Reclaiming Clio

Name: Reclaiming Clio
Author: Jennifer Banning Tomás
ISBN: 9781469686011

Making American Women's History, 1900-2000

by Jennifer Banning Tomás

Published by The University of North Carolina Press

Publication date: December 02, 2025

ISBN 9781469686011 | 494 Pages, 6.12 × 9.25 in, 20 halftones, 4 tables, notes, bibl., index

494 Pages, 6.12 × 9.25 in, 20 halftones, 4 tables, notes, bibl., index

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Praise

Women reclaiming their narrative in academia

Women’s history traveled a long and fascinating path before it became a respected and recognized academic field in twentieth-century America. This book explores the field’s development as a multiracial and multigenerational effort, going beyond the careers of individual women historians to focus on how the discipline itself took shape. Focusing on the foundational period between 1900 and 1968, Jennifer Banning Tomás shines a light on the work performed by archivists and professional historians that gave women’s history its own identity and legitimacy.

The women in Reclaiming Clio laid the groundwork for the field’s remarkable expansion during the final wave of twentieth-century feminism after 1970, when a genuine movement for women’s history emerged. Their contributions made the later success of women’s history possible. Tomás reveals the dedication and vision that turned women’s history into the thriving, influential field it is today.

Jennifer Banning Tomás is professor of history at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

“Whereas narratives in women’s history frequently focus on their activism from the late 1960s forward, Tomás effectively argues that the field was not the work of a single generation of late 20th-century scholars. . . . Tomás looks closely at the development and importance of archival sources, the experiences of women of color, and the political underpinnings of women’s history.”—CHOICE

“In a moment of increasingly virulent culture wars, Reclaiming Clio provides the grounding to remember how histories are made and how movements persist in the face of opposition.”—Catherine O. Jacquet, Louisiana State University

“Impressively researched and engagingly written, this monograph offers the most detailed account to date of how women’s history took shape as a field. Balancing insider perspective with careful analysis, it highlights the vision and hard work of scholar-activists who transformed the profession and makes a compelling case for the significance of women’s history in both academia and public life.”—Rachel Devlin, author of A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools

“Arising from the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, the field of women’s history changed historical scholarship—which might once have been accurately labeled 'men’s history'—indelibly. Tomás’s volume offers a vivid survey of that radical change in how we think of the past.”—Linda Gordon, author of Seven Social Movements that Changed America