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Feminist Studies

Emancipating the Passive Muse: A Call for a Feminist Approach to Writing Biographies on Historical Women

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This essay analyzes two popular biographies on historical women to interrogate how a focus on
gender has shaped the genre: Nancy Ruben Stuart’s The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy
Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation (2008) and Jung Chang’s Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine
Who Launched Modern China (2013). I argue that biographers who perpetuate gender stereotypes miss
a momentous opportunity during the current life writing boom in the United States to educate readers
on women’s social, cultural, and political contributions worldwide. In proposing that feminist-informed
biographies are more accurate, complete, and make social and cultural interventions, I discuss how these
texts celebrate women’s abilities and successes and, thus, counter patriarchal interpretations of history

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Publication Information
: Journal of Feminist Scholarship.,
Number of Pages
-
ISBN
-
Language
English
ISSN
8. https://digitalcommons.uri.ed
Subject(s)
Feminism
biography
historical women
life writing
gender studies
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Type
Article
Part Of Series
-
DOI Identifier
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