Designed to encourage critical thinking about history, the Major Problems in American History series introduces students to both primary sources and analytical essays on important topics in U.S. history. Major Problems in American Women's History is the leading reader for courses on the history of American women, covering the subject's entire chronological span. While attentive to the roles of women and the details of women's lives, the authors are especially concerned with issues of historical interpretation and historiography.

Sharon Block is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. She received an M.A./A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from Princeton University before taking up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. Her writing on race and rape has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and her book, RAPE AND SEXUAL POWER IN EARLY AMERICA, was published in 2006. She has been at the forefront of data mining for humanities research, including a published analysis of more than half a million historical abstracts. Her second monograph explores eighteenth-century constructions of gender and race in colonists' descriptions of the people around them. Professor Block teaches courses on the histories of early America, sexuality, race, colonialism and crime.