Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History

by Nancy C. Unger

From pre-Columbian times to the environmental justice movements of the present, women and men frequently responded to the environment and environmental issues in profoundly different ways. Although both environmental history and women's history are flourishing fields, explorations of the synergy produced by the interplay between environment and sex, sexuality, and gender are just beginning. Offering more than biographies of great women in environmental history, Beyond Nature's Housekeepers examines the intersections that shaped women's unique environmental concerns and activism and that framed the way the larger culture responded. Women featured include Native Americans, colonists, enslaved field workers, pioneers, homemakers, municipal housekeepers, immigrants, hunters, nature writers, soil conservationists, scientists, migrant laborers, nuclear protestors, and environmental justice activists. As women, they fared, thought, and acted in ways complicated by social, political,
and economic norms, as well as issues of sexuality and childbearing. Nancy C. Unger reveals how women have played a unique role, for better and sometimes for worse, in the shaping of the American environment.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Nature

336 pages, Paperback

First published September 7, 2012

About the author

Nancy C. Unger is Associate Professor of History at Santa Clara University. She believes that the story of Wisconsin giant Robert La Follette (1855-1925)and his fellow progressives remains a lively and highly relevant chapter in American history. It is the antidote to the resignation and complacency that emerge when problems are perceived as unprecedented in their severity, immune to remedy, and thus accepted as inevitable. Her op-eds applying the progressive tradition to the present are syndicated by the History News Service and have appeared in major newspapers across the country. Her radio appearances include Wisconsin Public Radio, Talking History, and Air America, and she has served as a consultant to PBS. Her current book project is Beyond Natures Housekeepers: Turning Points for Women in American Environmental History."

Reviews

[Catsandsnakes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Absolutely despise the fact that she barely acknowledged the violent transmisogyny of the michigan womyn's music festival. She mostly talks about white upper class women in this book, and barely acknowledges the transmisogyny, racism, and classism of these white women. I am still incensed over the tiny, inconsequential sentence she gives commenting on the transmisogyny of MWMF, and then proceeds to have positive interviews with the women in charge. Jesus Christ.

[Dan White · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is indispensable if you want a better understanding of the obstacles women campers (and mountaineers and other outdoor lovers) faced in the Victorian era. Jam-packed with fascinating info, and though it is a scholarly work, the writing style is accessible and enjoyable. Inspiring and persuasive.

[Mary Whisner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll say up front that the author and I are good friends, so I'm not a neutral reviewer. But I was able to read the book in draft and so can offer comments earlier than readers who are just now starting the book.

This book is both a serious scholarly work and completely accessible to readers who had very little exposure to either women's history or environmental history. Despite the broad scope (all of U.S. history, from pre-Columbian Indians and early European settlement to the present), the narrative is enlivened by vivid details. For example, instead of blandly saying that women were involved in protesting nuclear plants in the 1970s, Unger gives details about the activist tactics of a group of Wisconsin women and teases out how their gender affected their activism. Each chapter tells such stories of women, some famous (Rachel Carson) and some not well known (for instance, two Chicanas who worked to oppose industrial developments near their homes in East Austin, TX). Some of the photos she found to illustrate the text are stunning.

Unger's work is nuanced, looking at all sorts of tensions and complexities. For instance, she is well aware that the ideals of refined domesticity that "protected" white women from the world outside the home did not protect enslaved African American women forced to work in the fields. Women are not always environmental heroes. Indeed, women drove the demand for luxuriant feathers to ornament their hats that nearly destroyed large populations of egrets and other birds. And women were enthusiastic consumers of the plethora of chemical cleaning products that entered the market after World War II.

Some of the topics covered will be new to readers. Others might be familiar, but not with the analysis of sex, sexuality, and gender that Unger provides. For example, we know that Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was instrumental in the movement that led to the banning of DDT (and the saving of countless animals, including, no doubt, humans), but I didn't know the extent of the criticisms that were based on her being a woman (and an unmarried woman at that).

This book is appropriate for readers of US history generally as well as those specifically interested in environmental history, women's history, or activism.

[miti]

shoutout women 🔥🔥🔥

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good information for enhancing lectures, especially in Gender In the US Landscape. The writing style and layout are a bit grating, but very clear prose here, certainly intelligble for undergrads.

[Mills College Library]

304.2082 U576 2012

[patrick disanto]

Remarkably modern for an older author who has such defined gender, well written a time capsule of the transformation of the continent and early 20c US culture.