In Rochester, New York, where I was raised, Susan Anthony and Frederick Douglass are local heroes. But in the late 1960s, I was drawn more to grassroots movements than charismatic leaders. Despite dropping out of college—twice—I completed a B.A. in 1974 and then pursued a PhD in History. My 1981 dissertation and first book focused on three networks of mainly white female activists in nineteenth-century Rochester. Of the dozens of women I studied, Amy Post most clearly epitomized the power of interracial, mixed-sex, and cross-class movements for social justice. After years of inserting Post in articles, textbooks, and websites, I finally published Radical Friend in hopes of inspiring scholars and activists to follow her lead.
Thavolia Glymph analyzes the many ways that women—white and Black, enslaved and free, North and South—sought to promote or constrain the radical transformations promised by the Civil War. Sheinterweaves well-known stories of white nurses and teachers and northern white feminists who labored to expand their claims on the nation with the lesser-known efforts of free, fugitive, and self-emancipated Black women and poor and working-class white women to ensure that the war led to greater liberty. Even some plantation mistresses became more politically active in efforts to impede Union military campaigns. This powerful book expands our concept of activism, forcing us to rethink its many meanings, sites, and goals in times of crisis.
Historians of the Civil War often speak of "wars within a war--the military fight, wartime struggles on the home front, and the political and moral battle to preserve the Union and end slavery. In this broadly conceived book, Thavolia Glymph provides a comprehensive new history of women's roles and lives in the Civil War--North and South, white and black, slave and free--showing how women were essentially and fully engaged in all three arenas. Glymph focuses on the ideas and ideologies that drove women's actions, allegiances, and politics. We encounter women as they stood their ground, moved into each other's territory,…
As a child, I was drawn to the silences in family stories and as a young adult, the gaps in official records. Now I’m a former English professor turned full-time writer who is fascinated with who gets written out of history, and why. I love exploring overlooked lives, especially women’s lives—from Stalin’s female relatives to nineteenth-century shopgirls, and most recently, a pair of early medieval queens.
In Women Warriors, the footnotes are every bit as informative and bitingly funny as the text itself. Toler travels across many cultures and eras, from ancient times up until the 20th century, to show that, like it or not, “women have always gone to war.” She covers some women you’ve likely heard of before—like Boudica, Hua Mulan, and Joan of Arc—as well as many others you probably haven’t—like Tomyris, Artemisia II, and Lakshmi Bai. These mini-biographies, taken together, provide an eye-opening and unforgettable corrective about women and warfare.
Who says women don’t go to war? From Vikings and African queens to cross-dressing military doctors and WWII Russian fighter pilots, these are the stories of women for whom battle was not a metaphor.
The woman warrior is always cast as an anomaly—Joan of Arc, not GI Jane. But women, it turns out, have always gone to war. In this fascinating and lively world history, Pamela Toler not only introduces us to women who took up arms, she also shows why they did it and what happened when they stepped out of their traditional female roles to take on other…
It's 1943, and World War II has gripped the nation, including the Stilwell family in Jacksonville, Alabama. Rationing, bomb drills, patriotism, and a changing South barrage their way of life. Neighboring Fort McClellan has brought the world to their doorstep in the form of young soldiers from all over the…
An astonishing history of women in war. An eye-opening insight into the sacrifices and incredible bravery of women who demanded they were fully part of the war.
'It would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original' - Viv Groskop, Observer
Extraordinary stories from Soviet women who fought in the Second World War - from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
"Why, having stood up for and held their own place in a once absolutely male world, have women not stood up for their history? Their words and feelings? A whole world is hidden from us. Their war remains unknown... I want to write the history of that war. A women's history."
I am a male feminist, internationally renowned sociologist, and recognized expert on gender identity, men and masculinities, and international education. During my thirty-five-year career, I have published twenty books and numerous book chapters and articles. I am a co-creator of the concept of toxic masculinity. I am the creator of the concept of total inclusivity and co-creator of the concept of totally inclusive self-love. My passion and desire for gender justice and an end to male oppression and violence, especially against women and girls, has been the single biggest drive for all my research and writings.
If this book doesn’t compel you to become a feminist, then you probably don’t have a heart. Or if you have, then it is likely as cold as the rapists’ described in it.
What do you feel when you read yet another account of mass rape, the trafficking, torture, and abuse of girls and women, and the gang rape of innocents? You should feel anger, if not despair. You might also well wonder what is wrong with men to make them behave this way.
Of course, you can choose not to read such accounts. But really, that is the coward’s way out. This is why this book is on my list–to challenge you to read it from start to finish and then, at the conclusion, decide you are not a feminist.
'Devastating... rape and sexual abuse continue to be a pervasive and all-too-often hidden feature of conflict zones the world over' HM Queen Camilla
From award-winning war reporter and co-author of I Am Malala, this is the first major account to address the scale of rape and sexual violence in modern conflict.
Christina Lamb has worked in war and combat zones for over thirty years. In Our Bodies, Their Battlefield she gives voice to the women of conflicts, exposing how in today's warfare, rape is…
In 6th grade I did a report about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, which manifested in a career spanning more than 20 years where I’ve worked for NGOs, the State Department, and the United States Agency for International Development to help make the world a better place. I’ve lived in Guatemala, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Jordan, and travelled throughout Sub-Saharan Africa working on conflict prevention, democracy, governance, and human rights. I’m a firm believer that, no matter your profession, everyone can help make the world a better place – and that’s why I wrote my book and why I read the books on my list – to help make this a reality.
After spending more than 20 years working in the field of international development, I’ve come to the conclusion that gender equality is the key to creating a more peaceful, prosperous, and stable world.
Sex and World Peace affirms my conclusion through in-depth analysis clearly articulating it with hard data - and in an interesting way. The book shows the direct line between gender inequality and state-level conflict, inequality, and suffering.
Even though my experience had led me to this understanding, the book’s ability to explain it backed up by so much statistical analysis blew my mind…in a good way!
Sex and World Peace is a groundbreaking demonstration that the security of women is a vital factor in the occurrence of conflict and war, unsettling a wide range of assumptions in political and security discourse. Harnessing an immense amount of data, it relates microlevel violence against women and macrolevel state peacefulness across global settings.
The authors find that the treatment of women informs human interaction at all levels of society. They call attention to the adverse effects on state security of sex-based inequities such as sex ratios favoring males, the practice of polygamy, and lax enforcement of national laws protecting…
When I was a university student, I wanted to know how African presidencies function, not only how African presidents acquire and keep power, but also how they imagine it, how they anticipate political battles, who they trust, and who they fear. All too often, the literature focuses on colonial legacy and neo-colonization and describes African presidents with too little agency. As a doctoral researcher, I stumbled on a biography of Jomo Kenyatta and got caught by the intricacies of his political career. Since then, Kenyan political history has become my area of specialization, and while my background in political science keeps inspiring me, I have a passion for historical writing.
Idi Amin Dada is one of the “best known” African dictators. So many books, documentaries, and films have depicted him as a bloody, megalomaniac leader on the verge of craziness. He was even portrayed by Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland. Alicia Decker shows a different story, starting by asking what if we take Idi Amin’s seriously? What if we explore the way he turned his (brutal) “hyper-masculinity” into a political resource? To me, this book was eye-opening, there are so many ways to write about African presidents, their politics, their ideas, and their resources. And of course, there are many ways to “gender” their histories and look for the women who stand in the president’s shadow.
"A subtle, important, theoretically innovative, and elegantly written study that centralizes feminist thinking and shows why it matters." -Feminist Africa In Idi Amin's Shadow is a rich social history examining Ugandan women's complex and sometimes paradoxical relationship to Amin's military state. Based on more than one hundred interviews with women who survived the regime, as well as a wide range of primary sources, this book reveals how the violence of Amin's militarism resulted in both opportunities and challenges for women. Some assumed positions of political power or became successful entrepreneurs, while others endured sexual assault or experienced the trauma of…
It's 1943, and World War II has gripped the nation, including the Stilwell family in Jacksonville, Alabama. Rationing, bomb drills, patriotism, and a changing South barrage their way of life. Neighboring Fort McClellan has brought the world to their doorstep in the form of young soldiers from all over the…
I’ve been fascinated by the First World War ever since I read Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth at the age of 19. When I lived in France in my twenties I started to read French nurses’ memoirs and diaries, and for the last fifteen years or so have continued to read and write about women’s experiences during and after the war as a university academic researcher, often from a comparative perspective. Men’s stories and memories of the First World War still dominate our understanding of it, but I believe that women’s perspectives give us a vital and often overlooked insight into the war and its consequences.
This is an excellent introduction to the varied experiences of women in the war, both those on active service as workers or volunteers, those who were victims of the war, fleeing their homes as refugees, and those who remained at home, carrying out domestic roles as wives and mothers in what were often difficult circumstances. It is a book I regularly recommend to my students. Although no book could cover all nations and contexts in a four-year global war, it shows not only how the war had an impact on millions of women’s lives, but also how women’s actions had significant impacts on the war and its legacies. It has a useful chronology of the war, and a good bibliography for further reading.
Women and the First World War provides an introduction to the experiences and contributions of women during this important turning point in history. In addition to exploring women's relationship to the war in each of the main protagonist states, the book also looks at the wide-ranging effects of the war on women in Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and North America. Topical in its approach, the book highlights: The heated public debates about women's social. cultural and political roles that the war inspired Thier varied experiences of war Women's representation in propaganda Their roles in peace movements and revolutionary activity…
I have loved Algeria since I lived there for 3 years from 2007. The experiences of the 20th century, particularly the War of Independence, make Algeria such an important country. The anti-colonial War overturned an entrenched colonialism, not only in Algeria, but set in train a movement for freedom across an entire continent. I have written extensively on the growth of civil society associations and how these helped people recover from tragedies; and more recently, the developments that sprung from the Algerian Hirak of 2019. This saw millions of protesters march peacefully, for over a year, to bring about significant changes and new understandings of citizenship in the 21st century.
Our Fighting Sistersis a wonderful, inspiring, and stylishly written book, drawing on in-depth interviews with celebrated women fighters from the liberation struggle in Algeria.
It is one of the first books to fully engage with the experiences of women who lived through the struggles of the Independence War. It documents the roles women played, both as intellectuals and combatants, in overturning the brutal colonial rule, thus liberating Algeria and in many ways, the African continent.
It still has implications for the future of resistance movements in Algeria and beyond.
Between 1954 and 1962, Algerian women played a major role in the struggle to end French rule in one of the twentieth century's most violent wars of decolonisation. This is the first in-depth exploration of what happened to these women after independence in 1962. Based on new oral history interviews with women who participated in the war in a wide range of roles, from urban bombers to members of the rural guerrilla support network, it explores how female veterans viewed the post-independence state and its multiple discourses on 'the Algerian woman' in the fifty years following 1962. It also examines…
I’m a professor of history at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and I’ve been studying Russia ever since visiting the Soviet Union as a college student in 1990. I’ve been particularly interested in seeking connections between violence and other dimensions of historical experience. My first book (Drafting the Russian Nation) explored connections between political ideologies and violence, Imperial Apocalypse is in part a social history of violence, and my current project is examining the connection between literary cultures, professional communities, and the violence of the Cold War.
Stoff’s work on women’s history during the war has been consistently excellent, starting with her book on women soldiers and continuing with this book. One of the most significant developments of the war was the need to dramatically expand medical care, especially for sick and wounded soldiers. Women rushed in to fill this need, with significant consequences not only for the health of the army but also the nature of gender and sexual relations throughout the whole country.
They are war stories, filled with danger and deprivation, excitement and opportunity, sorrow and trauma, scandal and controversy-and because they are the war stories of nurses, they remain largely untold. Laurie Stoff's pioneering work brings the wartime experiences of Russia's "Sisters of Mercy" out of the shadows to show how these nurses of the Great War, far from merely binding wounds, provided vital services that put them squarely in traditionally "masculine" territory, both literally and figuratively.
While Russian nursing shared many features of women's medical service in other nations, it was in some ways profoundly different. Like soldiers and doctors,…
As a historian of the Civil War Era, I wanted to find out whether prewar Southern-led schemes for the expansion of slavery continued covertly during the Confederacy. I assumed that publicly at least the Confederacy, being as it was desperate for foreign recognition and fighting for its very existence, had to renounce emphatically anything remotely ambitious. I was, therefore, surprised to discover first in Richmond, Virginia, newspapers that Confederate journalists boldly proclaimed that they were seceding and fighting the war to change the world. Furthermore, they were candidly ambitious for themselves and their new nation.
I love this book because, as a wartime bestseller dedicated to the soldiers of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, it captures the Confederate mood during the war. It is at once a remarkable moment in the construction of femininity and masculinity in U.S. history, as Evans charts the headstrong, independent-minded heroine Irene Huntington’s struggles both with her traditionalist slaveholding father and with her self-made lover Russell and, finally, with Electra—her rival in Russell’s affections and whom her philanthropy had raised from poverty.
Irene rejects the traditional passive role of the heiress waiting to get married as she engages in scientific pursuits, educational projects including schools and orphanages, and finally, when war comes at the end of the book in nursing and hospitals. The South in which the characters move is cosmopolitan, a self-conscious advanced civilization in a transatlantic world, including the North and Europe, and driven by evangelical revivalism: the…
First published in 1864, Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice was the third novel of Augusta Jane Evans, one of the leading women writers of nineteenth-century domestic fiction. A wartime best seller, with more than twenty thousand copies in circulation in the print-starved Confederacy before the war's end, the novel was also extremely well received along the Union front, so much so that some northern officials thought it should be banned. Long out of print and largely unavailable until now, Macaria is a compelling narrative about women and war. In Macaria, Evans charts the journey of two southern women toward ultimate…
