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This Land Is Herland
Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010s
Women and the American West
Edited by Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin
Published by: University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
318 Pages | 6 x 9 | 21 b&w illus.
$24.95
$21.95
Since well before ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 secured their right to vote, women in Oklahoma have sought to change and uplift their communities through political activism. This Land Is Herland brings together the stories of thirteen women activists and explores their varied experiences from the territorial period to the present. Organized chronologically, the essays discuss Progressive reformer Kate Barnard, educator and civil rights leader Clara Luper, and Comanche leader and activist LaDonna Harris, as well as lesser-known individuals such as Cherokee historian and educator Rachel Caroline Eaton, entrepreneur and NAACP organizer California M. Taylor, and Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) champion Wanda Jo Peltier Stapleton.
Edited by Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin, the collection connects Oklahoma women’s individual and collective endeavors to the larger themes of intersectionality, suffrage, politics, motherhood, and civil rights in the American West and the United States. The historians explore how race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and political power shaped—and were shaped by—these women’s efforts to improve their local, state, and national communities.
Underscoring the diversity of women’s experiences, the editors and contributors provide fresh and engaging perspectives on the western roots of gendered activism in Oklahoma. This volume expands and enhances our understanding of the complexities of western women’s history.
Edited by Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin, the collection connects Oklahoma women’s individual and collective endeavors to the larger themes of intersectionality, suffrage, politics, motherhood, and civil rights in the American West and the United States. The historians explore how race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and political power shaped—and were shaped by—these women’s efforts to improve their local, state, and national communities.
Underscoring the diversity of women’s experiences, the editors and contributors provide fresh and engaging perspectives on the western roots of gendered activism in Oklahoma. This volume expands and enhances our understanding of the complexities of western women’s history.
Sarah Eppler Janda is Professor of History at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, and the author of Beloved Women: The Political Lives of LaDonna Harris and Wilma Mankiller.
Patricia Loughlin is Professor of History at the University of Central Oklahoma and the author of Hidden Treasures of the American West: Muriel H. Wright, Angie Debo, and Alice Marriott, named the Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History by the Oklahoma Historical Society.
“This Land Is Herland probes the state’s conflictive history through the lens of Indigenous, Black, and settler white women activists and scholars to spotlight thirteen courageous women, past and present, who attempted to create a better world. It accomplishes this free of boosterism, romanticization, or fear of exposing the demons of white supremacy and settler-colonialism.”—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie
“This exemplary collection is a model of scholarship on western women’s history. A pleasure to read, the rich essays reveal an exciting diversity of women whose hard work and political engagement have shaped the present-day state of Oklahoma and tribal nations.”—Cathleen D. Cahill, author of Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement
“This Land is Herland contributes much to this vibrant field of western women’s history. The anthology’s editors, Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin, both of whom are noted historians of gender and the American West, have woven a historical tapestry that artfully represents the activism of Oklahoma women from a variety of socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds between the 1870s and the 2010s.”—Journal of Southern History
“With a title that evokes both a quintessential American folk song and a foundational work of feminist utopian fiction, This Land is Herland centers on Oklahoma as a space of juxtapositions and contracts. Editors Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin bring together a collection of thirteen essays exploring how women in Oklahoma engaged in community and political activism. Across all sections, the writers frequently emphasize how stories of Oklahoma women have often been neglected and marginalized, as well as how the women self-fashioned identities and wielded significant political power founded in community and relationships. This is Herland is an accessible, readable collection that shines a spotlight on women’s lives and work that often fall outside mainstream histories of the American West, and as such, it is a useful entry point into further research for both scholars and students.”—Great Plains Quarterly
View the Table of Contents from This Land Is Herland
2022 -
“Great Reads from Great Places” selection, National Book Festival of the Library of Congress -
Winner
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