Use the resources below in tandem with the resources provided on the other pages (tabs) of this History guide to research women in American history. You may also want to consult the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Research Guide.
Ahead of Their Time: A Biographical Dictionary of Risk-Taking Women by
This unique reference work brings together a wealth of information about pioneering women who took risks and made remarkable strides in a diversity of fields. Whether in the name of science, sport, or humanitarianism, the spirit of adventure runs through the lives of these 75 daring woman who broke down barriers as they explored the far reaches of the globe, the depths of the seas, and the lofty expanses of space. These inspiring profiles investigate a wide range of notable women from throughout history and from around the globe. Included are the familiar and famous names such as Amelia Earhart, Jane Goodall, and Margaret Mead. Lesser known but equally inspiring women for whom it is more difficult to find information are also included, from early explorers to recent role models. An appendix offers short vignettes about women on whom little information is available, but whose accomplishments are significant particularly when they may have played a part in the contributions of other women cited here. This biographical dictionary will be a valuable research tool for students looking for information on a specific person, from a particular profession, time period or country of origin. For easy reference, alphabetized entries identify the subjects' country of origin and field of pursuit, and appendices list the names by these categories. Each biographical entry offers further suggested readings on the subject, and a more inclusive bibliography follows.
Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A biographical dictionary by
This access code card gives you access to all of MyHistoryLab's grade-boosting resources! Want a complete e-book of your textbook, too? Buy immediate access to MyHistoryLab with E-Book online with a credit card atwww.myhistorylab.com.
Notable American Women: A biographical dictionary completing the twentieth century by
Entries on almost five hundred women representing a wide range of fields of endeavor are featured in a collection of biographical essays that integrate each woman's personal life with her professional achievements, set in the context of historical developments.
Shapers of the Great Debate on Women's Rights by
The three waves of feminism are explored through the lives of the women who made history in bringing women's issues to the forefront of American society. Many early feminists supported not only women's rights, but also rights of slaves and contributed to the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, granting emancipation to slaves. They continued to work towards women's suffrage and were hopeful the Fourteenth Amendment would provide universal suffrage. However, women were not granted suffrage until the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, nearly fifty years later. It was women's fundamental need for independence and an identity of their own, separate from that of men, which thrust the women's movement forward and continues to propel it today. Many notable women, such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Billie Jean King, Betty Friedan, Helen Gurley Brown, Jane Fonda, and Sandra Day O'Connor, are included in this history of the women's movement in America. The biographical entries cite works for further reading, and the volume closes with a bibliography. The Shapers of the Great Debate series takes a biographical approach to history, following the premise that people make history in the circumstances in which they find themselves. Each volume in this series examines the lives and experiences of the individuals involved in a particular debate through both major and minor biographies.
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new windowThe Mansfield Library owns thousands and thousands of books, ebooks, serials (journals, magazines, etc.) and microfilm that contain primary source content, including transcriptions or reproductions of personal papers (such as letters and diaries) to support researching women's history in America. You can find these using OneSearch, and examples are below.
American Women's Suffrage: Voices from the Long Struggle for the Vote 1776-1965 by
For the first time, here is the full, definitive story of the movement for voting rights for American women, of every race, told through the voices of the women and men who lived it. Here are the most recognisable figures in the campaign for women s suffrage, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, but also the black, Chinese, and American Indian women and men who were not only essential to the movement but expanded its directions and aims. Here, too, are the anti-suffragists who worried about where the country would head if the right to vote were universal.
Archives of Dispossession by
One method of American territory expansion in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands was the denial of property rights to Mexican landowners, which led to dispossession. Many historical accounts overlook this colonial impact on Indigenous and Mexican peoples, and existing studies that do tackle this subject tend to privilege the male experience. Here, Karen R. Roybal recenters the focus of dispossession on women, arguing that gender, sometimes more than race, dictated legal concepts of property ownership and individual autonomy. Drawing on a diverse source base--legal land records, personal letters, and literature--Roybal locates voices of Mexican American women in the Southwest to show how they fought against the erasure of their rights, both as women and as landowners. Woven throughout Roybal's analysis are these women's testimonios--their stories focusing on inheritance, property rights, and shifts in power. Roybal positions these testimonios as an alternate archive that illustrates the myriad ways in which multiple layers of dispossession--and the changes of property ownership in Mexican law--affected the formation of Mexicana identity.
Autobiographical Writings by Early Quaker Women by
While writings by early modern Quaker women have been discussed and quoted fairly extensively, relatively few of their texts are readily or widely available. The chief purpose of this edition is to rectify this state of affairs in one central area - that of autobiographical writing. The edition contains substantial excerpts from a range of self-writings by Quaker women, composed between the 1650s and circa 1710: letters, testimonies, memoirs, accounts of spiritual development, narratives of persecution and imprisonment. Six of the texts have been freshly edited from manuscripts (including Mary Penington's A Brief Account); the others have been transcribed from the first printed editions. In his general introduction to the volume, the editor sketches the history of the Quaker movement from the 1650s to the early 1700s, and considers the role of female Quakers during the first and second phases of the movement. The introduction also surveys the types and purposes of autobiographical writings produced by female Friends, and relates these writings to key Quaker ideas, concerns and practices regarding the inner light, scripture, testimony, plain speaking, friendship, gender and community. Booy indicates the wider context of the development of autobiographical writing during the seventeenth century, and discusses briefly issues to do with the construction of the self in writing. Each text is prefaced by a substantial headnote providing biographical and historical information. Footnotes supply biblical and other references, and gloss unfamiliar or specialist vocabulary. The volume includes a comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary materials. The edition is aimed at all those interested in the history of the Quakers, whether they be scholars in the fields of religious, cultural and women's studies, or of history and literature generally.
Girl from the Gulches by
A covered wagon on a dim road, the promise of a long journey, and the wonder of what lay ahead filled the shadowy spaces of Mary Sheehan Ronan's earliest memories. By the time she was a married woman in her twenties, she was a well-seasoned pioneer, having crossed most of the country and retraced her steps back across a third of it. Ronan tells her story in this highly readable, entertaining account of one woman's life in the West during the second half of the nineteenth century. This detailed memoir recalls a girl's growing up on the Montana mining frontier, her ascent to young womanhood on a farm in southern California, her experiences as a student in a Los Angeles convent school, her return to Montana as a bride, and her life on the Flathead Indian Reservation as wife of the Indian agent. The exhilaration of a forbidden sled ride, the creaking of the hangman's rope, her father giving the last of their water to his dying mule--these things Ronan remembers with vivid clarity. A highly readable, entertaining account, Girl from the Gulches's unique perspective is a joy to read.
In Our Own Voices by
"Until a quarter century ago little was known or acknowledged about the role American women played in the shaping of America's religious history." "In Our Own Voices reclaims and affirms the previously ignored historical contributions of women by recovering many long-silenced voices. Here, woven together into a multicultural, multiethnic, and multifaith tapestry, are many of their remarkable contributions to American religion written in their own words." "Restored for contemporary women and men are the lyric voices of women representing various locales, time periods, and religious viewpoints: indigenous women, early colonists, religious council leaders and reformers, slaves and free women, commune leaders, Christian lesbians, witches, and Islamic and Buddhist feminists. Controversial issues are examined, including the clash of Catholic nuns and lay women with the hierarchy of priests, bishops, and the Pope; black women's experience with slavery and more recently with the womanist liberation movement; and the rights of women to lead and hold official office within their own religious faith." "Illuminating firsthand accounts - selections from diaries, letters, civil and religious documents, and formal histories - re-create in vivid and compelling detail the intricate fabric of women's religious aspirations, struggles, and accomplishments over the last four centuries, including: a pioneer nun's account of her meeting with Billy the Kid; Mother Jones urging miners to strike to "get a little bit of heaven before you die"; and a letter written by the founder of Hadassah stating her decision to say Kaddish for her mother." "Included among these works are the writings of such notable matriarchs as Mother Jones, Zora Neale Hurston, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Lucretia Mott, Toni Morrison, Las Hermanas, Kathryn Kuhlman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The body of their work and the spirit of their words continue to speak to both the minds and the hearts of women and men everywhere."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West by
In June 1867, the San Francisco Elevator-one of the nation\'s premier black weekly newspapers during Reconstruction-began publishing articles by a Californian calling herself \""Ann J. Trask\"" and later \""Semper Fidelis.\"" Her name was Jennie Carter (1830-1881), and the Elevator would print her essays, columns, and poems for seven years. Carter probably spent her early life in New Orleans, New York, and Wisconsin, but by the time she wrote her \""Always Faithful\"" columns for the newspaper, she was in Nevada County, California. Her work considers California and national politics, race and racism, women\'s rights and suffrage, temperance, morality, education, and a host of other issues, all from the point of view of an unabashedly strong-minded African American woman. Recovering Carter\'s work from obscurity, this volume re-presents one of the most exciting bodies of extant work by an African American journalist before the twentieth century. Editor Eric Gardner provides an introduction that documents as much of Carter\'s life in California as can be known and places her work in historical and lite-rary context. Eric Gardner is chair and professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University. He is the editor of Major Voices: The Drama of Slavery, and his work has appeared in African American Review, the African American National Biography, and Legacy.
Montana Memories by
Published by the Salish Kootenai College Press, Montana Memories is the life story of a mixed-blood Indian woman in western Montana and southern Alberta during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in 1866 to a white trader and a Shoshone and Salish Indian mother, Emma Magee saw Montana change from Indian Country to a part of industrial America. When she was born, mixed-blood Indians were socially part of the white community in Montana. By the time she died in 1950, however, mixed-bloods were considered Indians. In the memoirs of her long and dramatic life, Magee recounts many interesting aspects of early Montana: -Her father's experiences as a free trader in the Rocky Mountains. -Her mother's tales of her Shoshone ancestors. -Her memories of her life as a mixed-blood child in the Missoula Valley during the nineteenth century. -Her father's and other relatives' role in the Nez Perce War of 1877. -Her travels with her first husband through the Upper Flathead Country and the Thompson Falls area of Montana and High River, Alberta. -Her move with her second husband to the Flathead Indian Reservation and her impressions of the impact of allotment and the new irrigation system on the reservation community. -Her daughter's life in the boarding school at St. Ignatius Mission in the early twentieth century.
The Selected Papers of Jane Addams by
Venturing into Usefulness, the second volume of The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, documents the experience of this major American historical figure, intellectual, social activist, and author between June 1881, when at twenty-one she had just graduated from Rockford Female Seminary, and early 1889, when she was on the verge of founding the Hull-House settlement with Ellen Gates Starr. During these years she evolved from a high-minded but inexperienced graduate of a women's seminary into an educated woman and seasoned traveler well-exposed to elite culture and circles of philanthropy. Themes inaugurated in the previous volume are expanded here, including dilemmas of family relations and gender roles; the history of education; the dynamics of female friendship; religious belief and ethical development; changes in opportunities for women; and the evolution of philanthropy, social welfare, and reform ideas.
The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volumes 1-4 by
The birth control crusader, feminist, and reformer Margaret Sanger was one of the most controversial and compelling figures in the twentieth century. The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1 is composed of Sanger's letters, diaries, journals, articles, and speeches, most of which have not appeared previously in print. Now in paperback, the book documents the critical phases and influences of an American feminist icon and offers rare glimpses into her working-class childhood, burgeoning feminism, spiritual and scientific interests, sexual explorations, and diverse roles as wife, mother, lover, nurse, journalist, radical socialist, and activist.
Southern Women in the Progressive Era by
Riveting, revealing stories from women of all walks of southern life taking on the challenges of the Progressive Era From the 1890s to the end of World War I, the reformers who called themselves progressives helped transform the United States, and many women filled their ranks. Through solo efforts and voluntary associations, both national and regional, women agitated for change, addressing issues such as poverty, suffrage, urban overcrowding, and public health. Southern Women in the Progressive Era presents the stories of a diverse group of southern women--African Americans, working-class women, teachers, nurses, and activists--in their own words, casting a fresh light on one of the most dynamic eras in U.S. history. These women hailed from Virginia to Florida and from South Carolina to Texas and wrote in a variety of genres, from correspondence and speeches to bureaucratic reports, autobiographies, and editorials. Included in this volume, to name but a few of the selections, are the previously unpublished memoir of the civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded a school for black children; the correspondence of a textile worker, Anthelia Holt, whose musings to a friend reveal the day-to-day joys and hardships of mill-town life; the letters of the educator and agricultural field agent Henrietta Aiken Kelly, who attempted to introduce silk culture to southern farmers; and the speeches of the popular novelist Mary Johnson, who fought for women's voting rights. Always illuminating and often inspiring, each story highlights the part that regional identity--particularly race--played in health and education reform, suffrage campaigns, and women's club work. Together these women's voices reveal the promise of the Progressive Era, as well as its limitations, as women sought to redefine their role as workers and citizens of the United States.
Women's Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present by
Historical events of the last three centuries come alive through these women’s singular correspondences—often their only form of public expression. In 1775, Rachel Revere tries to send financial aid to her husband, Paul, in a note that is confiscated by the British; First Lady Dolley Madison tells her sister about rescuing George Washington’s portrait during the War of 1812; one week after JFK’s assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy pens a heartfelt letter to Nikita Khrushchev; and on September 12, 2001, a schoolgirl writes a note of thanks to a New York City firefighter, asking him, “Were you afraid?” The letters gathered here also offer fresh insight into the personal milestones in women’s lives. Here is a mid-nineteenth-century missionary describing a mastectomy performed without anesthesia; Marilyn Monroe asking her doctor to spare her ovaries in a handwritten note she taped to her stomach before appendix surgery; an eighteen-year-old telling her mother about her decision to have an abortion the year after Roe v. Wade; and a woman writing to her parents and in-laws about adopting a Chinese baby. With more than 400 letters and over 100 stunning photographs, Women’s Letters is a work of astonishing breadth and scope, and a remarkable testament to the women who lived–and made–history. From the Hardcover edition.
Select the "Archives and Special Collections" tab at the top of the page to find further information on UM and other archival collections.
Archives and Special Collections has many manuscript collections, oral histories, and photography collections created by or related to women in Montana and Missoula, in particular. Writers, professors, politicians, wives, teachers, ranchers, doctors, conservationists, mothers, poets, students, historians, pioneers, smokejumpers, postmasters, activists, and a filmmaker are all represented in the records. There are also collections created by women’s social and civic organizations and materials generated by various University of Montana women’s clubs and departments founded by or directed toward women.
Interview project topics include: women and feminists in Montana; forestry, land use and conservation, and the environment; Montana politics and politicians; smokejumping; homesteading and fur trapping in Montana; and University of Montana history. The majority of our oral history interviews can be found searching OneSearch (use "oral history" as one of your search terms).
Select the other tabs at the top of the page (e.g., Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, U.S. and Canadian History) for further database recommendations.
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowFull text digitized reproductions of more than 1,500 eighteenth and nineteenth century American newspapers and periodicals archived at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). Titles include general interest, children's, women's, early scientific, and professional publications that chronicle the development of America across 150 years, published from 1740-1940.
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowFull text of current newspaper, magazine, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, as well as historical coverage of Native American, African American, and Hispanic American periodicals, from 1959-1989. Specific ethnic groups include African American/Caribbean/African, Arab/Middle Eastern, Asian/Pacific Islander, European/Eastern European, Hispanic, Jewish, and Native. See also the Diversity Collection to search Ethnic NewsWatch, GenderWatch and Alt-PressWatch in one platform.
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowFull text of scholarly and popular articles and gray literature titles focusing on the evolution of gender roles in society. Covers topics related to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender studies; family studies; gender studies, and women's studies, from 1970-present. See also the Diversity Collection to search Ethnic NewsWatch, GenderWatch and Alt-PressWatch in one platform.
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowFull text of several million pages of digitized primary source materials drawn from the National Archives, presidential libraries, and the archival papers of key organizations and individuals, presented in six modules: (1) Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records, (2) Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 1, (3) NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files, (4) ?NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces, (5) Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Part 1, (6) Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975.
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowFull text of all 2,800+ academic journals on JSTOR that span more than 60 disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, along with millions of primary sources across four collections: Global Plants, 19th Century British Pamphlets, Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa, and World Heritage Sites: Africa. Also explore 3+ million images from ARTstor and over 10,000 open access books. Note: The library does not license any collections of fee-based books from JSTOR. New collections added Aug 2023, are identified below. See more... for details.
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window This link opens in a new windowJournals published by state historical societies often contain transcripts of primary source accounts of individuals lives in, and activities of, that state. Below are some examples.
Be sure to look at resources provided on the "Primary Sources" tab linked above, in addition to the resources below.