Pam Houston (Department of English)

With equal parts candor and lyricism, Pam Houston illuminates the interconnected histories of abortion in the United States and in her own life during the decades when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. Houston guides us through the shifting landscapes of politics, the law, and self-determination in a country where access to medical care and the power to determine your own destiny are increasingly—and once again—dependent on geography and circumstance.

Lisa G. Materson (Department of History)

How does a middle-class white woman from South Dakota end up becoming a political prisoner in 1950’s Puerto Rico convicted of trying to overthrow the colonial government?Professor Lisa G. Materson unravels the puzzle of how Ruth Reynolds, an American adherent of Gandhian nonviolence, became a close ally of Puerto Rican revolutionaries resisting US control of Puerto Rico. This unlikely story prompts us to consider what it means to believe in U.S. democracy and to take personal responsibility for U.S. government injustices and raises questions of how an outsider can provide true allyship and tie local battles to larger global themes of oppression. 

Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor (Department of History) 

The Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History, edited by history faculty Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor and Lisa G. Materson, boldly interprets the history of diverse women and how ideas about gender shaped their access to political and cultural power in North America over six centuries. In 29 chapters, leading scholars demonstrate the power of innovative research to excavate a history hidden in plain sight. 

Iris Jamahl Dunkle (Department of English)

Iris Jamahl Dunkle revives the groundbreaking voice of Sanora Babb. Dunkle follows Babb from her impoverished childhood in eastern Colorado to California. There, she befriended the era's literati, including Ray Bradbury and Ralph Ellison; entered into an illegal marriage; and was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was Babb's field notes and oral histories of migrant farmworkers that Steinbeck relied on to write his novel; Babb's impact was profound. Her life and work feature heavily in Ken Burns's award-winning documentary The Dust Bowl and inspired Kristin Hannah in her bestsellerThe Four Winds. Riding Like the Wind reminds us with fresh awareness that the stories we know — and who tells them — can change the way we remember history.

Nicole Ranganath (Middle East/South Asia Studies)

Based on six years of fieldwork in rural northern California, Nicole Ranganath examines the role of gender, water and land in the cultural history of Sikhs. From the Punjab region of South Asia hundreds of years ago to current day Northern California, it explores song as a window into the interior lives of Sikh women through their performance of diverse genres: gadar anti-colonial songs, folk music, hymns, and autobiographical songs.

Michiko Suzuki (Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures)

Presenting a fresh examination of women writers and pre-war ideology, this book breaks new ground in its investigation of love as a critical aspect of Japanese culture during the early to mid-twentieth century. As a literary and cultural history of love and female identity, Becoming Modern Women focuses on same-sex love, love marriage, and maternal love — new terms at that time; in doing so, it shows how the idea of "woman," within the context of a vibrant print culture, was constructed through the modern experience of love. 

Elisabeth Krimmer (German Program)

Elisabeth Krimmer looks at how women's diaries, fiction, memoirs and other writing gives an insight into the complicit bystanders' role in the functioning of the Nazi regime. Chapters on army auxiliaries, nurses, female refugees, rape victims and Holocaust survivors analyze women's motivations for enlisting in the National Socialist cause, as well as for their continuing support for the regime and, in some cases, their growing estrangement from it. 

Natalia Deeb-Sossa, Yvette G. flores, and Angie Chabram (Department of Chicana/o Studies)

Testimonios of Care: Feminist Latina/x and Chicana/x Perspectives on Caregiving Praxis is the first English-language collection of Latina/x caregiving testimonios. It gives voice to those who often are voiceless in histories of caregiving and is guided by Chicana and Latina feminist principles, which include solidarity between women of color, empathy, willingness to challenge the patriarchal medical health-care systems, questioning traditional gender roles and idealization of familia, and caring for self while caring for loved ones and community. 

As historian Traci Parker writes a new biography, she is learning just how much Coretta Scott King contributed to her husband’s ideas and actions, and how his story is also very much her own.

Historian Stacy Fahrenthold unravels the history of Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian immigrants’ activism in the global textile industry and labor strikes. Her book reveals how women garment workers, child laborers and union activists struggled against white and even Arab American bosses, as well as why their impact has gone ignored.