Idea Of Women Research Articles

The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers by Elizabeth Cobbs

Reviewed by: The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers by Elizabeth Cobbs Jill Frahm (bio) The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers. By Elizabeth Cobbs. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. 370. $29.95 cloth) Elizabeth Cobbs's book, The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers, is a welcome addition to the literature on women's overseas service during World War I. Although other books, including Susan Zeiger's In Uncle Sam's Service: Women Workers with the American Expeditionary Force, 1917–1919, Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider's Into the Breach: American Women Overseas in World War I, Lettie Gavin's Women in World War I: They Also Served and Lynn Dumenil's The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I include sections about the American telephone operators, The Hello Girls is the first book to devote a significant part of its narrative to their experiences. This is a very well-written, long overdue accounting of America's first women in combat. As Cobbs states in her introduction, "The Hello Girls explores how Americans mobilized for World War I, telephones transformed the United States, females joined the armed forces, suffragists fought for the vote, and women and men fought together for justice" (p. 7). In 1914, when the war began in Europe, the idea of women's suffrage was not widely accepted by political leaders in the United States, including President Woodrow Wilson. Among the objections to giving women the vote was their inability to serve their country in time of war. However, dependence on the telephone made the employment of American, bilingual female operators by the U.S. Army a necessity. Once in Europe, these women proved of immense value to Army operations; one group even served near the front at General Pershing's headquarters. At all levels, the operators impressed officers and men with their skill and professionalism. [End Page 552] Meanwhile, in the U.S., President Wilson shifted from being against woman suffrage to a supporter. Cobbs credits, in part, the heroic performance of American women in Europe for his transformation: "Wilson emphasize[d] two … reasons for his change of heart: international opinion and women's wartime service" (p. 119). Although the women's suffrage bill was defeated in 1918, with increasing support across the nation it finally made it through both houses of Congress and was ratified in 1920. Back in France, the operators received universal praise for their service, with many officers declaring them indispensable "uniformed women [who] performed beyond the call of duty" (p. 266). The operators began returning home shortly after the Armistice was signed in November 1918, with the last discharged on January 20, 1920. However, despite their excellent service, the operators were denied veteran's status and benefits. Led by Merle Egan Anderson and supported by almost all the officers with whom they had served, the operators fought for nearly 60 years until gaining recognition as veterans in 1977. Cobbs' very readable book draws on a variety of sources including previously unknown diaries that operators kept during their months overseas. Her use of the operators as a case study to illustrate how American women's wartime service influenced the suffrage movement is excellent. Although she might have used other American women to make her case, the operators are a great choice because they were the first women to serve in an official combat role with the U.S. Army. One point Cobbs might have been expanded upon is how the operators' role evolved during their time in France. When the operators first arrived, the Army envisioned them only handling routine calls, leaving higher-priority calls to men. As the women proved more efficient than the men, their responsibilities expanded until they connected all calls. This point would have bolstered Cobbs's argument of how the operators in France proved their value to both army operations and skeptical men. However, this criticism should not take away from my sincere [End Page 553] admiration for The Hello Girls. Cobbs's book is excellent and proves that fact can be far more interesting than fiction. The adventures of the Hello Girls and their connections to the...

Democracy and Continuing Marginalization of Women in Indonesian Politics

Although much progress and efforts have been made to increase women’s participation in politics, the main idea of women’s involvement in politics has not yet penetrated into the mainstream of Indonesian politics. The main idea is not only a representation of the number of female population but also the representation that will bring new norms for Indonesian politics that has been so far dominated by the assumption of masculinity based on power politics and struggle to control resources by one party for the loss of others. This paper seeks to see how this marginalization of women continues to occur. One of the reasons for this cannot be separated from the waning of the reform spirit that inspired the reformation. Slowly but surely Indonesian politics is re-defined in term of power struggles by all means including by corruption, collusion, and nepotism that was once the object of criticism of reform groups. In this context, it is often the case that if women want to succeed in politics, they must follow such political norms and abandons the idealism of their struggle. In fact, such women politicians not only abandon the ideal of feminist struggle but reinforce the assumption that politics is the world of men.

Men as victims of intimate partner violence - a case report

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an important worldwide problem. Several studies on IPV found equivalent rates of assault perpetrated by men and women. The victim was a 30 years old three wheel driver, married with two children. He was assaulted by his wife with a club over the head and was admitted to the Teaching Hospital Karapitiya. A CT scan of the brain revealed a left parieto-occipital large extra dural haemorrhage (EDH), left parietal skull fracture with midline shift of 2cm and cerebral oedema. Left tempero-parietal craniotomy and evacuation of EDH was done. On examination, apart from the surgical incision, he had a sutured laceration 8cm in length over the left side of the head. Left sided 3rd cranial nerve palsy was also present. The idea of women being violent is a hard thing for many people to believe as it goes against the stereotype of the passive and helpless female. This, in spite of the fact that women are known to be more likely than men to commit child abuse and child murder. Findings of this case suggest that women use IPV against their male partners. Given the potentially serious physical and mental health consequences this can have, particularly for victims, research in this area needs to move beyond the argument over who perpetrates more IPV and who suffers more as a consequence of IPV.

Quería que le limpiaran todo, la casa y el sable”: del servicio doméstico a la construcción subjetiva de la prostitución como oficio en Argentina

El presente trabajo se propone analizar trayectorias de iniciación de mujeres trabajadoras domésticas remuneradas en el mundo de la prostitución de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, a partir de ciertos usos y significados del dinero. Para esto recuperaré algunas escenas de la práctica de la dobleta como momentos a partir de los cuales se comienzan a entremezclar el servicio doméstico y el sexual, poniendo en tensión preconcepciones de la prostitución como “vida fácil”, “dinero fácil” y la idea de la mujer como “víctima” tanto de un sistema estructural de explotación sexual como de la pobreza. Indagaré en la transmisión de conocimientos de las prácticas sexuales, el lugar o territorio de trabajo y la presentación de clientes confiables de la mano de figuras intermedias que actúan como iniciadoras. Luego, mostraré el desplazamiento simbólico de la violencia hacia el ámbito del matrimonio y la construcción del oficio de la prostitución como fuente no sólo de ingresos, sino también de orgullo. Por último, concluiré que la idea según la que las mujeres “caen” en la prostitución como destino ineludible, indeseable y rechazable resulta problemática, pues su complejidad abarca significaciones sociales posibilitadas por el dinero obtenido y el orden social de género que funda. Los resultados fueron obtenidos a partir de un extenso trabajo de campo con enfoque etnográfico durante los años 2011 a 2013, con afiliadas a la Asociación de Mujeres Meretrices de la Argentina. Las técnicas utilizadas fueron primeramente entrevistas grupales informales y observación participante, construyendo un diálogo que toma a este grupo de mujeres como interlocutoras fundamentales para producir conocimiento.

Women’s Views About Domestic Violence: A Qualitative Study in Iran

Violence against women is an urgent health priority in Iran. Designing effective programs for preventing and controlling the problem necessitates a thorough understanding of Iranian women and their perspectives regarding domestic violence. This study was aimed at exploring the domestic violence-related views of married women who were referred to health care facilities in Ahvaz, Iran. In this qualitative research, data were collected through four focus group discussions with 30 married women. All the discussions were recorded and transcribed, after which the data were classified separately. The main themes and subthemes were then manually derived from the data and analyzed. The five main themes identified were domestic violence against women in Ahvaz, behavioral influencing factors, nonbehavioral influencing factors, the necessity to empower women to prevent domestic violence, and recommendations for developing special training programs for Ahvazi women. Most of the participants were aware that domestic violence against women is a common occurrence in Iran. They were well aware of the definition of violence and expressed a belief that behavioral factors exert an important effect on the occurrence of the problem. They recommended the development of appropriate training programs that empower women to prevent the problem, the use of mass media to educate citizens about domestic violence, and the involvement of opinion leaders in eliminating the taboo against considering such violence a crime against Iranian women. Considering the views and ideas of women as consumers of educational services is a principle used to develop effective programs for preventing and controlling domestic violence. As indicated by the findings, the participants believe that empowering women must be treated as a priority in the Iranian health care system. However, they recommended differing approaches and methods of empowerment on the basis of their individual views and concerns.

У пошуках гармонії: Vals mèlancolque в контексті малої прози О. Кобилянської кінця ХІХ ст.

This paper analizes O. Kobylanska’s story “Vals mèlancolque” as the epicenter of the writers’ refl ections on the category of harmony and happiness. The relationship of O. Kobylanska’s spiritual quest in «Diary» and short prose of the late nineteenth century is observed (“Nature”, “Rose”, “Ignorant”, “Vals mèlancolque”, “Humility”, etc.). The author’s vision of the substantial role of art and words in the story “Vals mèlancolque” is highligted. This paper also investigates the symbolist nature of a text. The writer emphasizes the understanding of the actual idea of women’s emancipation. The paper shows that female characters embody the author’s conscious distinction of such categories as “love” (Martha), “cold art” (Anna) and a harmonious combination of “pieces” and “love” (Sofi a). It is concluded that in the work of Kobylanska the text is a landmark, being both a kind of life and artistic credo.

Women's Rights, Human Rights, and Duties: From Domination to Partnership

The idea of women's rights as human rights can facilitate our identifying the causes, consequences, and potential remedies for the current quagmire in which we find themselves, but it needs some reformulation. To the traditional understandings of human rights, I add four conceptual tools: (1) Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of the counterparts of rights and duties, (2) Eisler’s concept of partnership (as opposed to dominator) societies, (3) Johan Galtung’s expansion of our conception of violence to include its structural and cultural forms, and, finally, (4) the literature on nonviolence as a path to mobilization and transformation that resists existing social structures and builds new ones.

"Shut up in a Countrey Grange": The Provenance of Lady Hester Pulter's Poetry and Prose and Women's Literary History

Recent scholarly emphasis on the public nature of manuscript circulation has highlighted the important contributions women made to a wide range of literary, intellectual, and social discourses. Against this backdrop, BC MS Lt q 32, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds (compiled ca. 1660) poses something of a problem. During Hester Pulter's lifetime, it did not circulate beyond her immediate family. After her death, it remained within the household; it was annotated by an eighteenth-century reader but never printed. The anomalous history of BC MS Lt q 32 makes it a useful test case of our ideas of women's authorship and manuscript authorship in general. It reveals how histories of publication affect our understanding of women writers and how patterns of preservation shape our approach to literary studies.

Love’s Labor Earned

To most women today who find themselves exhausted by unwaged, unappreciated emotion work, receiving payment for it probably seems like a pretty delightful idea. Yet, while the idea of women billing the men in their lives for emotional services rendered may succeed on some level as a rhetorical provocation regarding gender roles, treating emotional labor as a commodity—or a previously untapped resource to be monetized—suggests that the market is the solution to, rather than a cause of, gender inequality.

WOMEN’S ENLIGHTENMENT MOVEMENT AS THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION (LATE 19TH – FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY)

In this article, the author distinguished the ideological foundations of enlightenment work of Ukrainian women’s organisations (late 19th – first half of the 20th century) and grounded the necessity to implement a special course in educational programs of the humanities. The methodological basis of the study is axiological and competent approaches. The author examined the educational value of the idea of women’s Enlightenment movement and determined the positive experience of women’s organisations in the formation of the young generation of Ukrainians with a high level of national consciousness, gender culture and culture of international relations. Using the methods of content analysis, comparative analysis, historical and structural analysis, induction and deduction the author defined the concept of Ukrainian women’s Enlightenment movement, as also determined the purposes and suggested the content design of a training course on this social and cultural phenomenon for teacher training colleges in Ukraine.

La construcción de otras mujeres y de otros espacios: el caso de San Miguel Teotongo

<p>Este artículo presenta un análisis de las ideas que han construido la categoría de género y las feminidades desde la ilustración hasta el pos-estructuralismo. La idea central es entender el feminismo como una construcción sociocultural que transita desde el reconocimiento de una mujer universal de corte occidental hacia la idea de las mujeres en diversidad de luchas emancipadoras. Bajo dichos términos,<br />se realiza un estudio respecto de la construcción local de las feminidades en San Miguel Teotongo, sus resistencias y su manifestación en la espacialidad urbana.</p>

Baby, You Can Drive My Car: Advertising Women's Freedom in 1920s America

This article examines how understandings of women's new political and social status were constructed in car advertisements that appeared in Vogue during the post-suffrage age, and how the discourse presented in these ads was used to promote ideas regarding women's liberation while also delineating the limits of this freedom. Focusing on cars—a consumer product that was highly associated with mobility and modernity—the article illuminates how ideas of women's liberation were inherently connected to the material experience of consumption and the central role that advertising played in the legitimization and mainstreaming of feminist ideas. Car ads offered women a visual vocabulary to imagine their new social and political roles as citizens and to play an active role in shaping their identity as modern women.

The Meaning of Beauty through A Woman Image in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight

The presence of women has been questioned by men since ancient time up to now. They tried to define what kind of creature women are. Aristoteles had given the idea of woman that she is male in form but female in virtue. Thomas Aquinas also defined that woman is an imperfect man. In spite of their confusion about women, they like women’s presence since they give beauty in life. The beauty of women is not only in men’s mind but it also appears through their performance. They look so beautiful so that men want to make them as their partners in life. The meaning of beauty on women has been changed from time to time. In postmodern era, the meaning of beautiful women is not the same with that in the previous era. The elegant performance does not become the measurement anymore. The idea of what ‘she becomes’ is the indication of beauty itself and it is discussed in the last part of the article.

The power to change: Muslim women’s rights movement and the resistance towards gender-based violence

Under transnational migration, migrant women are not confined by the new host society; the unbreakable attachments to the home society constantly affect and shape these women’s perceptions of their gender and position in the host society. As a result of the growing number of Muslim migrant women, both Muslim and non-Muslim communities have begun to be aware of and recognise the rights of Muslim women and the violence that occurs. Yet, unlike international experiences of Islamic feminist groups being established to promote Muslim women’s rights, an increasing number of local women’s rights groups have started to work with Islamic faith-based organisations to disseminate the idea of women’s rights in Muslim communities. With a lack of studies regarding Muslim migrant women in Hong Kong, this article draws on the significance of international studies on culture, religion and migration to understand the situation in Hong Kong. By analysing the social and political influences on minority integration, this article seeks to uncover the capacity of the Muslim women’s rights movement in guarding against gender-based violence in Hong Kong.

The Idea of Women in Charlotte Bronte's Shirley

The current study aims at studying critically the idea of women in Charlotte Bronte' Shirley .Also it aims at casting light on Charlotte Bronte as one of the most prominent female novelist in the nineteenth century. It also traces Charlotte Bronte as a subjective novelist is concerned to convey a subjective impression. Furthermore, the study provides a historical and critical background of her age in which she matured and originated the main literary tendencies which affected and swayed her and decided the expression and manner of her writings. The study concludes, Charlotte Bronte sets up moral, spiritual and social problems such as the position of women, but evades a solution to the complications by dropping the problem and substituting the conventional solution of love and marriage.

“With a glance of dark meaning”; or, Bloodstained Allegories in Spenser and Hawthorne

Over and over again, there was the idea of woman, acting the part of a revengeful mischief towards man. It was, indeed, very singular to see how the artist's imagination seemed to run on these stories of bloodshed, in which woman's hand was crimsoned by the stain; and how, too,--in one form or another, grotesque or sternly sad,--she failed not to bring out the moral, that woman must strike through her own heart to reach a human life, whatever were the motive that impelled her. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun And the blood has its strange omniscience. D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature It has long been acknowledged that Hawthorne was a close and careful reader of Spenser. (1) He often wrote about reading his treasured copy of The Faerie Queene; he and his wife read cantos of the poem out to their children at bedtime; his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, adapted the first book of the poem for children; and his daughter was named Una after the heroine of Book I (Miller 49, 56, 409-10, passim-, Peabody; Hosington and Anne Shaver 289). According to Gary Scharnhorst, Hawthorne was the anonymous reviewer of the first American edition of Spenser's Poetical Works in the Boston Post in 1839 (668). It is thus hard to imagine another nineteenth-century writer--and there are many, given Spenser's importance for writers of Gothic fiction, poetry, and romance--who was more obviously influenced by the greatest Elizabethan poet. (2) Despite this, the ways in which Spenser has shaped Hawthorne's literary imagination have not often been fully explored, and Gregory Staley is a rare exception in acknowledging that Hawthornes debt to Ovid in his work is an Ovid "re-modelled by Spenser" (137). This is assuredly due, at least in part, to an over-compartmentalization of academic writing which has served to isolate scholars and critics in their distinct fields or time periods. Yet the relative lack of scholarship on the Spenser-Hawthorne relationship may also be due to a tradition of reading Hawthorne in terms of the development of Puritan allegory, especially in terms of John Bunyan, rather than more ambiguous and amorphous writers such as Spenser. Henry James, for one, ascribes Hawthorne's "metaphysical moods" to his reading of both Bunyan and Spenser, those two "masters of allegory," together in a single breath. As James writes: Hawthorne, in his metaphysical moods, is nothing if not allegorical, and allegory, to my sense, is quite one of the lighter exercises of the imagination.... It has produced assuredly some first-rate works; and Hawthorne in his younger years had been a great reader and devotee of Bunyan and Spenser, the great masters of allegory. But it is apt to spoil two good things--a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and the taste for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible feeble writing that has been inflicted upon the world. (366) Despite James's characterization, we should be careful to put Spenser and Bunyan uncritically together, as the two instantiate different literary and philosophical investments in their use of allegory. Although he acknowledges Hawthorne's first-rate works, for James, the influence of the two allegorists ultimately leads less to Hawthorne's richly allusive prose textures, marked by studied ambiguities of phrase and rhetoric, image and characterization--things Hawthorne found in Spenser, and which James would seemingly otherwise appreciate--than to James's opinion of allegory as one of the "lighter exercises of the imagination." What is more, Hawthorne's allegorical method notoriously combines not only Spenserian and Bunyanesque conceits (like the Valley of the Shadow of Death in "The Celestial Railroad"), but also unique features from New England Puritan typology, elements drawn from the historical "romance," as well as new understandings of symbol and allegory developed in Romantic poetics. …

Free Women's Contributions to Working-Class Women's Sexual Education during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and Beyond

Background/Context Women's sexuality, and the ways they experience it, has been a major topic in feminist theories and movements throughout history. For the more than 20,000 working-class women who participated in the Free Women movement in Spain (the libertarian women's movement, which started in 1936), women's sexuality was also a key topic in both their process of empowerment and their claims and activities. Purpose The objective of this article is twofold. First, it explores the ways in which the Free Women movement helped improve the personal lives of women in that period. Second, this article analyzes how the libertarian women's movement contributed to the sexual education and encouraged other women to have sexual and affective relationships free of violence. Research Design The article is constructed based on the life stories of two women who participated in the Free Women's movement. Our analysis also draws from an in-depth review of literature on the libertarian movement and sexual education as well as of historical documents about the libertarian movement of that time. Findings/Results Our data reveal that thousands of women experienced personal transformations through their involvement in the libertarian movement, a social revolution that affected the entire society. Reflections on free love, the eradication of prostitution, and the promotion of “conscious motherhood” were leading ideas in both the educational activities that Free Women organized for working-class women and in the activists’ own personal lives. These women's ideas on sexuality contributed to the creation of a society with more egalitarian and free relationships based on mutual support, solidarity, and collective and community-based action. This article shows how the Free Women were historically independent agents whose multiple achievements and transformations have been largely ignored. Conclusions/Recommendations The article concludes by discussing how the main features of the Free Women's libertarian women's movement are present in the preventive socialization of gender violence that is currently being developed in some educational projects in Spain. In particular, the Free Women's contributions help students construct relationships free of violence.

Split Infinities: German Feminisms and the Generational Project

When, in the second half of the nineteenth-century, the German women's movement took off, female activists/writers expressed a desire for their political work to initiate a generational project. The achievement of equal democratic rights for men and women was perceived to be a process in which the ‘democratic spirit’ was instilled in future generations through education and the provision of exceptional role models. The First Wave of the women's movement laid the ground, through their writing, campaigning, and petitioning, for the eventual success of obtaining women's suffrage and sending female, elected representatives to the Reichstag in 1919. My part of this article, drawing on the essays by Hedwig Dohm (1831–1919) analyses how the idea of women's political and social emancipation is phrased in the rhetoric of a generational project which will, in the short term, bring only slow changes to the status quo but which will enable future generations to build on the foundations of the (heterogeneous, but mostly bourgeoisie-based) first organised German women's movement, and which was intended to function as a generational repository of women's intellectual history.When, in the mid-2000s, a number of pop-feminist essayistic volumes appeared in Germany, their authors expressed the desire to reinvigorate feminism for a new generation of young women. Their texts focus in part on the continuing need to ensure equal democratic rights for young women in terms of equal pay, reproductive capacities and child care. Yet they simultaneously register their dissatisfaction with the legacy of the New Feminism and, more specifically, with the role models it produced. Although in their written interventions these new German pop-feminists often draw on the generic and rhetorical strategies of their feminist forebears, they employ the generational metaphor as a means of producing a narrative of ‘progress’ (Hemmings, 2011) which signifies a departure from previous feminist discourses and firmly ‘others’ their exponents. This type of narrative resonates troublingly with wider social and political narratives which situate feminism firmly in the past. Strikingly, German pop-feminist volumes share the deployment of this progress narrative with similar publications in Britain and the US. Yet the German volumes generally — and uniquely in relation to those three contexts — avoid textual engagement with the writing and protagonists of the first women's movement in Germany. This section of the article examines the feminist historiographical narratives told in pop-feminist volumes across all three contexts, enquiring after the local specificities of generational thinking, its caesurae, emphases and omissions, and revealing the broader transnational commonalities — and political implications — of feminist stories.

Men in Charge? Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition

At a time when men’s assumption of leadership roles through all-male eventsand publications is a popular phenomenon, Men in Charge?, a byproduct ofa project by the women-led organization Musawah, could not have been publishedat a more opportune moment. Comprising a foreword by Zainah Anwar,Musawah’s director, an introduction by the editors, and ten chapters from academicsand activists of varied backgrounds, the book historicizes and problematizesthe Islamic idea of qiwāmah (authority) and wilāyah (guardianship),among other legal patriarchal precepts. It successfully argues that the Islamiclegal tradition with regards to gender roles rests on the false notion of malesuperiority.Men in Charge? carries immeasurable value for scholars and studentsof Islam, religion, women’s and gender studies, activists working toward gender-egalitarianism, and (Muslim) feminists seeking empowerment within areligious framework. It also speaks to reform leaders and lawmakers in Muslimstates, who might better understand the fundamental assumptions uponwhich family laws operate and their disconnect from the reality that womenand families face. The book’s major success lies in covering several importantlayers of the myth of male authority, from the theoretical gaps in the notionsof qiwāmah, wilāyah, and istikhlāf to a practical examination of the impact ofthese legal principles and proposals for new and creative approaches for feministsto apply in their vision of a gender-egalitarian Islam.Men in Charge? can be divided into two sections: (1) a theoretical discussionof the problems raised through fiqh rulings on gender and proposesnew ways through which Muslim feminists can approach those problems and(2) an analysis of the established ideals’ practical impacts. Ziba Mir-Hosseini’sdiscussion in the first chapter, “Muslim Legal Tradition and the Challengeof Gender Equality,” effectively contextualizes the book’s broaderdiscussion: What Muslim scholars did in the early twentieth century to challengethe legal tradition’s normative thought in an effort to move towardmore democratic and egalitarian family systems.According to the ideas of the scholars from the past and those from themore modern period, there appears to be an inconsistency between the twogroups’ understanding of “woman.” This suggests that the idea of woman is ...

Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women ed. by Mia Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, and Barbara D. Savage

Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women. Edited by Mia Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, and Barbara D. Savage. John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Pp. xii, 308. Paper, $27.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-2091-6.) Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women offers a compelling exploration of black women's diverse intellectual labors and contributions. The volume is organized into four chronological sections that span the period from Phillis Wheatley's writings to the present day; the collection's focus lies within and beyond the United States, and it draws on numerous academic traditions. This border-crossing impetus shapes the collection's content and foci as well as its methods. It is historical in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, stretching the terms of what counts as history, who counts as a knower, and what constitutes an adequate historiographical method or source. Because the volume approaches intellectual history from beyond the usual bounds, it was a bit surprising to find no reference to some foundational interdisciplinary volumes documenting black women's ideas, such as Beverly Guy-Sheftall's edited collection Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought (New York, 1995) and Ann Allen Shockley's Afro-American Women Writers, 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide (Boston, 1988). Nevertheless, the volume's interdisciplinary reach adds many new insights to the extant literatures focused on tracing and analyzing black women's distinctive intellectual traditions. The authors illustrate that bringing together seemingly disparate sources is necessary to illuminate this rich history, given the partial and often fragmented nature of the historical archive vis-a-vis black women's lives. The contributors explore diverse genres of knowing across time, place, and circumstance, including novels, poetry, prose, spiritual autobiographies, letters, journalism, church registers, cloth, colonial archives, mission reports, church newsletters, trial records, public depositions, diaries, social media, speeches, the blogosphere, and various forms of activism, organizing, and protest. Many contributors also examine sites of reluctance, backlash, withholding, silence, and self-censure, underscoring that the expressive nature of the unsaid, the erased, and the untellable is in and of itself a pivotal means for tracing genealogies of black women's intellectual history, in terms of both epistemic and historical politics. Given my own work on Anna Julia Cooper, an early black feminist scholar, educator, and activist, 1 was drawn to the essays that highlighted black women's strategies for pivoting dominant frames of knowing (though, for full disclosure, I had hoped to find some engagement with Cooper's 1925 Sorbonne dissertation on the Haitian and French revolutions, which anticipated black Atlantic studies and predated W. …