Toward an Intellectual History of Women

Essays By Linda K. Kerber

By Linda K. Kerber

352 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 14 illus., notes, index

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-4654-4
    Published: May 1997
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-2040-4
    Published: December 2017
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-6864-0
    Published: December 2017

Gender and American Culture

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As a leading historian of women, Linda K. Kerber has played an instrumental role in the radical rethinking of American history over the past two decades. The maturation and increasing complexity of studies in women's history are widely recognized, and in this remarkable collection of essays, Kerber's essential contribution to the field is made clear. In this volume is gathered some of Kerber's finest work. Ten essays address the role of women in early American history, and more broadly in intellectual and cultural history, and explore the rhetoric of historiography. In the chronological arrangement of the pieces, she starts by including women in the history of the Revolutionary era, then makes the transforming discovery that gender is her central subject, the key to understanding the social relation of the sexes and the cultural discourse of an age. From that fundamental insight follows Kerber's sophisticated contributions to the intellectual history of women. Prefaced with an eloquent and personal introduction, an account of the formative and feminist influences in the author's ongoing education, these writings illustrate the evolution of a vital field of inquiry and trace the intellectual development of one of its leading scholars.

About the Author

Linda K. Kerber is May Brodbeck Professor in the Liberal Arts and professor of history at the University of Iowa. She is coeditor of U. S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays
For more information about Linda K. Kerber, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

“This volume take[s] the reader on an intellectual journey through the historiography of both the American Revolution and women’s history.”--William and Mary Quarterly

"[This] distinguished collection of essays . . . has something to offer every reader interested in revolutionary and early national America, or in women's history more generally. . . . It is a credit to Kerber that so many scholars are following her lead toward a richer and even more complex intellectual history of women."--Women's Review of Books

"A convenient collection reflecting the thoughts of a superb scholar. It will be appreciated by feminist theorists and students of U. S. and women's history."--Library Journal

"Linda Kerber's pioneering essays helped to set the agenda for the field of women's history and for American and intellectual history as well. Gracefully written, thoughtfully argued, and intellectually resonant, they enlarge every topic they address."--Dorothy Ross, Johns Hopkins University

"Putting together these articles and lectures by one of the country's leading women's historians provides simultaneously a stunning introduction to the field of women's history for novices as well as a state-of-the-art review for experts."--Linda Gordon, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"This collection documents the radical rewriting of our past by women's historians in the last two decades and discloses Linda Kerber's signal part in that paradigm shift. In the chronological arrangement of the pieces, Kerber starts by including women in the history of the Revolutionary era, then makes the transforming discovery that gender is her central subject, the key to understanding the social relation of the sexes and the cultural discourse of an age. From that fundamental insight follows Kerber's sophisticated address to the intellectual history of women. This volume is thus at once a fascinating record of an academic field and a compelling autobiography of an individual mind."--Robert Gross, College of William and Mary