Although women's charitable bazaars have contributed millions of dollars to important causes and institutions, they have long been thought of by both historians and the public as trivial events. Beverly Gordon corrects this view in Bazaars and Fair Ladies, the first history of women's fundraising fairs in the United States. Tracing their development from the early 1800s to the present day, Gordon show how women's fairs have reflected and influenced American culture, including styles of display and presentation, forms of public entertainment, attitudes about consumption and commodities, and...

The Saturated World: Aesthetic Meaning, Intimate Objects, Women s Lives, 1890 1940 explores the way middle-class American women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries added meaning to their lives through their domestic amusements leisure pursuits that took place in and were largely focused on the home. This pathbreaking study by Beverly Gordon demonstrates that these women elaborated on their everyday tasks and responsibilities by transforming them into playful, emotionally satisfying amusements. In doing so, they cultivated a heightened, aesthetically charged saturated state...

Even the earliest European explorers to the Americas collected objects made by native people. The ongoing fascination with the artistic and cultural expressions of American Indian people is documented historically, along with a close look at seven midwestern collections. The wide array of art encompassed is handsomely illustrated, and includes pottery, weavings, basketry, beadwork, and carvings.
Distributed for theChazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin Madison"