Global Women's History (Yale-NUS College): Welcome

A collection of 50,000 specially written biographies of men and women who have shaped all aspects of the British past, from the earliest times to the end of the year 2000, from the ancient (explorer Pytheas of the 4th Century BC) to the modern (Princess Diana).

Placing women's experiences in the context of the major social, economic and cultural shifts that accompanied the industrial and commercial transformations of this period, Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus paint a fascinating picture of the change, revolution, and continuity that were encountered by women of this time. This book combines original research with a discussion of current secondary literature, and the contributors examine areas as diverse as the Enlightenment, politics, religion, education, sexuality, family, work, poverty, and consumption.

This book introduces the main themes and debates of feminist history during this period of change, and brings together the findings of new research. It examines the suffrage movement, race and empire, industrialisation, the impact of war and women's literature. Specialists in their own fields have each written a chapter on a key aspect of womens lives including health, the family, education, sexuality, work and politics. Each contribution provides an overview of the main issues and debates within each area and offers suggestions for further reading.

This book surveys the history of women's political thought in Europe from the late medieval period to the early modern era. The authors examine women's ideas about topics such as the basis of political authority, the best form of political organisation, justifications of obedience and resistance, and concepts of liberty, toleration, sociability, equality, and self-preservation. Women's ideas concerning relations between the sexes are discussed in tandem with their broader political outlooks; and the authors demonstrate that the development of a distinctively sexual politics is reflected in women's critiques of marriage, the double standard, and women's exclusion from government.

This book reflects on the global history of the struggle for women suffrage. Controversially, Jad Adams rejects the widely accepted idea that success was primarily a result of the pressure group politics of the suffragists and their supporters. Ultimately, he argues, it was nationalism, not feminism, that was the most important factor in winning women the vote.

This book tells the fascinating stories of the myriad women who shaped the early modern North American world from the colonial era through the first years of the Republic. This volume goes beyond the familiar stories of Pocahontas or Abigail Adams, recovering the lives and experiences of lesser-known women; both ordinary and elite, enslaved and free, Indigenous and immigrant; who lived and worked in not only British mainland America, but also New Spain, New France, New Netherlands, and the West Indies.

Teresa Anne Murphy traces the evolution of women's history from the late eighteenth century to the time of the Civil War, demonstrating that competing ideas of women's citizenship had a central role in the ways those histories were constructed. As woman's rights activists recognized, citizenship encompassed activities that ranged far beyond specific legal rights for women to their broader terms of inclusion in society, the economy, and government.

This book chronicles 300 years of women's education during this time. Barabara Whitehead examines this history from a feminist perspective, pointing to the subversive actions of the women of this period that led to the formation of academia as we know it.

The growth of female reading audiences from the mid-eighteenth century to the early Victorian era represents both a vital episode in women's history and a highly significant factor in shaping the literary production of the period. This book offers a broad overview and detailed analysis of this growing readership, its representation in literature, and the extent of its influence. It examines both historical women readers and a wide range of texts in which the figure of the woman reader is important, from Gothic (and other) novels to conduct books and educational works, letters, journals and memoirs, political and economic works, and texts on history and science.

This book explores the women's movement in the US, asking under what conditions are Congress and the presidency responsive to the women's movement, and when will the women's movement gain access to Congress and the presidency? The book systematically compares the relation between political leaders and each of the three waves of the women's movement, 1848-1889, 1890-1928, and 1960-1985, in light of the political dynamics that each wave faced. The author utilizes perspectives and methods from the fields of Political Science, Sociology, and History to illustrate the ways in which changing political dynamics impacted the battle for both women's suffrage and the Equal Rights Amendment.

This book presents a new examination of Victorian nurses which challenges commonly-held assumptions about their character and motivation. This book is one of the first attempts to understand, in detail, the true nature of Victorian nursing at ground level. Uniquely, the study views nursing through an economic lens, as opposed to the more usual vocational focus. Nursing is placed in the wider context of women's role in British society, and the changing prospects for female employment in the high Victorian period. Using St George's Hospital, London as a case study, the book explores the evolution of nurse recruitment, training, conditions of employment and career development in the second half of the nineteenth century.

With chapters written by leading international experts, this book provides a full overview of the history of feminism, as well as the current context of the women's movement in 12 countries: the Philippines, China, Indonesia, Japan, Burma, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Korea, India and Pakistan. For each of these countries the manner in which feminism changes according to cultural, political, economic and religious factors is explored. The contributors investigate how national feminisms are influenced by transnational factors, such as the women's movements in other countries, colonialism and international agencies. Each chapter also considers what Asian feminists have contributed to global theoretical debates on the woman question, the key successes and failures of the movements and what needs to be addressed in the future.

This book provides an overview of women's role and place in western Europe, spanning the era from the beginning of the eighteenth century until the twentieth century. In this collection of essays, leading women's historians counter the notion of 'national' histories and provide the insight and perspective of a European approach. Important intellectual, political and economic developments have not respected national boundaries, nor has the story of women's past, or the interplay of gender and culture.

This book explores the professional, civic, and personal roles of women teachers throughout American history. Its voice, themes, and findings build from the mostly unpublished writings of many women and their families, colleagues, and pupils. Geraldine J. Clifford studied personal history manuscripts in archives and consulted printed autobiographies, diaries, correspondence, oral histories, interviews to probe the multifaceted imagery that has surrounded teaching.