By Jon F. Sensbach (NHC Fellow, 2001–02) Rebecca’s Revival is the remarkable story of a Caribbean woman—a slave turned evangelist—who helped inspire the rise of black Christianity in the Atlantic world. All but unknown today, Rebecca Protten left an enduring influence on African-American religion and society. Born in 1718, Protten had a childhood conversion experience, gained … Continued
By Janet Beizer (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) If questions of subjectivity and identification are at stake in all biographical writing, they are particularly trenchant for contemporary women biographers of women. Often, their efforts to exhume buried lives in hope of finding spiritual foremothers awaken maternal phantoms that must be embraced or confronted. Do women writing in … Continued
Edited by Daina Ramey Berry (NHC Fellow, 2007–08; 2008–09) Slavery in the history of the United States continues to loom large in our national consciousness, and the role of women in this dark chapter of the American past is largely under-examined. This is the first encyclopedia to focus on the daily experiences and roles of … Continued
By Jodi Bilinkoff (NHC Fellow, 1999–00) In early modern Catholic Europe and its colonies priests frequently developed close relationships with pious women, serving as their spiritual directors during their lives, and their biographers after their deaths. In this richly illustrated book, Jodi Bilinkoff explores the ways in which clerics related to those female penitents whom … Continued
Edited by Mia Bay (NHC Fellow, 2009–10), Farah J. Griffin, and Martha Jones Despite recent advances in the study of black thought, black women intellectuals remain often neglected. This collection of essays by fifteen scholars of history and literature establishes black women's places in intellectual history by engaging the work of writers, educators, activists, religious … Continued
By Dyan Elliott (NHC Fellow, 1997–98; 2012–13) Medieval clerics believed that original sin had rendered their "fallen bodies" vulnerable to corrupting impulses—particularly those of a sexual nature. They feared that their corporeal frailty left them susceptible to demonic forces bent on penetrating and polluting their bodies and souls. Drawing on a variety of canonical and … Continued
By Sandya Hewamanne (NHC Fellow, 2011–12) Sandya Hewamanne's Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone analyzed how female factory workers in Sri Lanka's free trade zones challenged conventional notions about marginalized women at the bottom of the global economy. In Restitching Identities in Rural Sri Lanka Hewamanne now follows many of these same women to explore the ways in … Continued
By Linda K. Kerber (NHC Fellow, 1990–91) As a leading historian of women, Linda K. Kerber has played an instrumental role in the radical rethinking of American history over the past two decades. The maturation and increasing complexity of studies in women's history are widely recognized, and in this remarkable collection of essays, Kerber's essential … Continued
By Kathryn Kish Sklar (NHC Fellow, 1995–96) This masterful biography by one of America's foremost historians of women tells the story of Florence Kelley, a leading reformer in the Progressive Era. The book also serves as a political history of the United States during a period of transforming change when women worked to end the … Continued
By Trudier Harris (NHC Fellow, 1996–97; NHC Fellow, 2018–19) Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature posits strength as a frequently contradictory and damaging trait for black women characters in several literary works of the twentieth century. Authors of these works draw upon popular images of African American women in producing what … Continued