Beyond Nature's Housekeepers
American Women in Environmental History
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:18th Oct '12
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£115.00(9780199735068)
From pre-Columbian times to the environmental justice movements of the present, women and men frequently responded to the environment and environmental issues in profoundly different ways. Although both environmental history and women's history are flourishing, explorations of the synergy produced by the interplay between environment and sex, sexuality, and gender are just beginning. Offering more than "great women in environmental history," this book examines the intersections that shaped women's unique environmental concerns and activism, and that framed the way the larger culture responded. Women discussed include Native Americans, colonists, enslaved field workers, pioneers, homemakers, municipal housekeepers, immigrants, hunters, nature writers, soil conservationists, scientists, migrant laborers, lesbians, nuclear protestors, and environmental justice activists. As women, they fared, thought, and acted in ways complicated by social, political, and economic norms, as well as issues of sexuality and childbearing. The housekeeping role assigned to women has long been recognized as important in environmental history. But that emphasis ignores the vast range of their influence and experiences. Enslaved women, left to do the fieldwork in disproportionate numbers, used their environmental knowledge to subtly undermine their masters, hastening the coming of the Civil War. Many pregnant women, faced with childbirth on the western trails, eyed frontier environments with considerable apprehension. In more recent times, lesbians have created alternative environments to resist homophobia and, in many economically disadvantaged communities, women have been at the forefront of the fight against environmental racism. Women are not always the heroes in this story, as when the popularity of hats lavishly decorated with feathers brought some bird species to near extinction. For better, and sometimes for worse, women have played a unique role in the shaping of the American environment. Their stories feature vibrant characters and shine a light on an underappreciated, often inspiring, and always complex history.
Nancy Unger's Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History chronicles women's interactions with nonhuman nature throughout American history. It is an ambitious and important work that combines American environmental and women's and gender history into an accessible synthesis that would be useful not only in women's and environmental history survey courses, but also in both halves of the US history survey. Unger's book would also appeal to readers with a general interest in American women's or environmental history.... Unger weaves together a highly engaging narrative of women's and environmental history that incorporates a multitude of fresh voices into the master narrative of American history. * Peggy Macdonald, Environmental History *
In Beyond Nature's Housekeepers, Nancy Unger brings together a breadth of scholarship that touches on American women's experience and impact on the environment in a short, well-written book. The relatively brief chapters with vivid anecdotes are perfect for an undergraduate audience. * Pacific Historical Review *
With this book, Unger has undertaken a formidable task that could have failed in the hands of a less-accomplished historian. She persuasively demonstrates that there is a distinct women-centered understanding of environmentalism and the people's relationship to the environment that transcends time and place and that this perspective must be incorporated into any analysis of environmental history. * American Historical Review *
Unger's narrative is a go-to reference for anyone interested in the socially constructed and physical ways both sex and gender intersect with nature in the United States. It is an important work that will be a reference in the field for quite some time. * Environment and History *
In this rich, learned, and lively synthesis, Nancy C. Unger reveals the astoundingly varied, crucial roles women have played throughout American environmental history. Where we have heretofore seen glimpses and snippets of this immense and still evolving story, Unger gives us a sweeping narrative to savor and ponder. A marvelous achievement! * Virginia Scharff, University of New Mexico and Autry National Center *
ISBN: 9780199735075
Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 18mm
Weight: 472g
336 pages