Through Feminist Eyes

Essays on Canadian Women’s History

Ebook

Through Feminist Eyes gathers in one volume the most incisive and insightful essays written to date by the distinguished Canadian historian Joan Sangster. To the original essays, Sangster has added reflective introductory discussions that situate her earlier work in the context of developing theory and debate. Sangster has also supplied an introduction to the collection in which she reflects on the themes and theoretical orientations that have shaped the writing of women's history over the past thirty years.Approaching her subject matter from an array of interpretive frameworks that engage questions of gender, class, colonialism, politics, and labour, Sangster explores the lived experience of women in a variety of specific historical settings. In so doing, she sheds new light on issues that have sparked much debate among feminist historians and offers a thoughtful overview of the evolution of women's history in Canada.

Table of contents

Table of contents
Cover 1
Contents 6
Acknowledgements 8
INTRODUCTION: Reflections on Thirty Years of Women’s History 10
DISCOVERING WOMEN’S HISTORY 58
THE 1907 BELL TELEPHONE STRIKE: Organizing Women Workers 62
LOOKING BACKWARDS: Re-assessing Women on the Canadian Left 90
THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND THE WOMAN QUESTION, 1922–1929 104
MANUFACTURING CONSENT IN PETERBOROUGH 136
THE SOFTBALL SOLUTION: Female Workers, Male Managers, and the Operation of Paternalism at Westclox, 1923–1960 144
‘PARDON TALES’ FROM MAGISTRATE’S COURT: Women, Crime, and the Court in Peterborough County, 1920–1950 182
TELLING OUR STORIES: Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History 222
FOUCAULT, FEMINISM, AND POSTCOLONIALISM 252
GIRLS IN CONFLICT WITH THE LAW: Exploring the Construction of Female ‘Delinquency’ in Ontario, 1940–1960 260
CRIMINALIZING THE COLONIZED: Ontario Native Women Confront the Criminal Justice System, 1920–1960 302
CONSTRUCTING THE ‘ESKIMO’ WIFE: White Women’s Travel Writing, Colonialism, and the Canadian North, 1940–1960 336
EMBODIED EXPERIENCE 364
WORDS OF EXPERIENCE/EXPERIENCING WORDS: Reading Working Women’s Letters to Canada’s Royal Commission on the Status of Women 368
MAKING A FUR COAT: Women, the Labouring Body, and Working-class History 400
Publications by Joan Sangster 434
Publication Credits 438