bunnyjadwiga

Was talking to a professor today about women's history et al and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich came up in conversation. Her work is on women's history, and is very meaty. I've read 2 of her four books:

A midwife's tale : the life of Martha Ballard, based on her diary, 1785-1812
Good wives : image and reality in the lives of women in northern New England, 1650-1750
Yards and gates : gender in Harvard and Radcliffe history
The age of homespun : objects and stories in the creation of an American myth

And am going to read the forth soon.
I think she would be very useful in a discussion of the construct of housework.

She's also written

Wheels, looms, and the gender division of labor in the eighteenth-century New England. By: Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. William & Mary Quarterly, Jan98, Vol. 55 Issue 1, p3, 36p
Of Pens and Needles: Sources in Early American Women's History
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. The Journal of American History. Bloomington: Jun 1990. Vol. 77, Iss. 1; p. 200 (8 pages)
An American Fantasy. By: Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Natural History, May2002, Vol. 111 Issue 4, p56, 8p, 6c, 2bw (about "The Age of Homespun")
Objects in the Classroom. By: Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. OAH Magazine of History, Jul2003, Vol. 17 Issue 4, p57-59, 3p
A Pail of Cream. By: Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Journal of American History, Jun2002, Vol. 89 Issue 1, p43-47 (about her career as a personal essayist, with a memorable encounter with another academic, who congratulated her on the acceptance of her essay, not her newborn, as "Babies don't count."

A book she reviewed looks interesting:
Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. By Jeanne Boydston. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.)

Another fascinating book is Never done : a history of American housework by Susan Strasser.