The frontiers of women's writing: women's narratives and the rhetoric of westward expansion

Introduction: American literature, westward expansion, and imperial meaning-making

pt. 1. Surveyors of the terrain, 1830-1860: 1. Traveling and settling on the prairies

2. Women on the overland trails

pt. 2. Army women, tourists, and mythmakers, 1860-1890: 3. Women and the rhetoric of Indian war

4. Touring and mapping the West

pt. 3. Missionaries, reformers, and new women, 1890-1930: 5. The West as a female mission?: white women and the transformation of the American Indian.