The Gendered Republic

An authoritative assessment of the early American republic through the lens of gender

What does it mean to study early American history through gender? The essays in this collection, written by the best emerging and established historians in the field, bring together women’s history with masculinity studies to showcase the transformative impact of gender history on our understanding of the early American republic. In addition to state-of-the-field historiographical overviews, The Gendered Republic features essays that use gender history to suggest new chronological and geographic frameworks, broaden understandings of politics and citizenship, highlight the complexities of intersectional identities, and explore new approaches that center bodies and sexualities. Collectively, the contributors showcase the vibrancy of gender history as a frame of inquiry, revealing how shifting notions of women’s and men’s roles shaped the lives of people in the early American republic—White, Black, and Indigenous—and how those people, in turn, experienced and redefined gender and, with it, their communities, cultures, laws, families, and nations.

Contributors: Jacqueline Beatty, York College of Pennsylvania * Rachel Hope Cleves, University of Victoria * Shannon C. Eaves, College of Charleston * Craig Thompson Friend, North Carolina State University * Lorri Glover, Saint Louis University * Antwain K. Hunter, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill * Lynn Kennedy, University of Lethbridge * Joshua A. Lynn, Eastern Kentucky University * Kenneth E. Marshall, SUNY Oswego * Ashley E. Moreshead, University of Central Florida * Jamie Myers, University of North Carolina, Pembroke * Steven Peach, Tarleton State University * Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch, University of Toledo * Stephanie J. Richmond, Norfolk State University * Rachel E. Walker, University of Hartford * Timothy J. Williams, University of Oregon