women's history - Columbia University Press Blog

March 22, 2019

In the Black: A Brief History of Early Black Women Investors

In the hilarious Showtime series Black Monday, set in the late 1980s, Dawn Towner (played by Regina Hall in gloriously shimmering peacock shades of eye shadow) is the only female head trader on Wall Street. Towner holds a small stake...

March 15, 2019

Roundup: Nancy K. Miller and My Brilliant Friends

This week we’ve been featuring Nancy K. Miller’s My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism in honor of Women’s History Month. If you haven’t been following us, set the FOMO aside. We’ve got your back with today’s roundup post of this week’s post and previous media...

March 14, 2019

“Carolyn Heilbrun”

“They will know that there are books waiting for them as there were no books for me.” ~ Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Women’s lives: The View from the Threshold Read the first section of Carolyn from Nancy K. Miller’s My Brilliant...

March 13, 2019

“The Art of Losing”

“In My Brilliant Friends, Nancy K. Miller depicts the life-altering importance of deep and nourishing friendships between and among women. Through vivid details and Miller’s singular point of view, we witness her transformative relationships with Carolyn Heilbrun, Naomi Schor, and Diane...

March 6, 2019

Book Excerpt! Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality (chapter 4)

Read an excerpt from chapter 4 “Aberrant Mothers/Captive Wives” of Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality, by Shani Orgad. In this chapter, Orgad illustrate this work of cover-up. It starts with the personal stories women tell themselves...

March 1, 2019

Join us in Celebrating Women’s History Month 2019

Today begins our celebration of Women’s History Month. If you’ve been following us, you likely know that Columbia has been a leader in the publication of gender studies and feminist theory since the 1980s. You’re probably familiar with Joan Wallach...

July 3, 2018

Trivia Tuesday: This Landmark Critique of Women’s History and Gender Inequality Examines the Use of Gender as a Tool for Historical and Cultural Analysis

Joan Wallach Scott’s Gender and the Politics of History played a significant role in the movement of women from the margins of historical focus to the center in the 1980s. This collection of essays was inspired by Scott’s tenure as Director of...

March 30, 2018

Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Search for an Adequate Witness: An Excerpt

Although their humble beginnings inspired comparison, Thomas’s upbringing was defined by paternal abandonment, and Hill’s, by a large and supportive family. Whereas Thomas is recalled as a boisterous consumer of porn and something of the “class clown” in his needling of straitlaced colleagues in...

March 29, 2018

Gender, Race, and Credibility in the Age of Trump

This narrative of individual healing, effort, and ultimate success is available primarily to white women, who have historically been constructed as precious and thus worthy of protection from hard manual labor, economic discomfort, and sexual violation (however ineffective that narrative...

March 29, 2018

Joan Wallach Scott Responds to “The Nightmare Begins”

Trump’s appeal to both men and women rested on his promise to impose a lost or threatened order of racial and gender hierarchies. The appeal was made not rationally or programmatically, but libidinally—it was the erotic call and response that...

March 28, 2018

Gender and the Politics of History: An Excerpt

It’s been 30 years since this book was first published; its endurance is a testimony to the continuing importance of gender in our political and cultural vocabulary. –Joan Wallach In celebration of Women’s History Month, we’re closing out March with one of...