Voices of Women Historians: The Personal, the Political, the Professional

by Eileen Boris (Editor), Nupur Chaudhuri (Editor)

Overview

This collection of personal narratives by former officers of the Coordinating Council for Women in History weaves together past and present in women's history, and women in the historical profession. Recording the diverse paths taken to become historians, essays describe how a group of women negotiated the often competing demands of being a woman, a professional, and a political activist during the turbulent 1960s through the challenges of the 1990s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253212757
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	09/22/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Eileen Boris, Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Virginia and coordinating editor of IRIS: A Journal of Women, is the author of Art and Labor: Ruskin, Morris, and the Craftsman Ideal in America, and Home to Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial Homework in the United States. She also has published numerous articles, essays and reviews in American Quarterly, Signs, Journal of American History, Women's Review of Books, and The Nation.

Nupur Chaudhuri , who teaches at Texas Southern University, is the coeditor of Westerm Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance, and coeditor of a special issue on "Gender, Race, Class, Sexuality: National and Global Perspectives" for the National Women's Studies Journal. She has written extensively on gender and imperialism and her articles have appeared in the Journal of Women's History, Women's History Review, and Victorian Studies.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Standpoints on Hard Ground by Eileen Boris and Nupur Chaudhuri
1. Women among the Professors of History: The Story of a Process of Transformation by Gerda Lerner
2. Three Faces of Trevia: Identity, Activism and Intellect by Berenice A. Carroll
3. Regionalism, Feminism and Class: Conceiving the Field of Women's History by Hilda Smith
4. On the Importance of Taking Notes (and Keeping Them) by Linda K. Kerber
5. The Shaping of a Feminist Historian by Sandi E. Cooper
6. Making and Writing History Together by Renate Bridenthal
7. Going Against the Grain: The Making of an Independent Scholar by Karen Offen
8. Reassertion of Patriarchy at the End of the Twentieth Century by Joan Hoff
9. Bahupath Perie: The Long Trek by Nupur Chaudhuri
10. Two Catalysts in My Life: Voter Registration Drives and CCWHP by Mollie C. Davis
11. A Graduate Student's Odyssey by Frances Richardson Keller
12. "Drop by Drop the Bottle Fills" by Margaret Strobel
13. In Circles Comes Change by Eileen Boris
14. Domestic Constraints: Motherhood as Life and Subject by Lynn Y. Weiner
15. Activism and the Academy by Barbara Winslow
16. The Emma Thread: Communitarian Values, Global Visions by Nancy A. Hewitt
17. Clio on the Margins by Mary Elizabeth Perry
18. Que se yo: A Historian in Training by Nancy Mirabal [please note spelling of chapter: Que se(accent accute) yo]
19. A New Generation of Women Historians by Crystal Feimster
20. Bibliography: Women Historians and How They Are Made by Barbara Penny Kanner

Editorial Reviews

"This volume introduces readers to 20 women historians of multiple generations involved in an organization called the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession (CCWHP). Founded in 1969, CCWHP became an active force in educating, lobbying, and promoting new awarenesses in the historical profession. Thirty years ago, women's experiences were often ignored in history textbooks, faculty were hired according to the old boy system, and young women were not encouraged to become college professors. All of the interviews in the collection are with women who have been active in the organization over time. Pioneer historians such as Gerda Lerner, who was a founder of CCWHP, are included as well as new entrants to the profession such as Crystal Feimster, a graduate student representative to the group in the 1990s. They all share something of their personal biographies as a basis for understanding their activism. Some came to the history profession with backgrounds in peace and civil rights, while others became activists thanks to discriminatory practices in academia. They all believe in synthesizing their social and professional ideals. Recommended for all libraries.February 2000"—J. Sochen, Northeastern Illinois University

From the Publisher

This volume introduces readers to 20 women historians of multiple generations involved in an organization called the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession (CCWHP). Founded in 1969, CCWHP became an active force in educating, lobbying, and promoting new awarenesses in the historical profession. Thirty years ago, women's experiences were often ignored in history textbooks, faculty were hired according to the old boy system, and young women were not encouraged to become college professors. All of the interviews in the collection are with women who have been active in the organization over time. Pioneer historians such as Gerda Lerner, who was a founder of CCWHP, are included as well as new entrants to the profession such as Crystal Feimster, a graduate student representative to the group in the 1990s. They all share something of their personal biographies as a basis for understanding their activism. Some came to the history profession with backgrounds in peace and civil rights, while others became activists thanks to discriminatory practices in academia. They all believe in synthesizing their social and professional ideals. Recommended for all libraries.February 2000

Northeastern Illinois University - J. Sochen

"This volume introduces readers to 20 women historians of multiple generations involved in an organization called the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession (CCWHP). Founded in 1969, CCWHP became an active force in educating, lobbying, and promoting new awarenesses in the historical profession. Thirty years ago, women's experiences were often ignored in history textbooks, faculty were hired according to the old boy system, and young women were not encouraged to become college professors. All of the interviews in the collection are with women who have been active in the organization over time. Pioneer historians such as Gerda Lerner, who was a founder of CCWHP, are included as well as new entrants to the profession such as Crystal Feimster, a graduate student representative to the group in the 1990s. They all share something of their personal biographies as a basis for understanding their activism. Some came to the history profession with backgrounds in peace and civil rights, while others became activists thanks to discriminatory practices in academia. They all believe in synthesizing their social and professional ideals. Recommended for all libraries." —J. Sochen, Northeastern Illinois University, Choice, February 2000

— J. Sochen, Northeastern Illinois University

Choice