Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (1941–2007)
Author of Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South
About the Author
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese is Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities at Emory University, where she was founding director of Women's Studies.
Image credit: Women for Faith & Family
Series
Works by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (1988) 456 copies, 6 reviews
The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders' Worldview (2005) 135 copies, 1 review
Slavery in White and Black: Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders' New World Order (2008) 52 copies
Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (1983) 43 copies
History and Women, Culture and Faith, Volume 1: Selected Writings of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese: Women Past and Present (2011) 4 copies
The Origins of Physiocracy: Economic Revolution and Social Order in Eighteenth-Century France (1976) 3 copies
Associated Works
That Gentle Strength: Historical Perspectives on Women in Christianity (1990) — Contributor — 20 copies
In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean, and Afro-American History (1986) — Contributor — 14 copies
Reason and Republicanism: Thomas Jefferson's Legacy of Liberty (1997) — Contributor — 6 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1941-05-28
- Date of death
- 2007-01-02
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris
Bryn Mawr College
Harvard University - Occupations
- historian
professor
author - Organizations
- Emory University
- Awards and honors
- National Humanities Medal (2003)
- Relationships
- Genovese, Eugene D. (husband)
Fox, Edward Whiting (father) - Short biography
- Elizabeth Ann Fox was born to a family of mixed ethnicities and religions. Her father Edward Whiting Fox, a Cornell professor who specialized in the history of modern Europe, was Protestant and of English and Scotch-Irish descent. Her mother Elizabeth Mary Simon Fox, was Jewish from a German-Jewish immigrant family. Elizabeth received a B.A. in French and history in 1963 from Bryn Mawr and studied at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. She earned an M.A. and then a Ph.D. in history at Harvard. She taught at the State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of Rochester. In 1969, she married fellow historian Eugene D. Genovese, with whom she founded the journal Marxist Perspectives and sometimes co-wrote works. In 1986, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese began teaching history at Emory University, where she was named the Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities. She founded the Institute for Women's Studies, which she served as director until 1991, and started the first doctoral program in women's studies in the USA. Her original academic interest had been French history, but she changed to the history of women in the pre-Civil War Southern USA. Among her works were on the subject were Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (1988) and To Be Worthy of God’s Favor: Southern Women’s Defense and Critique of Slavery (1993). Elizabeth Fox-Genovese also wrote scholarly and popular works on feminism. In 1995, she converted to the Roman Catholicism faith. After her death in 2007, her husband published a tribute to his wife, Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Places of residence
- Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Atlanta, Georgia, USA - Place of death
- Atlanta, Georgia, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- Georgia, USA
Members
Reviews
I read this book because I was interested in a sociological study of why women who otherwise believe in equality so frequently say things like, "I'm not a feminist, but..." I identify as a feminist so I find it odd that so many women don't. This book promised to explain to me why.
It doesn't, if you're wondering. Rather, Fox-Genovese makes a number of unsupported claims about what feminists say or think (as though it is a 100% monolithic community too) and then identify why some people don't show more agree with those things. Here are a few examples from the first chapter alone:
"Feminists accuse the religious right of trying to dictate what a woman should be... meanwhile these same feminists practice the very thing they preach against." No examples given. No quotes from her fieldwork. Nothing.
"Feminist indifference, if not hostility, to men and families" Examples? No.
Perhaps at the time this book was written, these things were clear, but they certainly aren't now. And it is sociologically suspect to make these claim without referring to examples or fieldwork, especially when the whole book is premised on her conducting fieldwork with women to find out about these attitudes.
First and second wave feminism have been rightly criticized for being racially exclusionary. This does not appear in this book other than in passing.
There are sociologists who use fieldwork to get to the heart of problems and illustrate why people behave the way they do. Kathryn Edin, for instance, wrote a seminal text on why low-income women choose to have children outside of marriage -- a phenomenal study that I highly recommend, [Promises I Can Keep]. Fox-Genovese could have done this, but her biases get in the way.
I should also note that there is a bizarre frequency of pro-life propaganda in this book, seemingly based on the fact that Fox-Genovese could not have children, which I found very off-putting. I would be very willing to read a book in which the reasons that otherwise progressive women choose to be pro-life, in order to understand that position; this book does not do that. Rather, it makes the pro-life position the default and accuses feminists of being monstrous extremists on the issue -- with no explanations why.
This is not sociology. I can't recommend it. show less
It doesn't, if you're wondering. Rather, Fox-Genovese makes a number of unsupported claims about what feminists say or think (as though it is a 100% monolithic community too) and then identify why some people don't show more agree with those things. Here are a few examples from the first chapter alone:
"Feminists accuse the religious right of trying to dictate what a woman should be... meanwhile these same feminists practice the very thing they preach against." No examples given. No quotes from her fieldwork. Nothing.
"Feminist indifference, if not hostility, to men and families" Examples? No.
Perhaps at the time this book was written, these things were clear, but they certainly aren't now. And it is sociologically suspect to make these claim without referring to examples or fieldwork, especially when the whole book is premised on her conducting fieldwork with women to find out about these attitudes.
First and second wave feminism have been rightly criticized for being racially exclusionary. This does not appear in this book other than in passing.
There are sociologists who use fieldwork to get to the heart of problems and illustrate why people behave the way they do. Kathryn Edin, for instance, wrote a seminal text on why low-income women choose to have children outside of marriage -- a phenomenal study that I highly recommend, [Promises I Can Keep]. Fox-Genovese could have done this, but her biases get in the way.
I should also note that there is a bizarre frequency of pro-life propaganda in this book, seemingly based on the fact that Fox-Genovese could not have children, which I found very off-putting. I would be very willing to read a book in which the reasons that otherwise progressive women choose to be pro-life, in order to understand that position; this book does not do that. Rather, it makes the pro-life position the default and accuses feminists of being monstrous extremists on the issue -- with no explanations why.
This is not sociology. I can't recommend it. show less
Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Gender and American Culture) 1st edition by Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth (1988) Paperback by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
There’s an extraordinary amount of information in this book that was new to me regarding the specifics of plantation life. I highly recommend it for history buffs who want to gain a true and accurate understanding of what it was like. However, it bothered me how conflictual the author was about the topic. Generally, on the one hand, she well-described the utter brutality of “slave owning “ women towards their slaves but, on the other hand there was an implication of her sympathy for show more the women slaveowners. show less
Documenting the difficult class relations between women slaveholders and slave women, this study shows how class and race as well as gender shaped women's experiences and determined their identities. Drawing upon massive research in diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral histories, the author argues that the lives of antebellum southern women, enslaved and free, differed fundamentally from those of northern women and that it is not possible to understand antebellum southern women by applying show more models derived from New England sources. show less
The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders' Worldview by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
I enjoyed this book immensely. It greatly added to my knowledge and understanding of the ante-bellum South and why secession and the Civil War occurred. Reading this book was like reading one of the books about what I didn't learn about American history. It seems that most of the history I have read was written from a Northern point of view and showed little understanding of the Southern attitudes portrayed in this book. This book helped me to understand how fundamental and very real were show more the differences between North and South. In the book the authors state that the Southerners shared a government with the free North. Their book is a lengthy exposition on how true that was.
The volume of research cited in the book is imposing. The footnotes comprise one-third of the 718 pages of text. After the text are 80 pages of supplementary references on topics from Addison and Cato to Women and the Classics. Instead of a descriptive review I will provide a few examples of what I learned by reading the book.
The intellectual life in the South centered around the fact that is was a slaveholding, agrarian, republican society. I say republican to emphasize that Southerners did not believe in true democracy. In commenting on the French Revolution Southern writers saw a democracy leading to the tyranny of Napoleon.
Much of Southern intellectual life was an attempt to justify slavery and define how to administer their duties as slave masters in accordance with historical and Christian standards. There is a discussion of Abramic slavery, slavery as practiced by Abraham. The South saw itself as a different and better place and some Southern writers recommended slavery for the workers of the North.
The section on religion in Southern intellectual life is approximately one-third of the book. The South was a country of small towns and villages and the church was the primary social activity.
The Southerners made great use of the Bible to justify slavery. They often cited the fact that Jews and other peoples in the Bible owned slaves and there was no criticism of slavery in the Bible. Southerners tried to justify African slavery with the curse of Noah and referred to Africans as "The sons of Ham". Southern theologians strongly criticized the Northern Transcendentalists and Unitarians.
The chapter on John Brown's raid on the Harper's Ferry armory corroborated my understanding of how it contributed to sectional hatreds. John Brown had been financed by Northern abolitionists and took over Harper's Ferry armory to control the weapons there. While he publicly stated that he did not intend to start a slave uprising that was his plan. In the North John Brown became a hero and was compared to Jesus. The Southerners saw this incident as proof that Northern abolitionists intended to promote slave uprisings that would lead to the slaughter of white Southerners. I agree with the statement of the authors that for many Southerners Harper's Ferry or its aftermath either proved to be the last straw or put them in a frame of mind to reject Lincoln's election more firmly than they might have done. The North and the South during this time were two societies who didn't know each other and increasingly didn't like each other.
After secession and before the Civil War Abraham Lincoln and other Northerners thought that Union sentiment in the South would lead to reconciliation before any conflict. Reading this book helped me to understand why that was never a real possibility. show less
The volume of research cited in the book is imposing. The footnotes comprise one-third of the 718 pages of text. After the text are 80 pages of supplementary references on topics from Addison and Cato to Women and the Classics. Instead of a descriptive review I will provide a few examples of what I learned by reading the book.
The intellectual life in the South centered around the fact that is was a slaveholding, agrarian, republican society. I say republican to emphasize that Southerners did not believe in true democracy. In commenting on the French Revolution Southern writers saw a democracy leading to the tyranny of Napoleon.
Much of Southern intellectual life was an attempt to justify slavery and define how to administer their duties as slave masters in accordance with historical and Christian standards. There is a discussion of Abramic slavery, slavery as practiced by Abraham. The South saw itself as a different and better place and some Southern writers recommended slavery for the workers of the North.
The section on religion in Southern intellectual life is approximately one-third of the book. The South was a country of small towns and villages and the church was the primary social activity.
The Southerners made great use of the Bible to justify slavery. They often cited the fact that Jews and other peoples in the Bible owned slaves and there was no criticism of slavery in the Bible. Southerners tried to justify African slavery with the curse of Noah and referred to Africans as "The sons of Ham". Southern theologians strongly criticized the Northern Transcendentalists and Unitarians.
The chapter on John Brown's raid on the Harper's Ferry armory corroborated my understanding of how it contributed to sectional hatreds. John Brown had been financed by Northern abolitionists and took over Harper's Ferry armory to control the weapons there. While he publicly stated that he did not intend to start a slave uprising that was his plan. In the North John Brown became a hero and was compared to Jesus. The Southerners saw this incident as proof that Northern abolitionists intended to promote slave uprisings that would lead to the slaughter of white Southerners. I agree with the statement of the authors that for many Southerners Harper's Ferry or its aftermath either proved to be the last straw or put them in a frame of mind to reject Lincoln's election more firmly than they might have done. The North and the South during this time were two societies who didn't know each other and increasingly didn't like each other.
After secession and before the Civil War Abraham Lincoln and other Northerners thought that Union sentiment in the South would lead to reconciliation before any conflict. Reading this book helped me to understand why that was never a real possibility. show less
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- Rating
- 3.7
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