In Westerns, women transmit complicated cultural coding about the nature of westward expansionism, heroism, family life, manliness and American femininity. As the genre changes and matures, depictions of women have transitioned from traditional to more modern roles. Frontier Feminine charts these significant shifts in the Western's transmission of gender values and expectations and aims to expand the critical arena in which Western film is situated by acknowledging the importance of women in this genre.

Click ′Additional Materials′ for downloadable samples "This is a sound purchase for college and university libraries with women′s studies or American West programs as well as for large public libraries." --BOOKLIST "This is the first encyclopedia to focus on this neglected group. . . . There is a clear need for this encyclopedia . . . recommended for academic and public libraries and all libraries with a special interest in the western region and women′s studies." --LIBRARY JOURNAL "A highly educational and enlightening resource, the Encyclopedia of Women in the American West is a core recommendation for academic and public library American Western History Studies and Women′s Studies reference collections, as well as an invaluable resource for writers and non-specialist general readers with an interest in studying women′s experiences and contributions to American society and culture." --THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW Unites the American West and Women′s History American women have followed their "manifest destiny" since the 1800′s, moving West to homestead, found businesses, author novels and write poetry, practice medicine and law, preach and perform missionary work, become educators, artists, judges, civil rights activists, and many other important roles spurred on by their strength, spirit, and determination. Encyclopedia of Women of the American West captures the lives of more than 150 women who made their mark from the mid-1800s to the present, contextualizing their experiences and contributions to American society. Including many women profiled for the first time, the encyclopedia offers immense value and interest to practicing historians as well as students and the lay public. Multidisciplinary and Multicultural Cowgirls, ranchers, authors, poets, artists, judges, doctors, educators, and reformers--although these women took many different paths, they are united in their role in history, fighting not only for women′s rights, but equal rights for all in this rich and promised land. The Encyclopedia of Women in the American West chronicles the work of Native American activists such as Mildred Imach Cleghorn, and Sarah Winnemucca, the champion of rights of indigenous peoples who established Nevada′s first school for Native Americans in 1884. The encyclopedia also explores the stories of early ranchers. Among them is Freda Ehmann, who founded the California Ripe Olive Association where, according to her grandson, "science and chemical exactness failed, the experience and care of a skillful and conscientious housewife succeeded." Women in the American West have long thrived in the arts. This is evidenced by the work of authors such as Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather, Amy Tan, and Linda Hasselstrom, poets such as Hildegarde Flanner, and journalist Molly Ivins. All are profiled in this comprehensive work. The arts are used to address both aesthetic and serious societal issues such as Maxine Hong Kingston′s The Woman Warrior, the story of a woman′s struggle with identity as a minority in American culture. Academics will appreciate a study of Ruth Underhill′s Autobiography of a Papago Woman, which deals with the role of feminist ideology in changing the discipline of anthropology during the first part of the twentieth century. Women in the American West have also achieved many "firsts" such as Utah′s Ivy Baker Priest, the first woman to hold the office of Treasurer of the United States, and Georgia Bullock, the first woman judge in the State of California. The Many Roles of Women in the American West The Encyclopedia of Women in the American West covers nine diverse topical categories: Agriculture/Ranching Arts and Letters Education Entrepreneurs Law Pioneers Public Performance Religion Women′s organizations The West is often portrayed as a rough and tumble man′s world, but behind these men--and often independently--were women with the dreams, strength, and determination to make a difference. The Encyclopedia of Women in the American West is a tribute to their independence, intelligence, courage, spirit, perseverance, and daring. Key Features Authoritative and in-depth articles on a wide range of salient issues in women′s history Suggested readings and interpretive materials for every entry Bridges two perennially popular areas of academic and lay interest: the American West and women′s history Developed and priced to appeal to high school and public libraries as well as academic libraries Recommended Libraries Public, school, academic, special, and private/corporate

An anthology of essays about 20th-century women living in the western U.S., showing that the image of the pioneer woman has been replaced not with another dominant one, but with many.

Men are usually the heroes of Western stories, but women also played a crucial role in developing the American frontier, and their stories have rarely been told. This anthology of biographical essays on women promises new insight into gender in the 19C American West. The women featured include Asian Americans, African-Americans and Native American women, as well as their white counterparts. The original essays offer observations about gender and sexual violence, the subordinate status of women of color, their perseverance and influence in changing that status, a look at the gendered religious legacy that shaped Western Catholicism, and women in the urban and rural, industrial and agricultural West.

In 1856, in an opera house in Roseville, Illinois, Susan B. Anthony called for the supporters of woman suffrage to stand. The only person to rise was eight-year-old Emma Smith. And she continued to take a stand for the rest of her life. As a leader in the suffrage movement, Emma Smith DeVoe stumped across the country organizing for the cause, raising money, and helping make the West central to achieving the vote for women. DeVoe used her feminine style to great advantage in the campaign for the vote. Rather than promoting public rallies, she encouraged women to put their energies toward influencing the votes of their fathers, brothers, and husbands. Known as the still-hunt strategy, this approach was highly successful and helped win the vote for women in Washington State in 1910. Winning the West for Women demonstrates the importance of the West in the national suffrage movement. It reveals the central role played by the National Council of Women Voters, whose members were predominantly western women, in securing the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Winning the West for Women also tells a larger story of dissension and discord within the suffrage movement. Though ladylike in her courtship of male support for the cause, DeVoe often clashed with other activists who disagreed with her tactics or doubted her commitment to the movement. This fascinating biography describes the real experiences of women and their relationships as they struggled to win the right to vote. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPLnFiZBHug

Describes the lives of women of various backgrounds as they traveled west, established homes, worked inside and outside the home, and helped to develop settled society

Focusing on a series of autobiographical texts, published and private, well known and obscure, Writing the Pioneer Woman examines the writing of domestic life on the nineteenth-century North American frontier. In an attempt to determine the meanings found in the pioneer woman's everyday writings -- from records of recipes to descriptions of washing floors -- Janet Floyd explores domestic details in the autobiographical writing of British and Anglo-American female emigrants.

A comprehensive view of the attainments made by American women in this century, and especially during the last fifteen years, cannot but be of great importance and value. The cruel kindness of the old doctrine that women should be worked for, and should not work, that their influence should be felt, but not recognized, that they should hear and see, but neither appear nor speak,—all this belongs now to the record of things which, once measurably true, have become fabulous. The theory that women should not be workers is a corruption of the old aristocratic system. Slaves and servants, whether male or female, always worked. Women of rank in the old world were not necessarily idle. The eastern monarch who refused an army to a queen, sent her a golden distaff. The extremes of despotism and of luxury, undermining society and state, can alone have introduced the theory that it becomes the highly born and bred to be idle. With this unnatural paralysis of woman’s active nature came ennui, the bane of the so-called privileged classes. From ennui spring morbid passions, fostered by fantastic imaginations. A respect for labor lies at the very foundation of a true democracy. The changes which our country has seen in this respect, and the great uprising of industries among women, are then not important to women alone, but of momentous import to society at large. The new activities sap the foundation of vicious and degraded life. From the factory to the palace the quickening impulse is felt, and the social level rises. To the larger intellectual outlook is added the growing sympathy of women with each other, which does more than anything else to make united action possible among them. A growing good will and esteem of women toward women makes itself happily felt and will do even more and more to refine away what is harsh and unjust in social and class distinctions and to render all alike heirs of truth, servants of justice. The initiative is now largely taken by women in departments in which they were formerly, if admitted at all, entirely and often unwillingly under the dictation of men. Philanthropists of both sexes, indeed, work harmoniously together, but in their joint undertakings the women now have their say and, instead of waiting to be told what men would have them think, feel obliged to think for themselves. The result is not discord but a fuller and freer harmony of action and intention. In industrial undertakings they still have far to go, but women will enter more and more into them and with happy results. The professions indeed supply the keystone to the arch of woman’s liberty. Not the intellectual training alone which fits for them, but the practical, technical knowledge which must accompany their exercise puts women in a position of sure defense against fraud and imposition. In the volume now given to the public the progress of women in all of these departments is presented by persons who have made each of them a special study, and who have done good and helpful work in them, with, moreover, the outlook ahead which is the important element in all labor and service. The world, even the American world, is not yet wholly converted to the doctrine of the new womanhood. Men and women who prize the ease of the status quo, and the imaginary importance conferred by exemption from the necessities which prompt to active exertion, often show great ignorance of all that this book is intended to teach. They will aver, men and women of them, that women have never shown any but secondary capacities and qualities. Women who take this ground often secretly flatter themselves that what they thus say of other women does not apply to themselves. A speaker representing this class lately asked at a legislative hearing in Massachusetts why women did not enter the professions? why they did not become healers of the sick, ministers, lawyers? One might ask how he could escape, knowing that in all of these fields, so lately opened to them, women are doing laborious work and with excellent results? A book like the present will furnish chapter and verse to substantiate what is claimed for the attainments of women. It will not, indeed, put an end to foolish depreciative argument, based upon erroneous suppositions, but it will furnish evidence to confute calumny, to convince the doubtful.