The Women's West

A collection of scholarly essays presents a multi-dimensional portrait of western women, challenging the traditional images of frontier women as passive participants in male history by exploring the experiences of Indian women, servants, waitresses, prostitutes, women farmers, and more.

Other Authors: Armitage, Susan H. 1937-, Jameson, Elizabeth.
Format: Book
Language: English
Published: Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, [1987]
Physical Description: xi, 323 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Edition: 1st ed.
Subjects:
Table of Contents:
  • pt. 1.
  • Myths:
  • Through women's eyes: a new view of the West /
  • Susan Armitage
  • Way we weren't: images of women and men in cowboy art /
  • Corlann Gee Bush
  • Illusion and illumination: visual images of American Indian women in the West /
  • Patricia Albers and William James
  • pt. 2.
  • Meetings:
  • Role of native women in the creation of Fur Trade Society in Western Canada, 1670-1830 /
  • Sylvia Van Kirk
  • Beyond princess and squaw: army officers' perceptions of Indian women /
  • Sherry L. Smith
  • Sharing bed and board: cohabitation and cultural difference in central Arizona mining towns, 1863-1873 /
  • Susan L. Johnson
  • pt. 3.
  • Emotional continuities:
  • Laura, Ma, Mary, Carrie, and Grace: Western women as portrayed by Laura Ingalls Wilder /
  • Kathryn Adam
  • Violence against women: power dynamics in literature of the Western family /
  • Melody Graulich
  • Lena Olmstead and Oscar Phillips: love and marriage /
  • Elizabeth Hampsten
  • pt. 4.
  • Coming to terms with the West:
  • Women as workers, women as civilizers: true womanhood in the American West /
  • Elizabeth Jameson
  • Homesteading in northeastern Colorado, 1873-1920: sex roles and women's experience /
  • Katherine Harris
  • Beyond baby doe: child rearing on the mining frontier /
  • Elliott West
  • Private lives of public women: prostitution in Butte, Montana, 1878-1917 /
  • Mary Murphy
  • Essential servants: immigrant domestics on the Canadian prairies, 1885-1930 /
  • Norma J. Milton
  • Waitresses in the trans-Mississippi West: "pretty waiter girls," Harvey girls, and union maids /
  • Mary Lee Spence
  • pt. 5.
  • Expanding our focus:
  • Distinctions in Western women's experience: ethnicity, class, and social change /
  • Rosalinda Méndez González
  • "Girls" from Syracuse: sex role negotiations of Kansas women in politics, 1887-1890 /
  • Rosalind Urbach Moss
  • Networking on the frontier: the Colorado Women's Suffrage Movement, 1876-1893 /
  • Carolyn Stefanco
  • Myth of the urban village: women, work, and family among Italian-Americans in twentieth century California /
  • Micaela di Leonardo
  • Impact of "Sun Belt industrialization" on Chicanas /
  • Patricia Zavella
  • Western women's history: a challenge for the future /
  • Suzan Shown Harjo.