Women’s and Gender History Comprehensive Exam List

Final Draft, October 2018

Theory/Overviews
1. Boydston, Jeanne. “Gender as a Question of Historical Analysis.” Gender & History 20, No.
3 (November 2008): 558–83.
2. Dayton, Cornelia H. and Lisa Levenstein, “The Big Tent of US Women’s and Gender
History” The Journal of American History 99, Issue 3 (December 2012): 793-817.
3. D'Emilio, John and Estelle B. Freedman. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in
America. Revised Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
4. D’Emilio, John and Estelle B. Freedman, “Since Intimate Matters: Recent Developments in
the History of Sexuality in the United States” Journal of Women’s History 25, no. 4 (Winter
2013): 88-100.
5. Downs, Laura Lee. Writing Gender History. Second Edition. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
6. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction. New York: Random
House, 1978.
7. Kelly, Joan. “Did Women Have a Renaissance?,” in Women, History & Theory: The Essays
of Joan Kelly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
8. Lerner, Gerda. The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1979.
9. Scott, Joan Wallach. Gender and the Politics of History. 30th Anniversary Edition. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
10. Scott, Joan Wallach. “Gender: Still a Useful Category of Analysis?” Diogenes 57, no. 1
(2010), 7-14.

The Body, Sex, & Morality

11. Ben-Atar, Doron S. and Richard D. Brown. Taming Lust: Crimes Against Nature in the Early
Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
12. Bloch, Ruth H. Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650-1800. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003.
13. Fogleman, Aaron Spencer. Jesus Is Female: Moravians and Radical Religion in Early
America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
14. Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England.
New York: W.W. Norton, 1987.
15. Littauer, Amanda. Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and the Rebellion Before the Sixties.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
16. Meyerwitz, Joanne. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
17. Owens, Diedre Cooper. Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American
Gynecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017.
18. Peiss, Kathy. Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
19. Turpin, Andrea L. A New Moral Vision: Gender, Religion, and the Changing Purposes of
American Higher Education, 1837-1917. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017.

Labor: Public and Private

20. Boydston, Jeanne. Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the
Early Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
21. Clark, Emily. Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a
New World Society, 1727-1834. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
22. Crane, Elaine Forman. Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change,
1630-1800. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.
23. Gilfoyle, Timothy. City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of
Sex, 1790-1920. New York: W. W.Norton, 1994.
24. Meacham, Sarah Hand. Every Home a Distillery: Alcohol, Gender, and Technology in the
Colonial Chesapeake. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
25. Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-Of-The-Century
New York. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.
26. Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary,
1785-1812. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
27. White, Deborah Gray. Ar'n't I A Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South. New York:
W. W. Norton, 1985.

Reproduction, Marriage, & the Family

28. Brewer, Holly. By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in
Authority. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
29. Briggs, Laura. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and US Imperialism in Puerto Rico.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
30. Canaday, Margot. The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century
America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
31. Conger, Vivian Bruce. The Widows’ Might: Widowhood and Gender in Early British
America. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
32. Cott, Nancy F. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2000.
33. Klepp, Susan E. Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility, and Family Limitation in
America, 1760-1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
34. Leavitt, Judith. Brought to Bed: Child Bearing in America, 1750-1950. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985.
35. Reagan, Leslie J. Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern
America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

Race, Slavery, and Emancipation

36. Adams, Catherine and Elizabeth Pleck. Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and
Revolutionary New England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
37. Block, Sharon. Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
38. Clark, Emily. The Strange History of the American Quadroon: Free Women of Color in the
Revolutionary Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
39. Demos, John. Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America. New York: Vintage
Books, 1995.
40. Perdue, Theda. Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
41. Wood, Kristen E. Masterful Women: Slaveholding Widows from the American Revolution
through the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Masculinity
42. Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the
United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
43. Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male
World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
44. Estes, Steve. I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
45. Foster, Thomas A., Mary Beth Norton, and Toby L. Ditz, eds. New Men: Manliness in Early
America. New York: NYU Press, 2011.
46. Haggerty, George E. Men in Love: Masculinity and Sexuality in the Eighteenth Century. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
47. Norton, Mary Beth. Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of
American Society. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1996.
48. Rotundo, E. Anthony. American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the
Revolution to the Modern Era. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2001.

Feminism & Political Activism

49. Cott, Nancy. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
50. Echols, Alice. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1990.
51. Freedman, Estelle B. The Essential Feminist Reader. New York: Random House, 2007.
52. Gilmore, Glenda. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in
North Carolina, 1890-1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
53. Gordon, Linda. Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-
1935. New York: Free Press, 1994.
54. Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.
55. Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in
the United States, 1900-1965. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
56. Ryan, Mary P. Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1990.
57. Stansell, Christine. The Feminist Promise: 1792 to the Present. New York: Modern Library,
2010.
58. Stewart-Winter, Timothy. Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
59. Turk, Katherine. Equality on Trial: Gender and Rights in the Modern American Workplace.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
60. Ware, Susan. Modern American Women: A Documentary History. Boston: McGraw-Hill,
2002.
61. Woloch, Nancy. Early American Women: A Documentary History. Boston: McGraw Hill,
2002.

Gender & War

62. Berube, Allan. Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War
II. New York: The Free Press, 1990.
63. Clinton, Catherine and Silber, Nina, eds., Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the American
Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
64. Hoganson, Kristin. Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the
Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
65. Honey, Maureen. Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World
War II. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1994.
66. Jensen, Kimberly. Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War.
Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
67. Kaminski, Theresa. Angels of the Underground: The American Women who Resisted the
Japanese in the Philippines in World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
68. Little, Ann M. Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
69. Mayer, Holly A. Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the
American Revolution. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.
70. Roberts, Mary Louise. What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Sexual & Gendered Violence

71. Block, Sharon. "Rape without Women: Print Culture and the Politicization of Rape, 1765–
1815." Journal of American History 89, No. 3 (Dec 2002): pp. 849-868.
72. Block, Sharon. "Reconstituting Archives of Violence and Silence in Early American
Women's History," Journal of Women's History 30, No. 1 (Spring 2018), 154-162.
73. Daniels, Christine and Michael V. Kennedy. Over the Threshold: Intimate Violence in Early
America. New York: Routledge, 1999.
74. Freedman, Estelle B. Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and
Segregation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.
75. Johnson, David K. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in
the Federal Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
76. McGuire, Danielle. At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance: A
New History of the Civil Rights Movement, from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. New
York: Vintage, 2010.