and asserts that the latest shift reflects the evolution of a neoconservative politics.

The study of the New South has in recent decades been greatly enriched by research into gender, reshaping our understanding of the struggle for woman suffrage, the conflicted nature of race and class in the South, the complex story of politics, and the role of family and motherhood in black and white society. This book brings together nine essays that examine the importance of gender, race, and culture in the New South, offering a rich and varied analysis of the multifaceted role of gender in the lives of black and white southerners in the troubled decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ranging widely from conservative activism by white women in 1920s Georgia to political involvement by black women in 1950s Memphis, many of these essays focus on southern women’s increasing public activities and high-profile images in the twentieth century. They tell how women shouldered responsibilities for local, national, and international interests; but just as nineteenth-century women’s status could be at risk from too much public presence, women of the New South stepped gingerly into the public arena, taking care to work within what they considered their current gender limitations. The authors—both established and up-and-coming scholars—take on subjects that reflect wide-ranging, sophisticated, and diverse scholarship on black and white women in the New South. They include the efforts of female Home Demonstration Agents to defeat debilitating diseases in rural Florida and the increasing participation of women in historic preservation at Monticello. They also reflect unique personal stories as diverse as lobbyist Kathryn Dunaway’s efforts to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in Georgia and Susan Smith’s depiction by the national media as a racist southerner during coverage of her children’s deaths. Taken together, these nine essays contribute to the picture of women increasing their movement into political and economic life while all too often still maintaining their gendered place as determined by society. Their rich insights provide new ways to consider the meaning and role of gender in the post–Civil War South.

Between 1880 and 1930, close to 200 women were murdered by lynch mobs in the American South. Many more were tarred and feathered, burned, whipped, or raped. In this brutal world of white supremacist politics and patriarchy, a world violently divided by race, gender, and class, black and white women defended themselves and challenged the male power brokers. Crystal Feimster breaks new ground in her story of the racial politics of the postbellum South by focusing on the volatile issue of sexual violence. Pairing the lives of two Southern women—Ida B. Wells, who fearlessly branded lynching a white tool of political terror against southern blacks, and Rebecca Latimer Felton, who urged white men to prove their manhood by lynching black men accused of raping white women—Feimster makes visible the ways in which black and white women sought protection and political power in the New South. While Wells was black and Felton was white, both were journalists, temperance women, suffragists, and anti-rape activists. By placing their concerns at the center of southern politics, Feimster illuminates a critical and novel aspect of southern racial and sexual dynamics. Despite being on opposite sides of the lynching question, both Wells and Felton sought protection from sexual violence and political empowerment for women. Southern Horrors provides a startling view into the Jim Crow South where the precarious and subordinate position of women linked black and white anti-rape activists together in fragile political alliances. It is a story that reveals how the complex drama of political power, race, and sex played out in the lives of Southern women.

Exploring the gendered dimension of political conflicts, Laura Edwards links transformations in private and public life in the era following the Civil War. Ideas about men's and women's roles within households shaped the ways groups of southerners--elite and poor, whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans--envisioned the public arena and their own places in it. By using those on the margins to define the center, Edwards demonstrates that Reconstruction was a complicated process of conflict and negotiation that lasted long beyond 1877 and involved all southerners and every aspect of life.

Dynamics of gender and sexuality -- Bodies, pleasures, and desires : transgender practices, same-sex relations, and heteronormative sexualities -- Bodies on the line

Women Speak Nation underlines the centrality of gender within the ideological construction of nationalism. The volume locates itself in a rich scholarship of feminist critique of the relationship between political, economic, cultural, and social formations and normative gendered relations to try and understand the cross-currents in contemporary feminist theorizing and politics. The chapters question the gendered depictions of the nation as Hindu, upper caste, middle class, heterosexual, able-bodied Indian mother. The volume also brings together interviews and short essays from practitioners and activists who voice an alternative reimagining of the nation. The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of gender, politics, modern South Asian history, and cultural studies.

In 1868, the state of Georgia began to make its rapidly growing population of prisoners available for hire. The resulting convict leasing system ensnared not only men but also African American women, who were forced to labor in camps and factories to make profits for private investors. In this vivid work of history, Talitha L. LeFlouria draws from a rich array of primary sources to piece together the stories of these women, recounting what they endured in Georgia's prison system and what their labor accomplished. LeFlouria argues that African American women's presence within the convict lease and chain-gang systems of Georgia helped to modernize the South by creating a new and dynamic set of skills for black women. At the same time, female inmates struggled to resist physical and sexual exploitation and to preserve their human dignity within a hostile climate of terror. This revealing history redefines the social context of black women's lives and labor in the New South and allows their stories to be told for the first time.

This book provides a short and accessible introduction to the field of gender history, one that has vastly expanded in scope and substance since the mid 1970s. Paying close attention to both classic texts in the field and the latest literature, the author examines the origins and development of the field and elucidates current debates and controversies. She highlights the significance of race, class and ethnicity for how gender affects society, culture and politics as well as delving into histories of masculinity. The author discusses in a clear and straightforward manner the various methods and approaches used by gender historians. Consideration is given to how the study of gender illuminates the histories of revolution, war and nationalism, industrialization and labor relations, politics and citizenship, colonialism and imperialism using as examples research dealing with the histories of a number of areas across the globe. Written by one of the leading scholars in this vibrant field, What is Gender History? will be the ideal introduction for students of all levels.

This book explores the gendered dynamics of institutional innovation, continuity and change in candidate selection and recruitment. Drawing on the insights of feminist institutionalism, it extends the 'supply and demand model' of political recruitment via a micro-level case study of the candidate selection process in post-devolution Scotland.

This book explores women’s campaign strategies when they ran for state and national office in California from their first opportunity after state suffrage in 1911 to the advent of modern feminism in 1970. Although only 18 won, nearly 500 women ran on the primary ballots, changing the political landscape for both men and women while struggling against a collective forgetfulness about their work. Mostly white and middle-class until the 1960s, the women discussed in this book are notable for their campaign innovations which became increasingly complex, even if not consciously connected to a usable past. They re-gendered politics as political “firsts,” pursued high hopes for organizational support from their women’s clubs, accommodated to opportunities created through incumbency and issue politics, and explored both separatist and integrationists politics with their parties. In bringing these campaigns to light, this study explores the history of California women legislators and the ways in which women on the ballots sought to transcend gendered barriers, supporting women’s equality while also recognizing the political value of connections to men in power. Organized in a loose chronology with the state’s governors, this study shows the persistent nature of women’s candidacies despite a recurring historical amnesia that complicated their progress. Remembering this history deepens our understanding of women running for office today and solidifies their credibility in a long history of women politicians.