Feminine Identities

The first four essays in this volume all focus on issues of gender in the works of different English authors and thinkers. Shorter versions of each of these essays were formerly presented as papers in an autonomous section of the Research and Educational Programme on Studies of Identity at the XXth Meeting of the Portuguese Association of Anglo-American Studies (Póvoa de Varzim, 1999) and published in the proceedings of the conference. The second cluster of essays in this volume — two of which (Jennie Wang’s and Teresa Cid’s) were first presented, in shorter versions, at the joint ASA/CAAS Conference (Montréal, 1999) — addresses the work of American women variously engaged in contexts of cultural diversity and grappling with the ideas of what it means to be an American and a woman, particularly in the twentieth century. These essays approach, from different angles, the definitional quandaries and semantic difficulties encountered when speaking about the self and the United States and provide, in one way or another, a sort of feminine rewriting of American myths and history.