Feminism and History

This volume offers a cross-disciplinary selection of recent articles on feminist history. Dismissing essentialist accounts of a universal female identity, the contributors examine how ideas about sexual difference are shaped by specific socio-historical circumstances. How, for example, do issues such as race, class, gender, and sexuality impact on the experience of "women"? How are such categories defined in widely disparate cultures and time periods? Open to non-Western as well as Western perspectives, this volume addresses subjects from the experience of women in colonial Asia to the ideology of sexual difference in Nazi Germany. These essays raise questions about the future direction of women's history.