Nancy Isenberg is associate professor of history at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.
Review
"Isenberg has a finely honed sense of the ironies that emerged within the antebellum polity, which she
illustrates to great benefit."
--American Quarterly
"A complex and challenging book. . . . The substantive chapters of the book contain consistent interest and
insight and pockets of brilliant research and analysis."
--Law and History Review
"[An] impressive study of antebellum feminist activism in the United States. . . . Sex and Citizenship admirably
executes its stated mission to recapture the variety and theoretical sophistication of U.S. feminism at its origins."
--American Literature
"At a time when it is fashionable among scholars and students to emphasize the limitations and failures of
the antebellum women�s rights movement, Nancy Isenberg�s brilliant study represents a much-needed corrective. Her
book illuminates the ideas of well-known stalwarts of the struggle for gender equality, such as Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and brings to life lesser-known figures such as Clarina Howard Nichols. . . . Whether as an introductory
survey for nonspecialists or a handy reference work for scholars, this book deserves a wide readership."
--Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
"Provides the closest reading yet of the arguments of antebellum woman�s rights activists and, as such, sheds
entirely new light on this important chapter in women�s political history in the United States."
--Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"[A] pathbreaking book."
--Virginia Quarterly Review
"Essential reading for graduate students and researchers interested in the intellectual history of the women�s
movement and for those interested in the discourse on the very nature of the American polity."
--Choice
"Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America resurrects the breadth and complexity of the antebellum women's
rights movement. In this major reassessment of antebellum political culture, Isenberg greatly increases our understanding
of the power of the movement during its time and over time."
--Michael Grossberg, Indiana University
"An original and significant contribution to the literature of women's history. Nancy Isenberg shows us how
antebellum feminists engaged the era's political culture, thereby laying the basis for American feminism's rich
theoretical tradition."
--Jan Lewis, Rutgers University at Newark
The University of North Carolina Press Web Site, May, 2001
Summary
With this book, Nancy Isenberg illuminates the origins of the women's rights movement. Rather than herald the
singular achievements of the 1848 Seneca Falls convention, she examines the confluence of events and ideas � before
and after 1848 � that, in her view, marked the real birth of feminism. Drawing on a wide range of sources, she
demonstrates that women's rights activists of the antebellum era crafted a coherent feminist critique of church,
state, and family. In addition, Isenberg shows, they developed a rich theoretical tradition that influenced not
only subsequent strains of feminist thought but also ideas about the nature of citizenship and rights more generally.
By focusing on rights discourse and political theory, Isenberg moves beyond a narrow focus on suffrage. Democracy
was in the process of being redefined in antebellum America by controversies over such volatile topics as fugitive
slave laws, temperance, Sabbath laws, capital punishment, prostitution, the Mexican War, married women's property
rights, and labor reform � all of which raised significant legal and constitutional questions. These pressing concerns,
debated in women's rights conventions and the popular press, were inseparable from the gendered meaning of nineteenth-century
citizenship.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Firstborn Feminism
2. Citizenship Understood (and Misunderstood)
3. Visual Politics
4. Conscience, Custom, and Church Politics
5. The Political Fall of Woman
6. The Bonds of Matrimony
7. The Sovereign Body of the Citizen
