新澳门六合彩内幕信息

Women Write Women鈥檚 History

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Lisa Materson and Ellen Hartigain-O'Connor
Lisa Materson and Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor, associate professors of history at 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis, read from The Oxford Handbook of American Women's and Gender History, which they edited. It was published in October.

Ellen Hartigan-O鈥機onnor and Lisa Materson of the University of California, Davis, collaborators in research and teaching of women鈥檚 and gender history for 10 years, were keenly aware of many fascinating stories about women in history, as uncovered by female historians.

But getting those stories into the big narratives of history was more than one or two people could accomplish.   

Then Oxford University Press asked the 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis scholars, both associate professors of history in the College of Letters and Science, to create a women鈥檚 history handbook.

The Oxford Handbook of American Women's and Gender History

 The Oxford Handbook of American Women's and Gender History
  • Ellen Hartigan-O鈥機onnor and Lisa G. Materson, editors

Oxford publishes definitive handbooks on hundreds of academic subjects, but none had been done on women in American history. So Hartigan-O鈥機onnor and Materson took on the project, determined to showcase not only women鈥檚 and gender history, but also the scholars whose intellectual innovation continues to bring women鈥檚 stories to life.

In a process that included a conference at 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis, Hartigan-O鈥機onnor and Materson discussed, sought, collected and edited dozens of historians鈥 essays on topics ranging from slavery to politics.

The resulting book came out in October: The Oxford Handbook of American Women鈥檚 and Gender History.

The essays illustrate the history of an entire continent through women and their ideas about gender: migration, colonialism, warfare, free and unfree labor, incarceration, sexuality, race and music, and women in the work force, in politics and in motherhood. As the first sentence of the book鈥檚 introduction proclaims: 鈥淗alf of the people who have lived in North America and the United States have been women.鈥

Materson and Hartigan-O鈥機onnor introduce the volume of 29 essays by explaining that female historians in previous generations 鈥渢rained themselves and each other within university departments that were teaching history as defined and dominated by men 鈥 and as a result pioneered alternative methodologies and perspectives.

鈥淭his book continues their innovations, by presenting new chronologies, transnational themes, and the integration of histories about diverse women鈥檚 lives with the history of ideas about gender and their consequences.鈥

Timely publication

From the time of their conference four years ago, Materson and Hartigan-O鈥機onnor knew the handbook would be relevant in today鈥檚 society. But they had no idea how timely its publication in the fall of 2018 would be 鈥 amid the #MeToo anti-sexual assault movement and during the run-up to the midterm elections in which women made historic gains.

 

鈥淭he handbook appears at a time when Americans are interested in understanding more about women and gender,鈥 Materson said in a recent interview. 鈥淭here is an urgency; it鈥檚 so important for people to learn U.S. women鈥檚 and gender history. There is direct relevance to our contemporary world.鈥

The editors, seizing on the timing of publication, wrote an article for the History News Network after confirmation hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In  Materson and Hartigan-O鈥機onnor make the point that women鈥檚 history is often written from archives that have critical gaps.

鈥淭he archive is shaped by those who preserve it: Notes can be filed or shredded. Calendars can be preserved or tossed. And whispered confidences can go unrecorded,鈥 they wrote.

鈥淢ultiple institutions control who gets to interpret.鈥

With their new work, Materson and Hartigan-O鈥機onnor have even more well-researched articles to cite and assign in 鈥淲omen and Gender in America,鈥 a two-quarter course on the period before 1865 and from 1865 to present.

新澳门六合彩内幕信息 authors throughout the book

Nine, or nearly a third of the essays, are penned by 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 authors, including Lorena Oropeza, a 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Davis history professor. Said Hartigan-O鈥機onnor: 鈥淭his just shows the long-standing important role 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 plays in training and hiring scholars of women鈥檚 and gender history.鈥

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, professor and chair of Asian American studies at 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Irvine, said she was honored that the authors asked her to write an essay on some dimensions of the history of feminism. 鈥淭he essay allowed me to explore the political, economic and sexual dimensions of U.S. feminisms, exploring the significance as well as limitations of these movements and ideas by foregrounding the agency and experiences of women commonly considered marginal to the U.S. nation-state,鈥 she said.

Sharon Block, a professor of history at 新澳门六合彩内幕信息 Irvine, said the editors approached her with the idea of writing a history of sexual violence across all of American history. 鈥淭his gave me a wonderful opportunity to link my interests in combating modern day sexual harassment to my historical knowledge. Especially in this MeToo era, it鈥檚 crucial for us to understand the ways that sexual violence and coercion grow out of intersecting racial, colonial and gendered power inequities across time and place.鈥

 

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