The Gendered Republic: Reimagining Identity in the New Nation

by Craig Thompson Friend (Editor), Lorri Glover (Editor), Jamie Myers (Contribution by), Ashley E. Moreshead (Contribution by), Antwain K. Hunter (Contribution by)

Overview

An authoritative assessment of the early American republic through the lens of gender

What does it mean to study early American history through gender? The essays in this collection, written by the best emerging and established historians in the field, bring together women’s history with masculinity studies to showcase the transformative impact of gender history on our understanding of the early American republic. In addition to state-of-the-field historiographical overviews, The Gendered Republic features essays that use gender history to suggest new chronological and geographic frameworks, broaden understandings of politics and citizenship, highlight the complexities of intersectional identities, and explore new approaches that center bodies and sexualities. Collectively, the contributors showcase the vibrancy of gender history as a frame of inquiry, revealing how shifting notions of women’s and men’s roles shaped the lives of people in the early American republic—White, Black, and Indigenous—and how those people, in turn, experienced and redefined gender and, with it, their communities, cultures, laws, families, and nations.

Contributors: Jacqueline Beatty, York College of Pennsylvania * Rachel Hope Cleves, University of Victoria * Shannon C. Eaves, College of Charleston * Craig Thompson Friend, North Carolina State University * Lorri Glover, Saint Louis University * Antwain K. Hunter, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill * Lynn Kennedy, University of Lethbridge * Joshua A. Lynn, Eastern Kentucky University * Kenneth E. Marshall, SUNY Oswego * Ashley E. Moreshead, University of Central Florida * Jamie Myers, University of North Carolina, Pembroke * Steven Peach, Tarleton State University * Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch, University of Toledo * Stephanie J. Richmond, Norfolk State University * Rachel E. Walker, University of Hartford * Timothy J. Williams, University of Oregon

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813953731
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	11/19/2025
Series:	Jeffersonian America
Pages:	390
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Craig Thompson Friend is Professor of History and Public History at North Carolina State University. Lorri Glover is Professor of History at Saint Louis University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Sophisticated and compelling. The Gendered Republic spans over a number of fields — women’s history, masculinity studies, cultural studies, and class, gender, and race studies — providing fresh angles to better assess the creation and evolution of the American nation. The essays recover women’s lives in their own terms and respect the complexity and diversity of women’s experiences. It expands the historical discourse, and is destined to become a classic.—Maurizio Valsania, University of Torino, Italy, author of First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity

This wonderful collection of essays by seasoned gender historians brings us fresh perspectives and conclusions that completely transform the history of the Early Republic. The twelve topical essays, with each breaking new ground in some way, and especially the two historiographical essays importantly highlight all that we have learned over the last few decades about how to analyze the lives of men and women in this era. Indeed, taken together, this collection not only fundamentally alters our understanding of how gender worked in the new nation, but also how the new nation completely rested on gender definitions and conceptions. The essays all urge us to reframe, recenter, and reimagine a new history of the Early Republic that is as capacious as it is complex. By asking questions about how femininity, masculinity, and sexuality shaped Americans lives and functioned in the new republic, these well-crafted essays reveal the diversity of individuals and experiences that made up American society, while also finding the common patterns and threads that demonstrate that gender mattered more in this era than we have ever thought. Questions about citizenship, power, and rights were grounded in gendered ideas—and those questions and ideas are still so relevant today. Written for students and professional historians alike, with stimulating questions posed after each chapter, the essays encourage readers to do history themselves as they grapple with the intriguing research and insights offered in each. This collection of thought-provoking essays raises as many interesting questions as they answer and will keep you pondering them long after you have finished reading the book.—Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, Kalamazoo College, coeditor of Women in George Washington’s World