Portraits of Women in the American West

by Dee Garceau-Hagen (Editor)

Overview

Men are usually the heroes of Western stories, but women also played a crucial role in developing the American frontier, and their stories have rarely been told.

This anthology of biographical essays on women promises new insight into gender in the 19C American West. The women featured include Asian Americans, African-Americans and Native American women, as well as their white counterparts. The original essays offer observations about gender and sexual violence, the subordinate status of women of color, their perseverance and influence in changing that status, a look at the gendered religious legacy that shaped Western Catholicism, and women in the urban and rural, industrial and agricultural West.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415948036
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/01/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	286
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dee Garceau-Hagen is Associate Professor of History and Chair of Women's Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She is the co-editor of Across the Great Divide: Cultures of Manhood in the American West (Routledge).

Table of Contents

Table of Contents,,Introduction,Dee Garceau-Hagen,,1. Mining a Mythic Past: The History of Mary Ellen Pleasant,Lynn M. Hudson,,2. Rape Narratives on the Northern Paiute Frontier: Sarah Winnemucca, Sexual Sovereignty, and Economic Autonomy, 1844-1891,Rosemarie Stremlau,,3. Frances Fuller Victor's Promotion of Strong, Independent Womanhood: Women and Marriage Reconstructed in The New Penelope,June Johnson Bube,,4. We Had No Assistance from Anyone - Happier to Do It Alone: Montana, the Missions, and Mother Amadeus,Anne M. Butler,,5. Finding Mary Fields: Race, Gender, and the Construction of Memory ,Dee Garceau-Hagen,,6. Reclaiming Polly Bemis: China's Daughter, Idaho's Legendary Pioneer,Ruthanne Lum McCunn,,7. Unlikely Champion: Emma Rose Sansaver, 1884-1925,Linda Peavey and Ursula Smith,,8. The Curative Space of the American West in the Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart,Natalie Dykstra,,9. Elizabeth Layton DeMary and the Culture Club: New Womanhood in a Reclamation Settlement Community,Laura Woodworth-Ney

Editorial Reviews

"The personal profiles in Portraits of Women in the American West reveal the fascinating and complex dynamics of women's lives in the American West. This collection's multidimensional and multi-cultural representations open up new and important perspectives on diverse peoples and places. Each chapter holds rewarding insights for attentive readers." — Clyde Milner, editor of The Oxford History of the American West
"This book is a smorgasbord of delectable essays that introduce new subjects and recast well-known characters of the American West. The confusion, humiliation, and terror of rape and racism, as well as the joy and satisfaction of work, homemaking, and organizing are conveyed in this collection of illuminating and sensitive biographical essays." — Mary Murphy, author of Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte, 1914-41
"These are women who challenged, reordered, and recreated lives that often did not fit conventional cultural expectations of women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." — Sandra Schackel, editor of Western Women's Lives: Continuity and Change in the Twentieth Century

From the Publisher