1. Women’s past and the currents of u.s. history

Abstract

This chapter traces the birth of professional women's and gender history in the United States amid the broader social, political, and intellectual currents of the 1960s. In particular, it examines four conceptual “turns” in women's and gender history, along with their influence on the practices of American historians and the study of women: the emergence of women's history as an intellectual pursuit; the shift in focus from women to gender; the interrelationships among gender analysis, poststructuralism, and cultural studies; and the increasing importance of transnational history. The chapter explains how writing women into history arose as a political project riding the crest of second-wave feminism and how the shift to gender history helped move women's history “from periphery to center” in the field of U.S. history.