Welcome to the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society

Courtesy of Getty Images 

The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society has the honor of promoting the life and works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman as subjects not just for critical engaged research and thoughtful teaching, but of public interest as well. A famous lecturer as well as the author of a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, Gilman’s legacy presents a rich view into the history of feminism in the United States. Challenging, nuanced, and provocative, her work also moves on a scale that ranges from humorous and wry to skeptical, ironic, and even ghostly.

What's New in Gilman Studies

New Publication Announcement: 


Broadview Press recently published a new edition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Women and Economics and Other Writings, edited by Rachel Elin Nolan, which Nancy Folbre calls “beautifully curated collection” that “offers a modern window into the mind of a pioneering feminist."

 

This new edition of Women and Economics highlights the importance of Charlotte Perkins Gilman as a leading public intellectual of the Progressive Era. It contains Gilman’s most influential economic analysis, including her signature idea that the relationship between men and women is at core “sexuo-economic.” Gilman applies ideas and techniques from evolutionary science to the study of marriage and the family. Her highly original approach reveals that female dependency is not a natural but rather a cultivated phenomenon. Women and Economics proposes wide-reaching social and economic reforms that were radical at the time and, as numerous twenty-first-century feminist economists continue to argue, are yet to be achieved today.

 

Related literary works by Gilman and historical documents allow readers to situate Gilman’s ideas in relation to larger debates concerning labour relations, the family, and women’s role in society.

Announcing the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society Panel for the 2023 American Literature Association Conference:


Panel Title: Gilman on Evolution and Optics


Chair: Andrew Ball, Emerson College


Panelists: