Julie A. Gallagher - Reshaping Womens History: Voices of Nontraditional Women Historians

Reshaping Womens History

WOMEN, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Editorial Advisors:

Susan K. Cahn

Wanda A. Hendricks

Deborah Gray White

Anne Firor Scott, Founding Editor Emerita

A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book.

Voices of Nontraditional
Women Historians

Edited by

JULIE A. GALLAGHER AND

BARBARA WINSLOW

2018 by the Board of Trustees

of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gallagher, Julie A., editor. | Winslow, Barbara, 1945 editor.

Title: Reshaping womens history : voices of nontraditional women historians / edited by Julie A. Gallagher and Barbara Winslow.

Description: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2018] | Series: Women, gender, and sexuality in American history | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018015282 | ISBN 9780252042003 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780252083693 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Womens studiesUnited States. | WomenHistoryStudy and teachingUnited States. | Women historiansUnited States.

Classification: LCC HQ1181.U5 R47 2018 | DDC 305.40973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018015282

ISBN 9780252050749 (e-book)

Cover illustration: Wildflower image iStock.com / baona

This book is dedicated to Catherine Kitty Prelinger and all those who followed in her footsteps

Julie A. Gallagher and Barbara Winslow

Fran Leeper Buss

Kathleen Sheldon

Rickie Solinger

Pamela Stewart

Lisa DiCaprio

Linda Williams Reese

Barbara Ransby

Catherine Fosl

Linda M. Rupert

Ann Marie Wilson

Midori V. Green

Grey Osterud

Stephanie C. Moore

La Shonda Mims

Julie R. Enszer

Donna Sinclair

Waaseyaasin Christine Sy

Annette Rodrguez

Nupur Chaudhuri

It is difficult to adequately express our appreciation to the anonymous donor for your generosity, vision, and support for women historians. Your gift has benefitted the lives of our contributors as well as the writing and understanding of history. We also thank the leadership of the Coordinating Council for Women in History (CCWH) for their support, encouragement, and suggestions during the entirety of this project. Special thanks to Nupur Chaudhuri, former president and dedicated supporter of CCWH, for her support and guidance, and also to Eileen Boris for her encouragement and editorial suggestions. Two wonderful scholars read our proposal and manuscript and gave us insightful comments. Nila Popal supplied invaluable tech support. And of course thanks to Dawn Durante and Laurie Matheson at the University of Illinois Press for supporting our vision and turning our manuscript into a book.

We are so appreciative of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at Harvard University, which houses the archives of the CCWH as well as the Catherine Prelinger Award applications. We also want to thank all those who applied for the Prelinger Award. Their powerful applications made a lasting impression on us. And more, their scholarship contributes to greater understanding of the complexities of womens lives and the histories they write. To the eighteen award recipients who wrote the essays, abided by deadlines, poured out their personal stories and passion for scholarship and activism, thank you for trusting us with this project.

In addition, we thank members of the Catherine Prelinger Awards Committee and the chairs, Peggy Renner, Carol Gold, Nupur Chaudhuri, and Stephanie Moore. Peggy Renner deserves a special callout for taking that first phone call from the donor and has continued to be the liaison between the donor and the donors attorney.

Julie Gallagher wants to thank her family for their support, encouragement, and above all time to dedicate herself to the book. Special thanks to Leighanne and Cass, who inspire her every day to find the beauty and fun in life. She would also like to thank Penn State Brandywine for support and a timely sabbatical. Barbara has already thanked her two wonderful daughters for past books. She dedicates this book to her terrific grandson, Teddy Winslow Frank, and thanks her beloved black lab, Figaro, for taking her on a lot of walks to clear her head. Finally, Julie and Barbara want to acknowledge each others contributions to this book. It has been more than a labor of love; it has been a labor of intellectual excitement, passion, friendship, and sisterhood.

JULIE A. GALLAGHER

AND BARBARA WINSLOW

From a Mormon wife to a feminist life, wrote Pamela Stewart in 2001 in her application for the Catherine Prelinger Award, a generous stipend of $20,000 given annually by the Coordinating Council for Women in History (CCWH) to a nontraditional scholar. In her personal statement, Stewart explained that after a year of dropping every course I attempted both at university and community college, I worked at clerical jobs until my too early marriage. She had five children, one after another, and devoted her life to a Mormon vision of an idealized but impoverished home and hearth. She struggled with, then divorced, an abusive husband, enrolled at the University of North Texas at Denton, and within one semester went from academic probation to the deans list. Along with raising her five children, she earned a PhD, did research on gendered violence during the 1871 Paris Commune, and now teaches history at Arizona State University.

This collection brings together eighteen scholar activists, all of whom have won the prestigious Prelinger Award. While in the literary world memoir remains a popular genre, historians are most comfortable keeping our scholarly lens firmly focused on historical actors of the past. Nevertheless, we have asked the Prelinger recipients to put their analytical skills to that less-familiar use and turn the lens on themselves. As they unpack their own histories, the contributors reflect on the connections between their lived experiences, their scholarship, the field of women and gender history, and womens professional lives. The stories they share are illuminating and rewarding, but also heart-rending and frustrating.

A number of key themes emerge from the essays that many women inside as well as outside the academys gates will find familiar. These include the importance of mentorship; the fragility of financial stability; the persistence and pervasiveness of gendered family demands, biases, and expectations that we hoped had diminished if not disappeared by now; and the anxiety of having to explain or cover up the gaps in resumes or CVs as women endeavor to advance from one stage of their career to the next, worried that people will interpret their breaks as misplaced priorities or a lack of seriousness or worse, of ability. Contributors offer vital lessons and exceptional insights into daunting challenges as well as rewards that women encounter as they pursue a life of the mind. Many faced poverty and at times homelessness. Others survived sexual abuse, family violence, medical malpractice, child custody losses, or family disownment to sustain their activist and intellectual passions. Still others navigated civil wars, guerrilla warfare, and a society riven by genocide. The contributors also have much to say about the commitment not only to writing histories of women but also preserving their voices in archives; the state of the historical profession and academia more generally; and the tangible and intangible importance of financial support that the Prelinger Award provided. Confronting the demons of invisibility and lack of institutional or family support, these contributors found inspiration in their historical subjects.