The Practice of U.S. Women's History: Narratives, Intersections, and Dialogues

381 Pages·2007·3.166 MB·English

by  Vicki L. Ruiz, S. J. Kleinberg, Eileen Boris

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The Practice of U.S. Women’s History
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The Practice of U.S.
Women’s History
Narratives, Intersections,
and Dialogues
Edited by
S. JAY KLEINBERG
EILEEN BORIS
VICKI L. RUIZ
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
The practice of U.S. women’s history : narratives, intersections, and dialogues /
edited by S. Jay Kleinberg, Eileen Boris, and Vicki L. Ruiz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN ----(hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN ----
(pbk. : alk. paper)
. Women—United States—History. I. Kleinberg, S. J. II. Boris, Eileen, –
III. Ruíz, Vicki.
HQ.P 
.—dc 
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available
from the British Library
This collection copyright © by Rutgers, The State University
Individual chapters copyright © in the names of their authors
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
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without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press,
Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ –. The only exception to this
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Manufactured in the United States of America
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Narratives, Intersections, and Dialogues
S. JAY KLEINBERG, EILEEN BORIS, AND VICKI L. RUIZ 1
1 Where the Girls Aren’t: Women as Reluctant Migrants
but Rational Actors in Early America
TREVOR G. BURNARD AND ANN M. LITTLE 12
2 “Your Women Are of No Small Consequence”: Native American
Women, Gender, and Early American History
GAIL D. MACLEITCH 30
3 From Daughters of Liberty to Women of the Republic:
American Women in the Era of the American Revolution
SUSAN BRANSON 50
4 Southern Women of Color and the American Revolution,
1775–1783
BETTY WOOD 67
5 From Dawn to Dusk: Women’s Work in the Antebellum Era
INGE DORNAN AND S. JAY KLEINBERG 83
6 To Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds: Women and the
American Civil War
SUSAN-MARY GRANT 106
7 Turner’s Ghost: A Personal Retrospective on Western
Women’s History
SUSAN ARMITAGE 126
8 Gender and U.S. Imperialism in U.S. Women’s History
LAURA BRIGGS 146
v
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vi CONTENTS
9 Chinese American Women in U.S. History: Explaining
Representations of Exotic Others, Passive Objects,
and Active Subjects
SHIRLEY HUNE 161
10 Migrations and Destinations: Reflections on the
Histories of U.S. Immigrant Women
DONNA R. GABACCIA AND VICKI L. RUIZ 185
11 African American Women and Migration
LESLIE BROWN 201
12 Morena/o, Blanca/o, y Café con Leche:
Racial Constructions in Chicana/o Historiography
VICKI L. RUIZ 221
13 The Woman Suffrage Movement, 1848–1920
ELIZABETH J. CLAPP 238
14 Engendering Social Welfare Policy
EILEEN BORIS AND S. JAY KLEINBERG 258
15 Interrupting Norms and Constructing Deviances:
Competing Frameworks in the Histories of Sexualities
in the United States
LEISA D. MEYER 280
16 Strong People and Strong Leaders: African American
Women and the Modern Black Freedom Struggle
MARY ELLEN CURTIN 308
17 A New Century of Struggle: Feminism and Antifeminism
in the United States, 1920–Present
KRISTIN CELELLO 329
Contributors 347
Index 353
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his collection originated with a conference in London sponsored by Brunel
University and the Mellon Fund of the University of Cambridge. Re-Visioning U.S.
Women’s History convened fifteen scholars from the United States and the United
Kingdom to consider the impact of women’s and gender history on standard top-
ics in U.S. history, major themes in U.S. women’s history, and fresh directions
within women’s history. Trevor Burnard and Inge Dornan co-organized this meet-
ing with S. Jay Kleinberg.
S. Jay Kleinberg expresses her gratitude to the Research Committee of Brunel
University and to Professor Tony Badger, Master of Clare College, Cambridge and
Mellon Professor of American History, for material assistance in funding the con-
ference. The supportive community of Americanists who are part of the British
Association for American Studies and members of the Centre for American,
Transatlantic, and Caribbean History at Brunel University have provided a colle-
gial intellectual environment and shared interests. Nic, Kirsten, and Peter have
been, as always, the ideal family: loving, interested, supportive, and tolerant.
Eileen Boris would like to thank Blair Hull for his generosity in endowing the
Hull Chair, which she holds, and providing her with resources to pursue this
project; her assistant for this book, Leandra Zarnow, who represents the best of
the next generation of women’s and gender historians of the United States; her
other women’s history graduate students at the University of California, Santa
Barbara, over the last five years, Carolyn Herbst Lewis, Sandra Dawson, April
Haynes, Danielle Swiontek, Carol Feinberg, Warren Wood, Andrea Gill, and
Bianca Murillo; her other graduate assistants, Jill Jensen, Beth Currans, and Ellie
Shermer; and Nelson Lichtenstein, whose support — and keen historical sense —
make all the difference. She especially was grateful for the presence of Daniel
during that weekend when Vicki and Jay came over to wrestle with turning a con-
ference into a collection.
Vicki L. Ruiz acknowledges the feminist graduate students at the University of
California, Irvine, with whom she has worked for the past five years and who are in
now in the throes of writing their dissertations — Margie Brown-Coronel, Casey
Christensen, Julie Cohen, and Ryan Kray. Although not her advisees, she also thanks
Veronica Castillo-Muñoz, Tracy Sachtjen, and Jennifer Thigpen. This community of
scholars pushes her intellectually on a daily basis and for that she is forever in their
vii
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viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
debt. And to Victor, Miguel, and Dan — thank you for all of your love and eternal
patience.
Leslie Mitchner, Kendra Boileau, and the entire Rutgers University Press
crew have proved delightful to work with. We also thank the anonymous readers
whose constructive comments and recommendations made a substantive differ-
ence in our framing of this volume and in the revisions of individual essays.
Finally, we couldn’t have completed this project without each other. A coop-
erative work always has its own rewards. This one was facilitated by e-mail; espe-
cially fortuitous was the time difference between London and California, which
allowed Jay to send corrections and comments with which those of us on the U.S.
West Coast could begin our day, and Jay, in turn, could wake up with yet another
task to perform. Eileen and Vicki must thank Jay for bringing us all together and
for the volume that follows. We are grateful to the patience and hard labors of
our contributors, whose work we make available as they showcase the efforts of
an entire field.
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The Practice of U.S. Women’s History