This outstanding collection of fifteen original essays represents
innovative work by some of the most influential scholars in the field of
women's history. Covering a broad sweep of history from the American
Revolution to contemporary times and ranging over the fields of legal,
social, political, and cultural history, this book, according to its
editors, "intrudes into regions of the American historical narrative
from which women have been excluded or in which gender relations were
not thought to play a part." State formation, power, and knowledge have
not traditionally been understood as the subjects of women's history,
but they are the themes that permeate this book. Individually and
together, the essays explore how gender serves to legitimize particular
constructions of power and knowledge and to meld these into accepted
practice and state policy. They show how the study of women's history
has moved from the discovery of women to an evaluation of social
processes and institutions.