Yale University Library Research Guides: HIST 114J / WGSS 114 Women, Gender, and Work in U.S. History: Secondary Sources and Background Reference

Scholarly Books

The following scholarly books and articles are recommended by AnneLessy:

General U.S. History - background and context

Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, volumes 1 and 2 (textbook).
Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr, American History Now (2011).
American Social History Project, Who Built America?: Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society (textbook).

American Women's History - resources and context

Books:

Anne Valk and Nancy Hewitt, eds., A Companion to American Women's History (2021).
- Notable chapter: Tracy Deutsch and Nan Enstad, “Capitalism in the 20th and 21st Centuries.”
Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor, ed., The Oxford Handbook of American Women's and Gender History (2018).
- Notable chapter: Eileen Boris and Lara Vapnek, “Women’s Labors in Industrial and Postindustrial America.”
Vicki Ruiz and Ellen Carol DuBois, eds., Unequal Sisters: A Multi-cultural Reader in U.S. Women's History (2000).
S. Jay Kleinberg, Eileen Boris, and Vicki Ruiz, eds., The Practice of U.S. Women’s History (2012).
Annelise Orleck, Rethinking American Women’s Activism (2015).

Essays and Articles:

Katherine Turk, “Not Additive, but Transformative: Women and Gender in the Journal of American History” Journal of American History (JAH).
Michele Mitchell, “Turns of the Kaleidoscope: ‘Race’, Ethnicity, and Analytical Patterns in American Women’s and Gender History,” Journal of Women’s History (2013).
Cornelia Dayton and Lisa Levenstein, “Big Tent of U.S. Women’s and Gender History: A State of the Field,” JAH (12.2012).
Crystal Feimster, “The Impact of Racial and Sexual Politics on Women’s History,” JAH (12.2012).

Key Scholars and Texts in Women's, Gender, and Labor History

Books:

Ava Baron, Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor (1991).
Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (2003).
Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (2002)
Alice Kessler-Harris, Women Have Always Worked: A Concise History (2018).
Alice Kessler-Harris, A Woman’s Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences (2014).
Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity : Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (2001).

Selected reference works

Background or "reference" sources are a great place to start your research. They are also incredibly useful for gleaning background information to use in situating your biography subject in a time period or events with which you aren't familiar. Reference works include bibliographies, scholarly encyclopedias, dictionaries, handbooks, and other sources that provide overviews of topics and suggestions for further reading.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History

A scholarly encyclopedia of potentially great use in the early stages of your research project. Each article has a discussion of the literature, including primary sources. A great starting point for finding more sources and arranged into browsable subject areas.

Gale in Context: U.S. History

This resource brings together reference articles, along with selected primary and secondary sources for getting started on your research.

Oxford Bibliographies

This is an extensive collection of annotated bibliographies that are keyword searchable and can also be browsed by subject and geographic areas. These bibliographies are a great starting point for finding resources, primary and secondary, for your research topic.

Oxford Handbooks Online
Lengthy chapters in the Oxford Handbooks usually provide helpful overviews of scholarly topics and historical literature, along with suggestions for further reading. A number of the handbooks may be helpful depending on your research topic.

Wiley Online Library

Includes scholarly journal articles and monographs as well as reference works. Often a single chapter or two within a reference work can provide a helpful starting point for research. Thousands of articles in this reference database touch on topics relating to eugenics. Titles include A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and A Companion to Post-1945 America.

Secondary sources

The following bibliographic databases will be helpful for finding secondary sources, especially scholarly/peer-reviewed journal articles, magazine articles, book reviews, and citations to book chapters and edited collections of books. Please note: the full text of articles will not always be available in these databases. If you see the "YaleLinks" icon instead of a PDF, click on the icon to discover whether we have online access to the article:

America: History and Life
Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada and indexes over 2000 historical journals. A key resource if you are searching for historical scholarship related to your research project. Among the journals indexed here are the Journal of American History, American Historical Review, and several more that can provide examples of some of the most recent scholarship in the field.
Historical Abstracts
Provides historical coverage of historical journals covering non-U.S./Canada history.
JSTOR
JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences

And, don’t forget, Orbis, Books+ and Articles+ are all useful tools for locating secondary sources!

Guides to Historical Research & Writing

The Craft of Research, Fourth Edition by Wayne C. Booth; Gregory G. Colomb; Joseph M. Williams; Joseph Bizup; William T. FitzGerald
ISBN: 9780226239569
Publication Date: 2016-10-19

HIST 114J / WGSS 114 Women, Gender, and Work in U.S. History: Secondary Sources and Background Reference

Scholarly Books

Selected reference works

Secondary sources

Guides to Historical Research & Writing

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