Searching for Their Places: Women in the South across Four Centuries

Abstract

Searching for Their Places is a collection inspired by the Fifth Southern Conference on Women's History. The essays in this volume are particularly astute in assessing the ways in which southern women have claimed power, or searched for their places, and suggests how southern women, individually and collectively, have sought to empower themselves. The essays, written by outstanding historians in this field, represent some of the freshest and most exciting scholarship about women in the South. They convincingly illustrate how the national experience looks different when southern women become the focus. The essayists use extensive analyses of primary source materials to examine a variety of issues that have confronted women in the South from the days of English colonialization through the civil rights struggles of the post-World War II era. The collection is well balanced in its periodization, with four essays on the antebellum years, one on the Civil War, three on the immediate postbellum era, and four based in the twentieth century. Studying women of every color, background, and station across the region and across four centuries, Searching for Their Places will appeal to the general reader and anyone interested in women's studies.