Wood, Sharon E.

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Wood, Sharon E.

PERSONAL:

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, University of Nebraska, Omaha, 287 Arts and Sciences Hall, 6001 Dodge St., Omaha, NE 68182. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Academic and historian. University of Nebraska, Omaha, associate professor of history. Visiting professor of history at University of Iowa, University of Chicago, and University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University resident fellow.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) M. Emilia Rockwell, A Home in the West, or, Emigration and Its Consequences, University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 2005.

The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sharon E. Wood is an academic and historian. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and entered academia. Wood eventually became an associate professor of history at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. She also served as a visiting professor at a number of institutions, including the University of Iowa, University of Chicago, and University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She also served as a resident fellow at Harvard University's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History.

She edited her first book, A Home in the West, or, Emigration and Its Consequences, by M. Emilia Rockwell, in 2005. That same year she also published The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City. The account looks at the benefits the Working Woman's Lend-a-Hand Club and other organizations in Davenport, Iowa, which provide for hardworking women in the quickly developing small city.

Mary E. Frederickson, reviewing the book in the Historian, commented that the author's quest to look "for meaning in the life histories of ordinary women provides intimate details about a broad range of new and previously unknown historical figures," including Jennie McCowen and Maggie Burke. Frederickson went on to say that the author's "indefatigable cross-referencing of city directories, census records, local newspapers, and court records across the decades has yielded a gold mine of biographical material," which will undoubtedly alter historical perceptions of Midwestern women and their lifestyles.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, April 1, 2006, Priscilla Murolo, review of The Freedom of the Streets: Work, Citizenship, and Sexuality in a Gilded Age City, p. 493.

Business History Review, winter, 2005, Margaret Garb, review of The Freedom of the Streets, p. 873.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, February 1, 2006, D.F. Anderson, review of The Freedom of the Streets, p. 1079.

Historian, summer, 2006, Mary E. Frederickson, review of The Freedom of the Streets, p. 364.

Journal of American History, June 1, 2006, Rebecca Edwards, review of The Freedom of the Streets, p. 227.

Journal of Economic Literature, September 1, 2005, review of The Freedom of the Streets, p. 906.

Western Historical Quarterly, summer, 2007, Clare A. Lyons, review of The Freedom of the Streets, p. 244.