ABSTRACT

These essays chart major contributions to recent historiography. Carefully selected for their accessibility and accompanied by headnotes and study questions, the essays offer a clear and engaging introduction for the non-specialist. The introduction describes the emergence of gender as a subject of historical investigation and in ten essays, historians explore the meanings and significance of gender in American history since 1890. The volume shows how the interpretation of gender expands and revises our understanding of significant issues in twentieth-century history, such as work, labour protest, sexuality, consumption and social welfare. It offers new perspectives on visual representations and explores the politics of historical subjects and the politics of our own historical revisions.

chapter 1|13 pages

Introduction

part 1|110 pages

Sexuality and Gender

chapter 3|29 pages

Sexual Geography and Gender Economy

The Furnished Room Districts of Chicago, 1890–1930

chapter 4|34 pages

Christian Brotherhood or Sexual Perversion?

Homosexual identities and the construction of sexual boundaries in the World War I era 1

part 2|80 pages

Work and Consumption in Visual Representations

chapter 6|28 pages

Art, the “New Woman,” and Consumer Culture

Kenneth Hayes Miller and Reginald Marsh on Fourteenth Street, 1920–40

chapter 7|27 pages

Manly Work

Public art and Masculinity in Depression America

chapter 8|23 pages

Gendered Labor

Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter and the Discourses of Wartime Womanhood

part 3|104 pages

Gender as Political Language

chapter 10|42 pages

Disorderly Women

Gender and labor militancy in the Appalachian South