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Exclusive History Information
Great History Resources for Homeschoolers
Best Books About Women's History
The Top Websites for Researching Ancient History
A Guide to the Best Homework Helper Sites for Your History Class
Learning History Through Film
Grading the US Presidents
Where to Find the Best World Atlases and Printable Maps Online
Class Presentation Fundamentals
The Best Books About Medieval and Early Modern History
Best Books About Women's History A Variety of Times, Places, and Topics Published February 15, 2006 by Rose Rankin
Did you know?In the harem of the Ottoman empire, there wasn't actually much sex going on. Often only a few women slept with the sultan over a long period of time.
TakeawaysWomen's history is a focus within broader historical contexts.Women's history can be studied within any time period or place.A lack of primary sources can make studying women's history more challenging.
The topic of women’s history may seem a little confusing; aren’t all history books inherently about men and women? In a sense that is true because historical events of course affected both sexes, but in recent decades, historians have begun to appreciate how women’s lives and experiences differed from men’s. Because of their different roles in society, the diverse expectations for their behavior, and the unique challenges they faced, the history of women’s lives is often examined separately from men’s.
This is not to say that women are studied in a vacuum; quite the opposite is true, in fact. Women’s history explores how women lived, thrived, and reacted to the social climate of their times and their relationships with men and each other. Since this type of investigation can be applied to any time period and place throughout history, this list includes books on a variety of historical topics: Vastly different geographical areas and historical eras are covered by the selections below. Since this list in an introductory overview to many different areas of history, only secondary sources are included. (Each of these books has copious information about primary sources should you decide to research one of these topics in-depth). Lastly, you may be asking yourself, what does this writer know about good history books for a college paper?
Just so you feel you can trust me, I graduated magna cum laude with my degree in history only a few years ago, my concentration was in early modern European women’s history, and I worked as a teaching assistant for two history classes while in college. What I am sharing with you are sources that helped me compose many of the papers I wrote during my four years as a history major, and I’m sure that at least some of them can help you too! (In fact, the citations for each book are the correct form of bibliographical citations according to the Chicago Manual of Style, which is the official citation method used in professional history. Learn this format so well that you can repeat it in your sleep!)
AMERICAN HISTORY
Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
One of the most infamous episodes in early American history was the witchcraft hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts, and the ensuing trials that took place in the early years of the 1690s. Mary Beth Norton’s book is a detailed and compelling study of these events that chronicles the accusations and trials, the specific people involved, and the broader context in which these often bizarre happenings took place. Since women comprised an integral part of the witchcraft crisis, this book is an excellent investigation of American women’s history. Its strengths include not only the meticulous descriptions of the accused, accusers, judges, and other peripheral characters involved, but also the way in which Norton narrates the events in seventeenth-century terms – i.e., she focuses on the perspective used by contemporary people to understand the events, not that of modern day observers. She also draws very interesting conclusions about how warfare in the late seventeenth century impacted the people of colonial New England (you’ll have to read the book to find out exactly how). The appendices outlining dates and characters involved are helpful resources, and in general, this book provides an in-depth look at a complicated yet fascinating episode in American history.
EUROPEAN HISTORY
King, Margaret L. Women of the Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Divided into three categories, King’s book, which has become a standard in the field of European women’s history, confronts the issue of how different types of women lived during the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries in Europe. Specifically, she profiles women’s lives as wives and mothers, as nuns, or as educated leaders, which occurred for a minority of elite women. Although this book consists of less than 250 pages of text, it packs an incredible amount of information into those pages. King discusses in depth how most women’s lives were dictated by what she terms the “virgin-matron-crone triad,” meaning that the majority of European women, after having their virginity obsessively insured and protected by male family members, became wives and mothers and then widows. For many other women whose families could not afford the skyrocketing dowry prices necessary to ensure a respectable marriage, they spent their lives as nuns, or “brides of Christ.” King effectively discusses the exceptions and challenges to these norms by everyday life and circumstances. Finally, she describes the lives of learned and powerful women who, although they remained a minority, impacted their societies in ways unusual for most women. Although this book is an overview of many topics within European women’s history, it is excellently researched and clearly written. It’s a must-read for any student of women’s history in medieval or early modern Europe.
Chojnacka, Monica. Working Women of Early Modern Venice. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
In contrast to many studies of women’s history, this book delves into the world of middle and lower class women who, unlike their wealthier and better documented sisters, worked for a living to support their families. Since the lower classes were less educated, they left behind fewer accounts of their lives, which for many years caused historians to focus on accounts of the upper classes with their prolific primary documents. But increased investigation of government records has opened up the world of middle and lower class citizens, and by using Inquisition court documents, parish registers, and financial and tax records Chojnacka is able to exploit these sources to examine women as workers, earners, heads of household, and people about town. Rather than being defined only by their marital status, living in seclusion from the outside world this book addresses how women interacted with each other, behaved in public, and thrived within the vibrant world of Renaissance Venice. Subaltern groups like immigrants and prostitutes are also discussed. Detailed and informative, but also readable and moving, this book is a fantastic example of diligent scholarship and thoughtful investigation. It provides a wonderful glimpse into the lives of everyday women (and men too) in one of the dynamic centers of Renaissance life.
ISLAMIC HISTORY
Peirce, Leslie P. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1993.
Although this is a complex book, I must admit it’s one of my favorite studies of women’s history. Peirce takes widespread misconceptions about an Ottoman institution and turns them on their head with painstaking research While the harem is usually viewed as a pernicious den of iniquity and sexual excess, Peirce explores how the succession practice of concubinage actually gave women, who previously had no social status or power whatsoever, access to and sometimes exercise of the highest power in the empire. As mothers of possible future sultans, women of the Ottoman harem developed influential networks, plotted, pulled strings, and directly affected the leadership of what was once the most powerful political and military entity in Europe or Asia. Utilizing a variety of sources, including Ottoman government documents as well as European ambassadorial accounts, Peirce overcomes the common problem of lacking information about women’s lives, especially in the secretive, guarded world of the harem. Not only does this book dispel myths about the harem and demonstrate how women could and did exercise power in very important ways, it also becomes an exciting narrative of behind-the-scenes machinations akin to a modern soap opera, which keeps it readable despite the density of information.
JAPANESE HISTORY
Kikue, Yamakawa. Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life. Translated by Kate Wildman Nakai. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.
Originally written by a descendant of a samurai family, this book is an intimate and poignant account of women’s lives in nineteenth-century in the waning years of the Tokugawa shogunate. Yamakawa draws upon the experiences of her mother and other family members to describe in great detail the daily lives and experiences of women in the lower levels of the samurai class in the domain of Mito. Social and political developments near the end of the Tokugawa era in mid-nineteenth-century are woven throughout the stories and descriptions of everyday life and culture. This book is a touching account of how ordinary women, in what could be construed as a middle class, met the challenges and requirements of their world; the nature of the author’s sources give an unusually personal touch to this book so that it borders on being a memoir. Intriguing and moving, this is a great source for information about the lives of Japanese women.
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