Intimate Practices: Literacy and Cultural Work in U.S. Women's Clubs, 1880-1920

ISBN: 0252066049

Author: Gere, Ann

Condition: New

Winner of the 1995 University of Illinois Press-National Women's StudiesAssociation manuscript prizeWomen's clubs at the turn of the century were numerous, dedicated toa number of issues, and crossed class, religious, and racial lines. Emphasizingthe intimacy engendered by shared reading and writing in these groups,Anne Ruggles Gere contends that these literacy practices meant that clubmembers took an active part in reinventing the nation during a periodof major change. Gere uses archival material that documents club members'perspectives and activities around such issues as Americanization, womanhood,peace, consumerism, benevolence, taste, and literature--and offers a raredepth of insight into the interests and lives of American women from thefin de sicle through the beginning of the roaring twenties.Intimate Practices is unique in its exploration of a range ofwomen's clubs--Mormon, Jewish, white middle-class, African American, andworking class--and paints a vast and colorful multicultural, multifacetedcanvas of these widely-divergent women's groups.