These essays chart major contributions to recent historiography. Carefully selected for their accessibility and accompanied by headnotes and study questions, the essays offer a clear and engaging introduction for the non-specialist. The introduction describes the emergence of gender as a subject of historical investigation and in ten essays, historians explore the meanings and significance of gender in American history since 1890. The volume shows how the interpretation of gender expands and revises our understanding of significant issues in twentieth-century history, such as work, labour protest, sexuality, consumption and social welfare. It offers new perspectives on visual representations and explores the politics of historical subjects and the politics of our own historical revisions.

Part One Sexuality and Gender: Modern Sexuality and the Myth of Victorian Repression, Christina Simmons; Sexual Geography and Gender Economy - The Furnished Room Districts of Chicago, 1890-1930, Joanne Meyerowitz; Christian Brotherhood or Sexual Perversion? Homosexual Identities and the Construction of Sexual Boundaries in the World War I, Era George Chauncey Jr; The Meanings of Lesbianism in Post-War America, Donna Penn. Part Two Work and Consumption in Visual Representations: Art, the New Woman, and Consumer Culture - Kenneth Hayes Miller and Reginald Marsh on 14th Street, 1920-1940, Ellen Wiley Todd; Manly Work - Public Art and Masculinity in Depression America, Barbara Melosh; Gendered Labour - Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter and the Discourses of Wartime Femininity, Melissa Dabakis. Part III Gender as Political Language Civilization, the Decline of Middle-Class Manliness, and Ida B. Wells's Anti-Lynching Campaign (1892-1894): Disorderly Women - Gender and Labour Militancy in the Appalchian South, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall; Family Violence, Feminism, and Social Control, Lynda Gordon.