March 3rd, 2008 at 10:13 am
Books for National Women’s History Month
Today, I’d like to bring your attention to the fact that March is National Women’s History Month. In honor of the strong contributions women have made to American history, I bring you several distinguished titles from our list in women’s history.
Now available in paperback, The Columbia Documentary History of American Women Since 1941 by Harriet Sigerman is an excellent research tool for the student of women’s history. This collection of documents chronicles the exciting and tumultuous recent history of American women, beginning with World War II. The documents speak to a series of timely topics: the ideas and changes brought about by the women’s movement, the challenges to and defense of reproductive rights, the backlash against feminism in the name of family values, and new visions for women’s lives in the twenty-first century. This book was named an American Library Association/University Press Books Committee Outstanding Title.
Continuing our exploration into the acclaimed series Columbia Guides to American History and Cultures, we move to The Columbia Guide to American Women in the Nineteenth Century edited by Catherine Clinton and Christine Lunardini. In this book the authors emphasize areas in which scholars have identified important changes (such as suffrage and reform), topics in which researchers are now making great strides (such as racial, ethnic, religious, and regional diversity), and innovative and relatively recent explorations (for example, work on female sexuality). Accessible overview articles and alphabetical encyclopedia-like entries are combined in a comprehensive, easy-to-use volume. The Times Literary Supplement praised it with, “The volume moves sensibly from addressing the needs of beginners to those of specialists, all of whom should find this guide helpful and satisfying.”
For the historian who faces the daunting task of writing comparative women’s history, Anna Cova, a professor of social science at the University of Lisbon in Portugal, has edited a guide on the methodology and practices needed in the field. The book, Comparative Women’s History, gives new insight into how to write comparative women’s history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The volume emphasizes the virtues of such research, but it also recognizes the methodological difficulties. The contributors have published widely and are well known experts in the field. This is an East European Monograph book.
Our next posting for national women’s history month will look at women’s religious history. Look for it soon! For a listing of more titles in Women’s Studies.