Wow! eBook
Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965
Author(s): Linda Eisenmann (Author)
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Publication Date: 15 Nov. 2007
- Language: English
- Print length: 296 pages
- ISBN-10: 9780801887451
- ISBN-13: 9780801887451
Book Description
Outstanding Academic Title for 2007, Choice Magazine
This history explores the nature of postwar advocacy for women’s higher education, acknowledging its unique relationship to the expectations of the era and recognizing its particular type of adaptive activism. Linda Eisenmann illuminates the impact of this advocacy in the postwar era, identifying a link between women’s activism during World War II and the women’s movement of the late 1960s.
Though the postwar period has been portrayed as an era of domestic retreat for women, Eisenmann finds otherwise as she explores areas of institution building and gender awareness. In an era uncomfortable with feminism, this generation advocated individual decision making rather than collective action by professional women, generally conceding their complicated responsibilities as wives and mothers.
By redefining our understanding of activism and assessing women’s efforts within the context of their milieu, this innovative work reclaims an era often denigrated for its lack of attention to women.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Eisenmann also makes an important contribution to our understanding of postwar American society.
–Susan Ware “Journal of Cold War Studies”
Eisenmann gives the postwar activists the attention they merit and insightfully conveys their value in women’s educational history.
–Nancy Woloch “Journal of American History”
For social, labor, and women’s historians interested in the middle twentieth century, the book is a critically important one.
–Marry Ann Dzuback “Journal of Social History”
Groundbreaking synthesis . . . Highly recommended.
— “Choice”
Historians of education and gender will find the book useful.
–Amy Thompson McCandless “History: Reviews of New Books”
This is an interesting book and Eisenmann skillfully demonstrates the connections between governmental policy, social ideologies, and higher education.
–Jana Nidiffer “Review of Higher Education”
