This dissertation explores the ways in which gender identity played an important role in shaping social and economic systems in post-Civil War Annapolis, Maryland. Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this study examines the definition, negotiation, and contestation of normative ideas about gender and acceptable social relationships during this time period of numerous social, political, and economic changes. Emergent gender ideologies were closely connected to citywide and national priorities, and normalized identity configurations were used to determine who would be considered eligible for civil rights and the protections of citizenship, and to individualize inequalities.

Utilizing historical and archaeological evidence from two streets in the historic district of Annapolis, this dissertation focuses on the ways in which negotiations of gender norms can be seen through archaeologically recovered material culture - namely historic features, ceramics, glass, and fauna. This dissertation argues that the "public" project of governance in Annapolis was accomplished partially through negotiations about "domestic" spaces and responsibilities, which are closely tied to gender and race. During the post-Civil War period, developing gender norms - including ideas about what made a man worthy of citizenship or a woman worthy of protection - played an important part in reformulated expressions of white supremacy, initiatives to modernize cities, and the organization of domestic spaces and priorities. A variety of tactics were used to negotiate gendered identities in Annapolis, and variations in the ways that gender ideologies were expressed reflect active mediations of dominant ideologies.