An Army of Women: Gender and Politics in Gilded Age Kansas (Reconfiguring American Political History)
(Part of the Reconfiguring American Political History Series)
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Book Overview
How political activists in the Populist Party and the Woman Movement sought to create a role for women while retaining the support of men Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Looking at both the private and public lives of women and men in rural and urban Kansas, Michael Lewis Goldberg offers sweeping evidence of the role gender played in influencing Gilded Age politics. In An Army of Women , he analyzes how political activists in the Populist Party and the Woman Movement sought to create a role for women while retaining the support of men. When these activists employed the often slippery symbols of masculinity and femininity, they found that gendered meanings often changed with the shifting political context. Their ideas and assumptions about gender helped determine their ideologies, strategies, the fate of their movements, and their impact on American politics. Goldberg's broad scope and use of both traditional and unusual sources--including folkways, poems, songs, and novels--allow readers to understand the movements both as part of a national framework and within the context of the state and local cultures that were their primary concern.
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:0801855624
ISBN13:9780801855627
Release Date:June 1997
Publisher:Johns Hopkins University Press
Length:328 Pages
Weight:1.40 lbs.
Dimensions:1.1" x 6.2" x 9.3"
Customer Reviews
2 ratings
Well written book that asks some important questions
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
like the first reviewer I also had this assigned for a class and it was the book I enjoyed the most. I've done a lot of political organizing and am interested in what makes a social movement tick and why it succeeds or fails, and this book does a great job of getting into the heads of political activists. The story is also very interesting, there's a real drama to the way the author tells the story. It reminds me of another book on the Populists, The Populist Moment, by Lawrence Goodwyn, only this book is more concerned with how women and men related (or not) to each other, and how this affected the movement. The book also does a good job of covering women's politics, especially the woman suffrage movement. The author's argument is that women tried to be both committed to their gender and their political party, and couldn't balance the two, which I think in part is a problem feminists have today. I enjoyed it very much, and learned a lot.
An interesting book with some very cool women
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
This book was assigned in a course on American political history, and I have to admit I didn't expect it to be so interesting--I mean, Kansas??!! Turns out Kansas was a pretty amazing place in the 1890s, and there were a lot of very strong, interesting women involved in politics for the first time. The book is often pretty funny, especially when it looks at how freaked out men were about women getting the vote. I've recommended it to a couple of friends as a book to read outside of class (although it helps to like history, like I do), and though they thought I was crazy at first, they really like it to. I'm now looking for more books like it. Maybe I should start a list!
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