It's Women's History Month!!!
Being in the business of women's history, I am aware of this month's celebration. I was curious what was "out there" for Women's History Month and the first result of my Google Search was the National Women's History Project. Their slogan is "Writing Women Back into History." This is an admirable endeavor and not to mention complicated. The organization established in 1980 works to celebrate women's achievements in history and they make a concerted effort to have a multicultural approach. They also have programs for educators. All good things. The Library of Congress also has a site devoted to Women's History Month. This is nice, because it is the LoC and there are tons of links to historical documents and images to explore.
(Do you feel a but coming on?)
The methodology of "writing women back into history" bears a resemblance to the early women's history approach of finding women' worthies, such as early biographies of Jane Addams and Ameliea Earhart. These women were noteworthy because they appeared to do things as feminists and that only men did. They competed successfully with men. (OK, sure, Earhart died in that pursuit, but she was successful before then.) This type of history was popular in the early days of women's history as a discipline (1970s and 1980s). Since that time, the field has moved on, broadened its approach to include all sorts of methodologies, including gender analysis and new periodization among others. This makes me think of the recent post by Notorious Ph.D. Girl on her encounter with women's historians of another country with a different methodological approach, which she and her fellow scholars had moved beyond. Another post at Historiann discusses revisionist history and whether the concept still exists. These discussion on the state of the discipline and how we as scholars relate to one another, plus the idea of celebrating women in the past, made me think of about how historians relate to the wider world.
While the above two posts deal with a specific field of history and tribalism, the thing that strikes me is that Average-Jane and John-on-the-Street have not moved on from 1980. Each semester I teach American women's history and each semester I have to introduce my students to the women worthies of history. They do not know who Jane Addams was. They are unfamiliar with when and how suffrage was won by women. This was one of the big events of women's history and they do not know when this happened or how. They do not know who Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Alice Paul were. (Depending on their age, they might have heard of Susan B. Anthony because she is on a dollar coin. One student remarked, "Isn't she that chick on the money?") The average person outside the field of history know very little about the past or how historians think about the past.
So, when I think about what the National Women's History Project people and others like them are doing, I am of two minds. One part of me says we have to stop looking for great women and discover more about how women lived in the past. The other part of me says every little bit helps. So, I say, you go girls! Now, I will go back to reading my feminist methodology and being cranky.
Being in the business of women's history, I am aware of this month's celebration. I was curious what was "out there" for Women's History Month and the first result of my Google Search was the National Women's History Project. Their slogan is "Writing Women Back into History." This is an admirable endeavor and not to mention complicated. The organization established in 1980 works to celebrate women's achievements in history and they make a concerted effort to have a multicultural approach. They also have programs for educators. All good things. The Library of Congress also has a site devoted to Women's History Month. This is nice, because it is the LoC and there are tons of links to historical documents and images to explore.
(Do you feel a but coming on?)
The methodology of "writing women back into history" bears a resemblance to the early women's history approach of finding women' worthies, such as early biographies of Jane Addams and Ameliea Earhart. These women were noteworthy because they appeared to do things as feminists and that only men did. They competed successfully with men. (OK, sure, Earhart died in that pursuit, but she was successful before then.) This type of history was popular in the early days of women's history as a discipline (1970s and 1980s). Since that time, the field has moved on, broadened its approach to include all sorts of methodologies, including gender analysis and new periodization among others. This makes me think of the recent post by Notorious Ph.D. Girl on her encounter with women's historians of another country with a different methodological approach, which she and her fellow scholars had moved beyond. Another post at Historiann discusses revisionist history and whether the concept still exists. These discussion on the state of the discipline and how we as scholars relate to one another, plus the idea of celebrating women in the past, made me think of about how historians relate to the wider world.
While the above two posts deal with a specific field of history and tribalism, the thing that strikes me is that Average-Jane and John-on-the-Street have not moved on from 1980. Each semester I teach American women's history and each semester I have to introduce my students to the women worthies of history. They do not know who Jane Addams was. They are unfamiliar with when and how suffrage was won by women. This was one of the big events of women's history and they do not know when this happened or how. They do not know who Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Alice Paul were. (Depending on their age, they might have heard of Susan B. Anthony because she is on a dollar coin. One student remarked, "Isn't she that chick on the money?") The average person outside the field of history know very little about the past or how historians think about the past.
So, when I think about what the National Women's History Project people and others like them are doing, I am of two minds. One part of me says we have to stop looking for great women and discover more about how women lived in the past. The other part of me says every little bit helps. So, I say, you go girls! Now, I will go back to reading my feminist methodology and being cranky.
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