Women's History Commons^™

"I Just Had To Do Most Everything": Gender, Settlement And American Empire In The Far West, Hannah Alexandra Reynolds

Dissertations and Theses

The field of settler colonial studies has made huge strides in recent years toward problematizing the establishment of the United States on stolen land and the nation's steady, violent expansion across the continent. Settler colonial framework provides a rich opportunity for historians of the American West to reframe white settlement on the frontier, especially that which was made possible through land grant legislation such as the Homestead Act of 1862. As the families who took up land grant property sought new opportunities for themselves, they also acted as drivers of U.S. territorial acquisition. This process was inherently gendered, in terms …