Book Spotlight: Women’s History Month

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, we’re spotlighting Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times Volume 1, edited by Ann Short Chirhart and Betty Wood. Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times is a book of essays that follows the lives of important women in Georgia History from Georgia’s founding in 1733 up until World War I. Georgia Women is one of the over dozen books that the UGA Press has published in the Southern Women: Their Lives and Times series. 

 Reviews

“Women have made their mark on all aspects of Georgia’s history, from early colonization and revolution, through slavery, war, and defeat, and on through the era of racial repression and reform. Their stories, as told here by accomplished historians all, provide valuable new gendered lenses through which to view that history afresh. Full of new insights and fascinating reading throughout.”

—John C. Inscoe, editor of The New Georgia Encyclopedia

“This important work brings to light the role of significant women in our state’s history. Reflecting the latest scholarship in the field, it brings more depth and analysis to women whose stories may be familiar and introduces women whose efforts and contributions deserve a place in Georgia’s historical record.”

—Lee Ann Caldwell, director of the Center for the Study of Georgia History, Augusta State University

From The Book

“What has it meant for women of different social classes and ethnicities to be a Georgia woman? Does identification with a particular state shape a woman’s identity in any significant way? Do women’s experiences cast a new light on the first two centuries of Georgia’s history, as the colony became one of the United States and part of the South? These are the questions that are at the heart of essays included in these volumes, essays that are devoted to those who for so very long were either marginalized or ignored by the men who compiled their histories of the ‘Peach State.'”

—Ann Short Chirhart With Betty Wood, Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times, pg. 1

“The biographies that follow attest to the processes by which women of different
social ranks and ethnicities constructed their particular Georgian identity as they sifted through the meanings of local, state, national, and even international events. The stories related here evoke each woman’s experiences with interlocking communities, including those of other women, religious denominations, national identities, class, and race. Unsurprisingly, the modes of expression that shaped their notions of place changed over time, contributing to the diverse ways in which women saw themselves as participants in Georgia’s evolving history.”

—Ann Short Chirhart With Betty Wood, Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times, pg. 2

About Southern Women Series

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This series is devoted to the biographical, life-and-times histories of women from the various southern states. Each book is a collection of insightful essays focused on the lives of individuals or small groups of women that address larger issues in the history of the state, the South, and the nation. These individual profiles will also contribute to an understanding of the history of women and gender roles in American society.