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Imagining Home: Gender, Race and National Identity, 1945-1964 is a powerful examination of ideas and images of home in Britain during a period of national decline and loss of imperial power. Exploring the legacy of empire in imaginings of the nation during a period of decolonization after 1945, it is has become one of the outstanding books about the relationship between gender, race and national identity.
Analyzing the role of colonialism and racism in shaping ideas of motherhood, employment and domesticity, it brilliantly traces the way in which Englishness became associated with domestic order and the very idea of home became white, exploring themes that reverberate strongly today as arguments around gender, race and feminism occupy the headlines.
Drawing extensively on oral history and life-writing of politicians, journalists, churchmen, health professionals, novelists and film-makers, Wendy Webster examines the multiple meanings of home to women in narratives of belonging and unbelonging. Its focus on the complex interrelationships of white and black women's lives and identities offers a compelling new perspective on this period.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author.
List of contents
Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition Introduction 1. Homecomings 2. Unbelongings 3. Home and Colonialism 4. This New England 5. Good Homes 6. Home and Work 7. Domestic Identities. Epilogue Bibliography Index
About the author
Wendy Webster is Professor of History at the Centre for History, Culture and Memory, University of Huddersfield, UK.
Summary
Imagining Home: Gender, Race and National Identity, 1945-1964 is a powerful examination of ideas and images of home in Britain during a period of national decline and loss of imperial power. Exploring the legacy of empire in imaginings of the nation during a period of decolonization after 1945, it is has become one of the outstanding books about the relationship between gender, race and national identity.
Analyzing the role of colonialism and racism in shaping ideas of motherhood, employment and domesticity, it brilliantly traces the way in which Englishness became associated with domestic order and the very idea of home became white, exploring themes that reverberate strongly today as arguments around gender, race and feminism occupy the headlines.
Drawing extensively on oral history and life-writing of politicians, journalists, churchmen, health professionals, novelists and film-makers, Wendy Webster examines the multiple meanings of home to women in narratives of belonging and unbelonging. Its focus on the complex interrelationships of white and black women's lives and identities offers a compelling new perspective on this period.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author.
Report
'A riveting study of gender, race and national identity.' - Guardian
'Highly readable and authoratative, introducing readers to potentially difficult ideas in a thoroughly accessible way.' - Ethnic and Racial Studies
'This is an interesting and important book and should stand as a landmark study for this formative period of contemporary British history.' - Professor Mary Chamberlain, Women's History Review
