No More Separate Spheres!

"[T]he anthology offers both a critical repository and long-needed challenge for scholars of nineteenth-century America. . . . Because the anthology is so well organized and comprehensive, it strikes me as a perfect compendium text for theorizing the nineteenth century in both undergraduate and graduate literature and history classes. Its usefulness is underscored by the evenness of the submissions, all of which stand as thought provoking and well researched arguments, but when grouped together successfully challenge the separate spheres paradigm that has governed much of scholarship for the past fifty years. . . . If future analyses are as compelling and interesting as those found in this anthology, we have a rich area of study ahead." - Brenda R. Weber, Feminist Teacher

"Drawing on a wealth of interdisciplinary scholarship that rethinks feminist approaches to gender, this valuable collection of essays brings together a wide range of feminists and Americanists on the gendered history of public and private worlds. . . . [A] timely volume. . . ." - Carla Kaplan, American Literature

“This groundbreaking collection of essays by a group of extraordinary scholars and critics treats a wide range of key American writers and presents the most important arguments of the last twenty years on gender and sexuality and on class, race, and nationalism in American cultural expression. The book demonstrates clearly how far we have come, what we have learned, and what is at stake today in our reading, in the classroom, and in our lives. It asks, finally, if we will accept the continuation of separate spheres or if we will keep striving to resist them. A major achievement!” - Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside