Women's History Month: eBooks

Black Women in Texas History draws together a multi-author narrative of the experiences and impact of black American women from the time of slavery until the recent past. Each chapter, written by an expert on the era, provides a readable survey and overview of the lives and roles of black Texas women during that period. They look not only at how African American women have been shaped by the larger culture but also at how these women have, in turn, affected the culture and history of Texas.

The advocates of woman suffrage and black suffrage came to a bitter falling-out in the midst of Reconstruction, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it granted the vote to black men but not to women. How did these two causes, so long allied, come to this? Based on extensive research, Fighting Chance is a major contribution to women's history and to 19th-century political history--a story of how idealists descended to racist betrayal and desperate failure.

Written for everyone interested in women's and gender history, History Matters reaffirms the importance to feminist theory and activism of long-term historical perspectives. Judith M. Bennett, who has been commenting on developments in women's and gender history since the 1980s, argues that the achievement of a more feminist future relies on a rich, plausible, and well-informed knowledge of the past, and she asks her readers to consider what sorts of feminist history can best advance the struggles of the twenty-first century.

Through a lyrical narrative of her journey to Tibet in 2007, activist Canyon Sam contemplates modern history from the perspective of Tibetan women. Her glimpse of Tibet's past through the lens of the women - a visionary educator, a freedom fighter, a gulag survivor, and a child bride - affords her a unique perspective on the state of Tibetan culture today - in Tibet, in exile, and in the widening Tibetan diaspora. Gracefully connecting the women's poignant histories to larger cultural, political, and spiritual themes, the author comes full circle, finding wisdom and wholeness even as she acknowledges Tibet's irreversible changes.

Collecting stories that are both deeply personal and powerfully political, Telling Histories compiles seventeen personal narratives by leading black women historians at various stages in their careers. Their essays illuminate how--first as graduate students and then as professional historians--they entered and navigated the realm of higher education, a world concerned with and dominated by whites and men.

First published in 1973, this is an essential work on the corruption of the medical establishment and its historic roots in witch hunts. In this new edition, they build on their classic expose of the demonization of women healers and the political and economic monopolization of medicine, bringing it up to date with today's changing attitudes to these issues.

Three deaf women with widely varying stories share their experiences in this unique collection, revealing the vast differences in the circumstances of their lives, but also striking similarities. The combined effect of these three Deaf women's stories, despite the variation in their experiences, reveals the common thread that weaves through the lives of all deaf individuals.

A fascinating and inspiring story of a woman who was ahead of her time. Born in Bristol, England, in the 1820s, Elizabeth Blackwell emigrated to the US when she was young and made history by becoming the first woman to earn a medical degree. Her long career included the founding of two hospitals and a medical college for women.

This book commemorates and explores the life of one of Mississippi's great civil rights activists, Fannie Lou Hamer. Known for her daring, her brinkmanship and her impassioned speech-making, Hamer rose to prominence in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, an intrepid group which tried to unseat the predominantly white Democrats of Mississippi during the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Like many before her, this figure sought to expand freedom and basic rights to African Americans in the United States.

To identify what impelled Davison to suffer multiple imprisonments, to experience the torture of force-feedings and the insults of hostile members of the crowds who came to hear her speak, Carolyn P. Collette explores a largely ignored source-the writing to which Davison dedicated so much time and effort during the years from 1908 to 1913. Davison's writing is an implicit apologia for why she lived the life of a militant suffragette and where she continually revisits and restates the principles that guided her. In the Thick of the Fight makes available for the first time the archive of published and unpublished writings of Emily Wilding Davison.

Written with the cooperation of President Jimmy Carter and his family, this books provides an intimate glimpse inside the life of the woman who - as nurse, mother and social justice activist in segregated southwest Georgia - made a lifelong habit of breaking the rules defining a woman's place in and out of the home and the status of blacks in society. Drawing on interviews with friends and colleagues, members of the Plains, Georgia, black community, Peace Corps Volunteers who trained with her, White House insiders and key players in the civil rights movement, as well as letters, documents and photographs never before made public, this book captures the essence of the woman the press dubbed "Rose Kennedy without the hair dye" and "First Mother of the world".

A captivating look at the remarkable life of this nineteenth-century suffragist, philanthropist, and reformer. Mary Elizabeth Garrett was one of the most influential philanthropists and women activists of the Gilded Age. With Mary's legacy all but forgotten, Kathleen Waters Sander recounts in impressive detail the life and times of this remarkable woman, through the turbulent years of the Civil War to the early twentieth century. At once a captivating biography of Garrett and an epic account of the rise of commerce, railroading, and women's rights, Sander's work reexamines the great social and political movements of the age.

A biography of recordbreaking soccer player who helped the United States win a gold medal in soccer in the 1996 Olympics and the Women's World Cup in 1999.

Focusing on Phillis's early years, this profile reveals her illiterate beginnings in the Wheatley family and the turbulent pre-Revolutionary War climate in which she became an avid student and young poet.

Ann Carey McFeatters sketches O'Connor's formative years, her years at Stanford University and her inability to find a job - law firms had no interest in hiring a woman lawyer. McFeatters writes about how O'Connor juggled marriage, a career in law and politics, three sons, breast cancer, and the demands of fame. We learn how O'Connor became the Court's most important vote on such issues as abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, the role of religion in society, and the election of a president, decisions that shaped a generation of Americans.

In the generation that followed Frederick Douglass, no African American was more prominent, or more outspoken, than Ida B. Wells. Seriously considered as a rival to W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington for race leadership, Wells' career began amidst controversy when she sued a Tennessee railroad company for ousting her from a first class car, a legal battle which launched her lifelong commitment to journalism and activism. Using diary entries, letters, and published writings, McMurry illuminates Wells's fiery personality, and the uncompromising approach that sometimes lost her friendships even as it won great victories.

Provides the story of these two well-known sisters, from their earlier days when they had competed against each other in local city courts to more recent times as high-ranked tennis stars on the world stage, complete with photos, chronologies, and an index.

The first woman judge in the state of North Carolina and the first woman in the United States to be elected chief justice of a state supreme court, Susie Marshall Sharp (1907-1996) broke new ground for women in the legal profession. Anna Hayes presents Sharp's career as an attorney, distinguished judge, and politician within the context of the social mores, the legal profession, and the political battles of her day, illuminated by a careful and revealing examination of Sharp's family background, private life, and personality.

Based on research into the public sector, Challenging Women offers a radical reassessment of organizational forces for change, the barriers encountered, and the role of "challenging women": senior women managers who are faced with the task of transforming their organizations. The implications of the study go far beyond the public sector to embrace the experience of women managers in organizations everywhere. Challenging Women provides new evidence for understanding and analyzing organizational change in the context of the gender culture at work.

Historically, the contributions of women architects to their profession have been minimized or overlooked. 'Designing Women' explores the tension that has existed between the architectural profession and its women members. It demonstrates the influence that these women have had on architecture in Canada, and links their so-called marginalization to the profession's restrictive and sometimes discriminatory practices.

This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach through which it compares American feminist art and artists with their European counterparts. Challenging traditional disciplinary boundaries, it moves beyond an art-history survey to discuss the artistic field in relation to feminist theory and politics, revealing the continuing relevance of both areas for the contemporary reader. While concentrating upon the second wave of feminism in Europe and the USA, it also addresses aspects of the third wave and the current state of the feminist movement, particularly in respect to the Israeli art scene.

Gendered Media addresses the broad topic of gender and media, where "gender" is not simply a shorthand for "woman" but also embraces masculinitiy/ies, queer, lesbian and gay identities. Karen Ross provides the necessary historical context against which to read recent sex- and gender-based media phenomena such as Big Brother, Terminator, girls' use of mobile phones, women news editors, the Wonderbra generation, the Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin phenomena, and so on.

This unique and fascinating book tells the story of glamour. It explores the changing meanings of the word, its relationship to femininity and fashion, and its place in twentieth century social history. Using a rich variety of sources - from women's magazines and film to social surveys and life histories - Carol Dyhouse examines with wit and insight the history and meaning of costume, cosmetics, perfume and fur.

In a compelling approach structured as theme and variations, Barbara Sicherman offers insightful profiles of a number of accomplished women born in America's Gilded Age who lost--and found--themselves in books, and worked out a new life purpose around them. Reading themselves into quest plots and into male as well as female roles, these young women went on to create an unparalleled record of achievement as intellectuals, educators, and social reformers. Sicherman's graceful study reveals the centrality of the era's culture of reading and sheds new light on these women's Progressive-Era careers.

Looking at women's power in the home, in the workplace, and in politics from a political economy perspective, Torben Iversen and Frances Rosenbluth demonstrate that equality is tied to demand for women's labor outside the home, which is a function of structural, political, and institutional conditions. The first book to integrate the micro-level of families with the macro-level of national institutions, Women, Work, and Politics presents an original and groundbreaking approach to gender inequality.

This intriguing volume offers a feminist perspective on the 21st century war on poverty, illustrated by the words of women forced to live everyday with social policies they had no voice in developing. Topics include the struggles of daily life, crime, health care, education, employment, and a discussion of capitalism, inequality, greed, and moral obligation in a free society. In the unrestrained pursuit of wealth, this work shows, America has created a vast poverty problem, making the rich richer and forcing the poor into the forgotten class.

Women Telling Nations highlights how, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, European women, as readers and writers, contributed to the construction of national identities. Women Telling Nations underlines the quantitative importance of the circulation of these women's writings and demonstrates the extent as well as the impact of the international cross-fertilization of nations, especially by and for women: focusing on routes rather than roots.

This ground-breaking collection investigates the relationship between feminist activism and legal reform as a pathway to gender justice and social change. This important book looks at comparative insights drawn from field-based research on the processes, the challenges, and the outcomes of legal reform and feminist activism.

Fight Like a Girl offers a fearless vision for the future of feminism. By boldly detailing what is at stake for women and girls today, Megan Seely outlines the necessary steps to achieve true political, social and economic equity for all. With an eye toward what it takes to create actual change, Seely offers a practical guide for how to get involved, take action and wage successful events and campaigns.

Examines the advances that have been made towards ensuring the rights of women. It looks below the surface to find out what the reality is for women all around the world and shows how, in this post-feminist' age, women's rights are still very much an issue. Contains a brief history of women's rights, from 900BC to the present day and numerous text boxes with case studies, charts and graphs to illustrate points clearly.

A powerful and essential anthology that sheds light on the status of women throughout the world. Hailed by Alice Walker as "one of the most important human documents of the century," this collection of groundbreaking essays examines the global status of women's experiences, from oppression to persecution.

In Votes For Women, Jean H. Baker has assembled an impressive collection of new scholarship on the struggle of American women for the suffrage. Each of the eleven essays illuminates some aspect of the long battle that lasted from the 1850s to the passage of the suffrage amendment in 1920. From the movement's antecedents in the minds of women like Mary Wollstonecraft and Frances Wright, to the historic gathering at Seneca Falls in 1848, to the civil disobedience during World War I orchestrated by the National Woman's Party, the essential elements of this tumultuous story emerge in these finely-tuned chapters.

A collection of sixty short stories by women writers from across the Arab world.

This series covers texts of women writers whose work is being increasingly discussed in the study of the development of the 20th century and the Modernist movements of the 19th century, placing the works in their context.

Winner of the 2010 Richard Sullivan Prize in Fiction, Joan Frank's second story collection, In Envy Country, explores the uncertainties and triumphs of women and men in and out of love and marriage, at varying ages and stages of contemporary American life. By turns wry, pained, and amused, In Envy Country investigates those small, complex truths that gain clarity with time and distance.

Montgomery's characters blow drugs and boys, advise friends who are dying of AIDS about pennies in penny loafers, write letters to Caroline Kennedy, and fall in love with movie stars. Some lose themselves to ambivalence while contemplating motherhood; others find themselves soothed when, after hearing of the sudden death of a dear friend they seduce a stranger. Tender, poignant, and at times hilarious, the women in Whose World Is This turn common notions of love, compassion, and tradition upside down as they show us how vulnerability, although dangerous, is what makes life astonishingly beautiful and reality strangely unreal.