Edited by Kathryn Kish Sklar (NHC Fellow, 1995–96), Anja Schüler, and Susan Strasser Women reformers in the United States and Germany maintained a brisk dialogue between 1885 and 1933. Drawing on one another's expertise, they sought to alleviate a wide array of social injustices generated by industrial capitalism, such as child labor and the exploitation … Continued
By Edna G. Bay (NHC Fellow, 1993–94) Wives of the Leopard explores power and culture in a pre-colonial West African state whose army of women and practice of human sacrifice earned it notoriety in the racist imagination of late nineteenth-century Europe and America. Tracing two hundred years of the history of Dahomey up to the French … Continued
By Judith M. Bennett (NHC Fellow, 1993–94) Women brewed and sold most of the ale consumed in medieval England, but after 1350, men slowly took over the trade. By 1600, most brewers in London were male, and men also dominated the trade in many towns and villages. This book asks how, when, and why brewing … Continued
By Bettye Collier-Thomas (NHC Fellow, 2001–02; 2014–15) “The Negroes must have Jesus, Jobs, and Justice,” declared Nannie Helen Burroughs, a nationally known figure among black and white leaders and an architect of the Woman’s Convention of the National Baptist Convention. Burroughs made this statement about the black women’s agenda in 1958, as she anticipated the … Continued
By Akasha Gloria Hull (NHC Fellow, 1994–95) From the last part of the twentieth century through today, African-American women have experienced a revival of spirituality and creative force, fashioning a uniquely African-American way to connect with the divine. In Soul Talk, Akasha Gloria Hull examines this multifaceted spirituality that has both fostered personal healing and functioned … Continued
By Leila Ahmed (NHC Fellow, 1982–83) Are Islamic societies inherently oppressive to women? Is the trend among Islamic women to appear once again in veils and other traditional clothing a symbol of regression or an effort to return to a “pure” Islam that was just and fair to both sexes? In this book Leila Ahmed … Continued
Nineteenth-century, middle-class American women saw their behavior regulated by a social system known today as the cult of domesticity, which was designed to limit their sphere of influence to home and family. Yet within this space, they developed networks and modes of expression that allowed them to speak out on the major moral questions facing … Continued
During much of the nineteenth century, middle-class American women saw their behavior regulated by a social system known today as the cult of domesticity, which limited their sphere of influence to home and family. Within that space they developed networks and modes of expression that allowed them to speak out on major moral questions facing … Continued
From the 1890s through the 1920s, Progressivism manifested itself in a variety of ways from cleaning up slums to eliminating government corruption to Americanizing immigrants to standardizing industrial practices. Such initiatives often sought to improve life by applying insights derived from the newly emerging social sciences—disciplines like sociology, psychology, economics, and statistics. When applied to … Continued
In correspondence with her husband John as he and other leaders were framing a government for the United States, Abigail Adams (1744–1818) argued that the laws of the new nation should recognize women as something more than property and protect them from the arbitrary and unrestrained power men held over them.