The field of American women's writing is one characterized by innovation: scholars are discovering new authors and works, as well as new ways of historicizing this literature, rethinking contexts and categories. This book develops and challenges historical, cultural, theoretical, even polemical methods, all of which will advance the future study of American women writers – from Native Americans to postmodern communities, from individual careers to communities of writers and readers.
This book chronicles the influence of second wave feminism on everything from electoral politics to LGBTQ rights. The original descriptions of second wave feminism focused on elite, white voices, obscuring the accomplishments of many activists, as third wave feminists criticized. In this book scholars provide a more complex description of second wave feminism, in which the efforts of women from many races, classes, sexual orientations, and religious traditions, in the fight for equality have had a long-term impact on American politics.