In 1935, the United States Congress began employing large numbers of American artists through the Works Progress Administration-fiction writers, dramatists, photographers, poster artists, painters, sculptors, muralists, wood carvers, composers and choreographers, as well as journalists, historians and researchers. Secretary of Commerce and supervisor of the WPA Harry Hopkins hailed it a ""renascence of the arts, if we can call it a rebirth when it has no precedent in our history."" Women were eminently involved, creating a wide variety of art and craft, interweaving their own stories with those of other women whose lives might not otherwise have been the subject of artistic attention. This book takes a look at the thousands of women artists who worked for the U.S. government, the historical and social worlds they described and the collaborative depiction of womanhood they created at a pivotal moment in American history.

Winifred Black worked in journalism from 1888 to 1936, often writing under the pseudonym Annie Laurie. Her work appeared in the Hearst papers - especially the San Francisco Examiner - and in fifty additional newspapers weekly through syndication. Black wrote 10,000 short pieces, as well as three books, a nonfiction oeuvre that combined quasi-autobiographical details with characters and scenes to provide cultural analysis for a nationwide audience. She wrote about the realities facing modern women - their work, their marriages and divorces, the violence they endured, their need for independence. Contemporary praise for Black named her ""the world's most famous feature writer"" and ""one of the world's most successful reporters,"" while her critics affixed the pejorative labels ""stunt girl"" and ""sob sister."" This study covers her influential career and gives the first serious attention to her journalism and nonfiction.

In the years from 1880 to 1940, considered the glory days of the American circus, between a third and a half of the cast members were women, a large group of very visible American workers whose story has never been told. In this book, drawing on diverse sources such as diaries, autobiographies, newspaper accounts, films, posters, and route books, the authors first consider the popular media's presentation of these performers as unnatural and scandalous--as well as romantic and thrilling. The book next moves to the stories told by circus women, which contradict and complicate other versions of their lives. Across America in those years an array of acts featured women, such as tableaux, freak shows, girlie shows, tiger acts, and aerial performance, all involving special skills and means of communication with an audience. By beginning with representations of women as circus performers and then moving to the performances themselves, this book offers a unique and fascinating view of what it meant to be an American woman at work.

Past biographies, histories, and government documents have ignored Alice Paul's contribution to the women's suffrage movement, but this groundbreaking study scrupulously fills the gap in the historical record. Masterfully framed by an analysis of Paul's non-violent and visual rhetorical strategies, Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign narrates the remarkable story of the first person to picket the White House, the first to attempt a national political boycott, the first to burn the president in effigy, and the first to lead a successful campaign of non-violence. Katherine H. Adams and Michael L. Keene also chronicle other dramatic techniques that Paul deftly used to gain publicity for the suffrage movement. Stunningly woven into the narrative are accounts of many instances in which women were in physical danger. Rather than avoid discussion of Paul's imprisonment, hunger strikes, and forced feeding, the authors divulge the strategies she employed in her campaign. Paul's controversial approach, the authors assert, was essential in changing American attitudes toward women's suffrage.