Bibliographic Essay

The study of gender and violence is a relatively recent innovation in the history of early America. To date, few works exist that focus exclusively on gender and violence; rather, the richest literature is contained in histories of women, Native Americans and African Americans.

An excellent introduction to gender and violence during the era of contact and conquest can be found in Elizabeth D. Heineman (ed.), Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones: From the Ancient World to the Era of Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and Matthew Jennings, New Worlds of Violence: Cultures and Conquests in the Early American Southeast (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2011). Spanish and indigenous women are well explored in Karen Vieira Powers, Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500-1600 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005). The enslavement of native women and the variety of those experiences can be found in Andres Resendez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) and Brett Rushford, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). The Anglo-Indian exchange is explored in Ann M. Little, Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) and Ann Marie Plane, Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in Early New England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).

Gender and violence in the English colonies is sprinkled throughout colonial history, but the best places to begin are Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York: Alfred A.

The work on gender and violence is perhaps clearest in the study of enslaved women. Comparative studies can be found in Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) and Kirsten Fischer, Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). For African American women specifically, see Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) and Marisa J. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Gender and violence is examined through the lens of masculinity in Thomas A. Foster, Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006).

The violence of the American Revolution is best captured by Holger Hoock, Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth (New York: Crown, 2017). Studies of women during the Revolution can be found in Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800, new edn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996) and Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). The effects of the Revolution on sexuality and marriage are explored in Merril D. Smith, Breaking the Bonds: Marital Discord in Pennsylvania, 1730-1830 (New York: New York University Press, 1991) and Clare A. Lyons, Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).