Out in Public: Configurations of Women's Bodies in Nineteenth-Century America [Paperback]

Alison Piepmeier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 8, 2004

Images of the corseted, domestic, white middle-class female and the black woman as slave mammy or jezebel loom large in studies of nineteenth-century womanhood, despite recent critical work exploring alternatives to those images. In Out in Public, Alison Piepmeier focuses on women's bodies as a site for their public self-construction. Rather than relying on familiar binaries such as public/private and victim/agent, Piepmeier presents women's public embodiment as multiple, transitional, strategic, playful, and contested.

Piepmeier looks closely at the lives and works of actress and playwright Anna Cora Mowatt (1819-1871), Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), abolitionist and feminist orator Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), antilynching journalist Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), and Godey's Lady's Book editor Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879). Piepmeier's analysis of these women places their written documents in conjunction with salient cultural contexts, including freak shows, scientific writing, tall tales, and popular visual images of athletic women. By destabilizing and complicating traditional binary categories, Piepmeier makes culturally obscured or unreadable aspects of women's lives visible, offering a more complete understanding of nineteenth-century female corporeality.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The innovative theses [and] the broad research . . . are useful contributions to American and Women's Studies."
— Feminist Teacher

"Deftly weaves between sentimental and sensational discourses."
— American Literature

"This is a work of literary criticism that takes historical context seriously. . . . Rich with exciting insights."
— American Historical Review



"By presenting an alternative method and approach to interpretation of the significance of these women's contributions, Piepmier's analysis engages the impact of race, class, and gender and calls forth a reconsideration of the significance of twentieth-century scholarship of nineteenth-century women's history."
— Journal of American History

From the Inside Flap

Piepmeier examines the lives and works of actress and playwright Anna Cora Mowatt, Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, abolitionist and feminist orator Sojourner Truth, anti-lynching journalist Ida B. Wells, and Godey's Lady's Book editor Sarah Josepha Hale to demonstrate a more nuanced range of roles for women than traditional understandings of 19th-century womanhood allow.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (November 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807855693
• ISBN-13: 978-0807855690
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,503,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alison Piepmeier directs the Women's and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston, where she is also associate professor of English. She is a recognized academic voice about third wave feminism. She has authored articles on third wave feminism for The Scholar & Feminist Online, The Women's Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism (ed. Leslie Heywood, 2005), and Bitch magazine. She is regularly interviewed by local and national media outlets for her opinions on young feminist issues ranging from roller derby to abortion to women changing their names when they marry. She has given numerous conference presentations on grrrl zines and lectures frequently about third wave feminism and grrrl zines at colleges and universities across the country.

For more information, visit alisonpiepmeier.com.