Childbirth is a quintessential family event that simultaneously holds great promise and runs the risk of danger. By the late nineteenth century, the birthing room had become a place where the goals of the new scientific professional could be demonstrated, but where traditional female knowledge was in conflict with the new ways. Here the choice of attendants and their practices defined gender, ethnicity, class, and the role of the professional. Using the methodology of social science theory, particularly quantitative statistical analysis and historical demography, Charlotte Borst examines the effect of gender, culture, and class on the transition to physician-attended childbirth. Earlier studies have focused on physician opposition to midwifery, devoting little attention to the training for and actual practice of midwifery. As a result, until now we knew little about the actual conditions of the midwife's education and practice. Catching Babies is the first study to examine the move to physician-attended birth within the context of a particular community. It focuses on four representative counties in Wisconsin to study both midwives and physicians within the context of their community. Borst finds that midwives were not pushed out of practice by elitist or misogynist obstetricians. Instead, their traditional, artisanal skills ceased to be valued by a society that had come to embrace the model of disinterested, professional science. The community that had previously hired midwives turned to physicians who shared ethnic and cultural values with the very midwives they replaced.

This collection of articles and extracts from books and periodicalsdescribes in detail the opportunities in Western Canada for Britishwomen emigrants. By 1900 there was a great demand both for wives andfor workers in a variety of occupations. 'Women Wanted' was themessage conveyed by Canadian officials, journalists, andpublic-spirited women who travelled across Canada and reported on theirfindings.

Describes the immigrant experiences of rural German, Irish, Swedish, and Polish women settling in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century, and the effects of gender and culture of origin on the growth of ethnic communities.

Nineteenth-century middle-class Protestant women were fervent in their efforts to “do good.” Rhetoric - especially in the antebellum years - proclaimed that virtue was more pronounced in women than in men and praised women for their benevolent influence, moral excellence, and religious faith. In this book, Lori D. Ginzberg examines a broad spectrum of benevolent work performed by middle-and upper-middle-class women from the 1820s to 1885 and offers a new interpretation of the shifting political contexts and meanings of this long tradition of women’s reform activism. During the antebellum period, says Ginzberg, the idea of female moral superiority and the benevolent work it supported contained both radical and conservative possibilities, encouraging an analysis of femininity that could undermine male dominance as well as guard against impropriety. At the same time, benevolent work and rhetoric were vehicles for the emergence of a new middle-class identity, one which asserted that virtue - not wealth - determined status. Ginzberg shows how a new generation that came of age during the 1850s and the Civil War developed new analyses of benevolence and reform. By the postbellum decades, the heirs of antebellum benevolence referred less to a mission of moral regeneration and far more to a responsibility to control the poor and 'vagrant,' signaling the refashioning of the ideology of benevolence from one of gender to one of class. According to Ginzberg, these changing interpretations of benevolent work throughout the century not only signal an important transformation in women activists’ culture and politics but also illuminate the historical development of American class identity and of women’s role in constructing social and political authority.

Essays discuss housewives, shoemakers, labor movements, slavery, farmers, strikes, domestic workers, and changes in women's work over the past two centuries.

The author presents the case of surgeon Dr. Mary Dixon-Jones, who in 1889 Boston was the subject in two court cases -- one for manslaughter and the other for libel -- which became a 19th century sensation.

Calame, Marie-Anne (Erzieherin).

Essays discuss housewives, shoemakers, labor movements, slavery, farmers, strikes, domestic workers, and changes in women's work over the past two centuries.

Too often, the emigration of women has been treated as an adjunct to that of men, especially in the case of families travelling together. In significant ways, however, the emigration of single women from Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries was distinct from the general movement. It was rooted, in the main, in those features of British society peculiar to their sex, and also in conditions in the colonies that made the venture possible for them. What factors would cause a woman to leave all she has known for the uncertainty and danger of a 'wild' colony half a world away? How did these women adapt to the unique circumstances of life in southern Africa? These are some of the questions addressed by the author, herself the daughter of an emigrant couple, in this fascinating book. The author not only explores the larger issues of single women's emigration to southern Africa, but also presents the compelling experiences of individual women, as seen through documents by them and people who knew them.

Profiles the nation's original First Lady as the widowed mother of two children who became George Washington's beloved partner and a mainstay in his stressful life, drawing on numerous sources to reveal her contributions to American character.

"An extraordinary new series intended to capture extraordinary moments in history." -Chicago Tribune TURNING POINTS features preeminent writers offering fresh, personal perspectives on the defining events of our time. Available Now Eleanor Clift, Founding Sisters and the Nineteenth Amendment Alan Dershowitz, America Declares Independence Thomas Fleming, The Louisiana Purchase William Least Heat-Moon, Columbus in the Americas Scott Simon, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball Forthcoming Titles Douglas Brinkley on the March on Washington William F. Buckley Jr. on the Fall of the Berlin Wall Sir Martin Gilbert on D-Day Martin Goldsmith on the Beatles Coming to America Kweisi Mfume on the Emancipation Proclamation

In Women and Men in Renaissance Venice Stanley Chojnacki explores the central role played by women in holding Venetian patrician society together. Family relations, marriages, and dowries were the areas in which women interacted dynamically with men. The three parts of the book discuss the involvement of the state in those interactions; the social and economic consequences for women; and their unexpectedly varied consequences for men of the patriciate. The society Chojnacki describes is at once socially complex and highly regulated. On the one hand, women of the Venetian nobility, like patrician women in other cities, were subordinate to their fathers and husbands. But unlike their counterparts elsewhere, Venetian patrician women exercised much control over their own wealth and property and were key players in family strategies. Thanks to advantageous state regulations regarding dowries and marriage practices, Venetian women influenced their fathers' financial and social choices, which in turn affected their fathers' and husbands' attitudes and behavior toward them. Because limited family resources favored some daughters' marriage prospects at the expense of their sisters', the family and marriage practices of the Venetian nobles led to a range of vocations for women, as well as for men.

Traditionally, texts and images have been discussed together on the assumption that they are 'sister arts,' but in Reading Iconotexts Peter Wagner pushes beyond the world-image opposition in a radical attempt to break down the barriers between literature and art. He sets out here the new approach he has identified for dealing with the 'iconotext'—a genre in which neither image nor text is free from the other. Examples include Swift's Gulliver's Travels, a number of William Hogarth's best-known engravings, and a sample of the so-called 'obscene' propaganda prints that were published during the French Revolution. Throughout, the author argues for the importance of seeing text and image as mutually interdependent in the ways they establish meaning. It becomes clear in the course of Wagner's exposition that one cannot study prints without taking into account their accompanying inscriptions; whilst illustrated books contain two kinds of 'text'—one verbal, one visual—that are invariably at odds with one another. Drawing on theories of intertextuality and semiotics as developed by Barthes and Kristeva, as well as post-structuralist studies by Derrida, Foucault and others, Reading Iconotexts treats pictures as encoded visual discourse and illustrations in books as counter-discourse. The author's persuasively argued polemic in favour of recognising the 'iconotext' as a viable advance in methodology is an important contribution to current debates on word and image.

Een boek over de kruistochten de vroege middeleeuwen.