Contains letters, journals, and reminiscences showing the impact of the frontier on women's lives and the role of women in the West.

The Roman Catholic order of Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, founded in Ireland in 1776 by Nano Nagle as the Society of Charitable Instruction of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and migrating to North America in the mid 1850s, remains commited to tutoring, healing, and nuturing.

The classic history of women on America's frontiers, now updated and thoroughly revised. FRONTIER WOMEN is an imaginative and graceful account of the extraordinarily diverse contributions of women to the development of the American frontier. Author Julie Roy Jeffrey has expanded her original analysis to include the perspectives of African American and Native American women.

Women Rewriting Boundaries expands the work of gender and literary scholars by offering fresh insights on how to read travel writing by women. It analyzes the connections between class, gender, physicality, and sexuality as found in nineteenth-century literature. The authors discuss the myriad ways in which women writers reinforced and challenged Victorian social norms. Inspired by a special topics panel, “Women Writing Boundaries,” presented at the 2013 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association’s annual convention, this edited collection will be a thought-provoking resource for college- level humanities and gender studies students and their instructors.

From the girl in Red Cloud who oversaw the construction of a miniature town called Sandy Point in her backyard, to the New Woman on a bicycle, celebrating art and castigating political abuse in Lincoln newspapers, to the aspiring novelist in New York City, committed to creation and career, Daryl W. Palmer’s groundbreaking literary biography offers a provocative new look at Willa Cather’s evolution as a writer. Willa Cather has long been admired for O Pioneers! (1913), Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918)—the “prairie novels” about the lives of early Nebraska pioneers that launched her career. Thanks in part to these masterpieces, she is often viewed as a representative of pioneer life on the Great Plains, a controversial innovator in American modernism, and a compelling figure in the literary history of LGBTQ America. A century later, scholars acknowledge Cather’s place in the canon of American literature and continue to explore her relationship with the West. Drawing on original archival research and paying unprecedented attention to Cather’s early short stories, Palmer demonstrates that the relationship with Nebraska in the years leading up to O Pioneers! is more dynamic than critics and scholars thought. Readers will encounter a surprisingly bold young author whose youth in Nebraska served as a kind of laboratory for her future writing career. Becoming Willa Cather changes the way we think about Cather, a brilliant and ambitious author who embraced experimentation in life and art, intent on reimagining the American West.

"Dear Brother," Jane Manning James wrote to Joseph F. Smith in 1903, "I take this opportunity of writing to ask you if I can get my endowments and also finish the work I have begun for my dead.... Your sister in the Gospel, Jane E. James." A faithful Latter-day Saint since her conversion sixty years earlier, James had made this request several times before, to no avail, and this time she would be just as unsuccessful, even though most Latter-day Saints were allowed to participate in the endowment ritual in the temple as a matter of course. James, unlike most Mormons, was black. For that reason, she was barred from performing the temple rituals that Latter-day Saints believe are necessary to reach the highest degrees of glory after death. A free black woman from Connecticut, James positioned herself at the center of LDS history with uncanny precision. After her conversion, she traveled with her family and other converts from the region to Nauvoo, Illinois, where the LDS church was then based. There, she took a job as a servant in the home of Joseph Smith, the founder and first prophet of the LDS church. When Smith was killed in 1844, Jane found employment as a servant in Brigham Young's home. These positions placed Jane in proximity to Mormonism's most powerful figures, but did not protect her from the church's racially discriminatory policies. Nevertheless, she remained a faithful member until her death in 1908. Your Sister in the Gospel is the first scholarly biography of Jane Manning James or, for that matter, any black Mormon. Quincy D. Newell chronicles the life of this remarkable yet largely unknown figure and reveals why James's story changes our understanding of American history.

Chicana Leadership: The "Frontiers" Reader breaks the stereotypes of Mexican American women and shows how these women shape their lives and communities. This collection looks beyond the frequently held perception of Chicanas as passive and submissive and instead examines their roles as dynamic community leaders, activists, and scholars. Chicana Leadership features fifteen essays from the notable women's journal Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies that demonstrate the strength and diversity of Chicanas as well as their continuing struggle to have their voices heard. Noted scholars discuss issues ranging from the feminist prototype La Malinche to Chicana writers and national ideology, from gender and identity to ideas of culture and romance, andøfrom tokenism to the diversity within the Chicana community. The essays provide an introduction to an evolving understanding of this diverse community of women and how they interact among themselves, with their community, and with the world around them.