History and Women, Culture and Faith is a five-volume collection of eighty essays and journal articles spanning the extraordinary intellectual career of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese (1941-2007). A working scholar for more than three decades, Fox-Genovese made significant contributions to European and Southern American history and became one of the most provocative scholars and educators of her time as she evolved intellectually from a Marxist to a feminist to a pro-life Roman Catholic. Although she authored or co-authored many well-received books, her prolific output as an essayist is less well known.
Concluding this multivolume series of Fox-Genovese’s fugitive works, Unbought Grace: An Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Reader draws on earlier volumes in the series to provide an overview of fundamental intellectual concerns that shaped her writings. Divided into two parts–sixteen essays written by Fox-Genovese and ten remembrances of her life–the contents of this volume demonstrate her remarkable range of subjects, methods, and audiences as she examined both historical and contemporary issues.
The volume at the same time reflects persistent issues and themes running through Fox-Genovese’s work, and her life journey from Marxism and feminism to Roman Catholicism. As her perspectives evolved, Fox-Genovese re-examined and refined previous arguments about many of these issues and themes: power imbalances for marginalised populations, the rise of bourgeois hegemony, Lockean individualism and liberalism, feminism, religion, and a moral economy.
Remembrances of Fox-Genovese, written by colleagues and former students, conclude the book. Providing insight into her personal and professional relationships, these remarkable accounts allow the reader to understand better the woman behind the nuanced and thought-provoking essays.
Demonstrated through her own words and in the remembrances, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese’s life reflected more continuity than change. Her legacy is a remarkable wealth of academic knowledge, vigourous and complex moral arguments, and, most of all, a life lived searchingly through her embrace of a deep, abiding faith that defined her scholarship and personal life.
