Between 1800 and 1920, middle-class women in the West fought for education, employment, equitable marriage and custody laws, and the vote. Poor women demanded literacy, labor and child protection laws, food, and shelter. Colonization and migrations compounded gender and class conflicts in contact zones where races and ethnic groups met, often violently. Faced with breath-taking social, global, and technological change, many women valiantly worked with and for one another. Key issues include growing attention to late life, discourses of heterosexuality and homosexuality, the rise of the writing woman, and the challenges to women professionals, from artists to physicians.

A Cultural History of Women in the Age of Empire presents essays on women's life cycle, bodies and sexuality, religion and popular beliefs, medicine and disease, public and private realms, education and work, power, and artistic representation.

Table of contents

A Cultural History of Women in the Age of Empire, Edited by Teresa Mangum

• Introduction
• The Life Cycle: Women and the Life-Cycle, c.1800-1920, Pat Thane, University of London, UK
• Bodies & Sexuality: Sexuality and Bodies in the Age of Empire, Ellen Rosenman, University of Kentucky, USA
• Religion & Popular Beliefs: Women and Wandering Jews after Daniel Deronda, Susan Bernstein, University of Wisconsin at Madison, USA
• Medicine & Disease: Women and Medicine in the Age of Empire, Pamela Gilbert, University of Florida, USA
• Public & Private: The Fault Lines Between Public and Private Selves in Women's Autobiographical Writings, Linda Peterson, Yale University, USA
• Education & Work: Women and the Education Acts, Florence Boos, University of Iowa, USA
• Power: Memsahibs, Manners, and Empires, Teresa Mangum, University of Iowa, USA
• Artistic Representation: Travel Narrative and the Construction of Female Artistic Identity in the Nineteenth Century, Alexandra Wettlaufer, University of Texas at Austin, USA