Arguments against the influence of St. Augustine's theology of the origin of evil.

Catharine Beecher: The Complexity of Gender in Nineteenth-Century America investigates how the life of education reformer Catharine Beecher is a lens through which to understand the cultural changes of the nineteenth century. Catharine Beecher’s writings outlined a unique domestic role for women just as urbanization and industrialization were limiting their social influence. By arguing that gender differences were a strength, Beecher empowered middle-class women to embrace domestic duties. This book contextualizes Beecher’s life against the major changes that occurred during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century. By looking at Beecher’s writings and anecdotes from her life, this book offers insight into her personality and how her career shaped the culture of femininity. Students and the general reader will find this a powerful and insightful introduction to Catharine Beecher, her work, and legacy. About the Lives of American Women series: selected and edited by renowned women's historian Carol Berkin, these brief biographies are designed for use in undergraduate courses. Primary sources at the end of each biography reveal the subject's perspective in her own words. Study questions and an annotated bibliography support the student reader. About the Series Editor: Carol Berkin is Presidential Professor of History Emerita at Baruch College & the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Berkin is a frequent contributor to PBS and History Channel television documentaries on early American and Revolutionary Era history and edits the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s online journal, History Now. She serves on the scholarly boards of several professional organizations including The National Museum of Women s History and the Scholars Board of the Gilder Lehrman Institute. She has been elected to the Society of American Historians and the American Antiquarian Society. In addition, Berkin is a frequent participant in programs at the New-York Historical Society, and a speaker for One Day University and for a variety of organizations across the country.

In a century almost continually at odds with the proper place of females, Catherine Esther Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Isabella Beecher Hooker shared a commitment to women's power. Although they did not always agree on the nature of that power, each in her own way--Catherine as educator and author of advice literature; Harriet as author of novels, tales, and sketches; and Isabella as a women's rights advocate--devoted much of her adult life to elevating women's status and expanding women's influence.

Feminist history of philosophy has successfully focused thus far on canon revision, canon critique, and the recovery of neglected or forgotten women philosophers. However, the methodology remains underexplored, and it seems timely to ask larger questions about how the history of philosophy is to be done and whether there is, or needs to be, a specifically feminist approach to the history of philosophy. In Empowerment and Interconnectivity, Catherine Gardner examines the philosophy of three neglected women philosophers, Catharine Beecher, Frances Wright, and Anna Doyle Wheeler, all of whom were British or American utilitarian philosophers of one stripe or another. Gardner’s focus in this book is less on accounting for the neglect or disappearance of these women philosophers and more on those methodological (or epistemological) questions we need to ask in order to recover their philosophy and categorize it as feminist.

A “rich, varied, sensitive” biography of three nineteenth-century women: an educator, an early feminist, and the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Publishers Weekly). Daughters of the famous evangelist Lyman Beecher, Catherine, Harriet, and Isabella could not follow their father and seven brothers into the ministry. Nonetheless, they carved out path-breaking careers for themselves. Catharine Beecher founded the Hartford Female Seminary and devoted her life to improving women’s education. Harriet Beecher Stowe became world famous as the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And Isabella Beecher Hooker was an outspoken advocate for women’s rights. This engrossing book is a joint biography of the sisters, whose lives spanned the full course of the nineteenth century. The life of Isabella Beecher—who has never been the subject of a biography—is examined in particular detail here, as Barbara White draws on little used sources to explore Isabella’s political development and her interactions with her sisters and with prominent people of the time—from Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Mark Twain.