Writing Gender History

How has Feminist Scholarship Changed History? At the beginning of the twenty-first century, scholars no longer imagine that it is possible to write history, whether political, social, economic or intellectual, without taking gender into account. In this second edition of Writing Gender History, Laura Lee Downs explores the evolution of historical writing about women and gender from the 1930s until the early twenty-first century. With chapters on the history of Europe, the USA, and colonial India and Africa, Downs draws on both cultural and social analysis to explain how writing has moved from women's history to gender history and on to poststructuralist challenges to that history.

This revised edition includes an exciting new chapter looking at recent scholarship on race, gender and sexuality in colonial and transnational history. Designed to be highly accessible but encouraging of new debate, this book provides students with a practical understanding of the theories that make up the history of women and gender.

`Ingenuity and perspicuity shine through Laura Lee Downs' superb distillation and analysis of women's and gender history....put this book at the top of your list.' - Nancy F. Cott, Harvard University

`Puts the entire range of women's and gender history into context, showing how it challenges the conventional pieties, opens up new veins of research, and transforms our understanding of every aspect of history.' - Lynn Hunt, University of California, Los Angeles

Laura Lee Downs is Director of Studies at the Centre de Recherches Historiques, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.