Offers a nuanced account of the multiple aspects of women’s lives and their roles in American society

American Women's History presents a comprehensive survey of women's experience in the U.S. and North America from pre-European contact to the present. Centering women of color and incorporating issues of sexuality and gender, this student-friendly textbook draws from cutting-edge scholarship to provide a more inclusive and complicated perspective on the conventional narrative of U.S. women’s history. Throughout the text, the authors highlight diverse voices such as Matoaka (Pocahontas), Hilletie van Olinda, Margaret Sanger, and Annelle Ponder.

Arranged chronologically, American Women's History explores the major turning points in American women’s history while exploring various contexts surrounding race, work, politics, activism, and the construction of self. Concise chapters cover a uniquely wide range of topics, such as the roles of Indigenous women in North American cultures, the ways women participated in the American Revolution, the lives of women of color in the antebellum South and their experiences with slave resistance and rebellion, the radical transformation brought on by Black women during Reconstruction, the activism of women before and after suffrage was won, and more.

• Discusses how Indigenous women navigated cross-cultural contact and resisted assimilation efforts after the arrival of Europeans
• Considers the construction of Black female bodies and the implications of the slave trade in the Americas
• Addresses the cultural shifts, demographic changes, and women’s rights movements of the early twentieth century
• Highlights women’s participation in movements for civil rights, workplace justice, and equal educational opportunities
• Explores the feminist movement and its accomplishments, the rise of anti-feminism, and women’s influence on the modern political landscape

Designed for both one- and two-semester U.S. history courses, American Women's History is an ideal resource for instructors looking for a streamlined textbook that will complement existing primary sources that work well in their classes. Due to its focus on women of color, it is particularly valuable for community colleges and other institutions with diverse student populations.

Melissa Estes Blair is an Associate Professor of History at Auburn University. She is the author of Revolutionizing Expectations: Women’s Organizations, Feminism, and American Politics 1965-1980. Her second book, Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of the Women who Shaped the Presidency, 1930-1960, will be published in 2023.

Vanessa M. Holden is an Associate Professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community. She has been published in Slavery and Abolition: Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, Perspectives on History, Black Perspectives and in The Routledge Companion to Black Women’s Cultural Histories.

Maeve Kane is an Associate Professor of History at the University at Albany - State University of New York. She is the author of Shirts Powdered Red: Haudenosaunee Gender, Trade, and Exchange Across Three Centuries. Her recent published work includes articles in the journal Ethnohistory, the Journal of Early American History, and a chapter in the edited collection Women and the American Revolution.