‘Unequal Sisters’ book provides revolutionary perspective on US women’s history

LAWRENCE — When the first “Unequal Sisters” volume came out in 1990, its multicultural feminist essays focused on establishing that women of color were important to acknowledge and understand as key figures in U.S. history.

“I won’t say that’s a fact we take for granted. But now we can spend our time focusing on the nuances about people’s experiences,” said Kim Warren, associate professor of history at the University of Kansas.

“We can also expand our scope and our reach — temporally and geographically — and challenge previous notions about gender identity. We have the privilege of spending our scholarly efforts on digging into a much richer, multivocal past.”

Warren is one of the editors on the new fifth edition titled “Unequal Sisters: A Revolutionary Reader in U.S. Women’s History.” Building on its goal of emphasizing feminist perspectives on race, ethnicity and sexuality, this edition also highlights queerness, transgender identity, disability, the rise of the carceral state and the militarization of migration. It’s published by Routledge.

Co-edited with Stephanie Narrow, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Vicki Ruiz, this edition is the first to feature the word “revolutionary” in its subtitle.

“With this edition, we wanted to interrogate the initial concept of what it meant to bring together scholarship from the various fields in U.S. women’s history,” she said. “By revolutionary, we’re trying to say that this field has exponentially grown. It is entirely different, entirely larger and more inclusive than it was 30 years ago.”

Warren, who is also associate dean of academic affairs for KU’s Edwards Campus/School of Professional Studies, said despite the book’s revolutionary designation, its editors were intent on honoring all those who pioneered the field and made it possible for scholars like her to do the work that she does. As a way to connect with the original volume, inaugural co-editor Ruiz was invited to join the three new editors.

“What we’re attempting to do is model feminist scholarship as multigenerational work that is building on the work done by previous generations,” she said.

The 36 chapters include pieces on Indigenous women, Mexican farmworkers, boarding schools, the racialization of sexual violence and U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico. One of the more provocative chapters is titled “Transgender: A Useful Category?: Or, How the Historical Study of ‘Transsexual’ and ‘Transvestite’ Can Help Us Rethink ‘Transgender’ as a Category,” written by Marta Vicente, KU professor of history.

“Dr. Vicente’s work on transgender scholarship is groundbreaking. It is not only influencing the way we think about categories of gender, but it’s also changing the way we teach in WGSS (women, gender, and sexuality studies) programs,” Warren said.

Warren said that Vicente’s work is also notable for being transnational.

She said, “Marta takes a global approach to identities that aren’t rooted in or limited by geography. Her work also reaches back into much earlier periods than a lot of the work of other contemporary scholars.”

A KU faculty member since 2004, Warren is a scholar of gender and race in African American and Native American studies, history of education and U.S. history. Her previous books include “The Quest for Citizenship: African American and Native American Education in Kansas, 1880-1935” (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) and “Transforming the University of Kansas: A History, 1965-2015” (University Press of Kansas, 2015).

“The revolutionary goal with a project like ‘Unequal Sisters’ is helping readers understand that this is history — this is not a subcategory of the historical past,” Warren said. “The voices and lives that are highlighted in a book like this are central to our understanding of human history.”