Papers from a colloquium, "Visible women: American Women and Public Space 1865-1910," held at King's College London in June 2005.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [331]-353) and index.

Preliminary material / Editors Becoming Visible -- INTRODUCTION: BECOMING VISIBLE / ALISON EASTON , R.J. ELLIS , JANET FLOYD and LINDSEY TRAUB -- CLAIMING VISIBILITY: WOMEN IN PUBLIC / PUBLIC WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES, 1865-1910 / ANNE M. BOYLAN -- DANGEROUS WORKING-CLASS WOMEN: MOTHER JONES, LUCY PARSONS, AND ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN / JANET ZANDY -- VISIBLE WOMEN IN THE NEEDLE TRADES: REVISITING THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES / MARGARET WALSH -- WOMEN’S EMPLOYMENT IN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES, 1880-1920 / S.J. KLEINBERG -- “IF IOLA WERE A MAN”: GENDER, JIM CROW AND PUBLIC PROTEST IN THE WORK OF IDA B. WELLS / MIA BAY -- “OUTDOOR RELIEF”: SARAH ORNE JEWETT, ANNIE ADAMS FIELDS, AND THE VISIT IN GILDED AGE AMERICA / ALISON EASTON -- NEGOTIATING VISIBILITY: LOUISA MAY ALCOTT’S NARRATIVE EXPERIMENTS / LINDSEY TRAUB -- “PEOPLE WILL THINK YOU HAVE STRUCK AN ATTITUDE”: FASHIONABLE SPACE IN EMMA DUNHAM KELLEY-HAWKINS’NOVELS / R.J. ELLIS -- “MAGNIFICENT EQUIPMENT”: BODY, SOUND AND SPACE IN THE REPRESENTATION OF THE FEMALE SINGER / JANET FLOYD -- THE PAINFUL PRODUCTION OF VERENA TARRANT: JOHN LOCKE AND THE BOSTONIANS / PETER RAWLINGS -- “THE TRUE AMERICAN WOMAN”: NARCISSA OWEN’S EMBODIED NATIONAL NARRATIVE / KAREN L. KILCUP -- AMERICAN WOMEN TRAVELERS AND THE MATERIAL FEMININE / SHIRLEY FOSTER -- GENDERING MODERNITY: FRANCES E. WILLARD’S POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGICAL SENTIMENTALITY / TIMOTHY A. HICKMAN -- WOMEN, ANTI-IMPERIALISM, AND AMERICA’S CHRISTIAN MISSION ABROAD: THE IMPACT OF THE PHILIPPINE-AMERICAN WAR / SUSAN K. HARRIS -- NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS / Editors Becoming Visible -- SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY / Editors Becoming Visible -- INDEX / Editors Becoming Visible.

Available to subscribing member institutions only.

This exciting collection of interdisciplinary essays explores the later decades of the nineteenth century in America - the immediate postbellum period, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era - as a time of critical change in the cultural visibility of women, as they made new kinds of appearances throughout American society. The essays show how, across the USA, it was fundamentally women who drove changes in their visibility forward, in groups and as individuals. Their motivations, activities and understandings were essential to shaping the character of their present society and the nation's future. The book establishes that these women's engagement with American society and culture cannot be simply understood in terms of the traditional polarities of inside/outside and private/public, since these frames do not fit the complexities of what was happening, be it women's occupation of geographic space, their new patterns of employment, their advocacy of working-class or ethnic rights, or their literary or cultural engagement with their milieux. Such women as Ida B. Wells, Mother Jones, Jane Addams, Rebecca Harding Davis, Willa Cather, Sarah Orne Jewett, Louisa May Alcott and Kate Douglas Wiggin all come under consideration in the light of these radical changes.