Making Women’s Histories
Beyond National Perspectives
Examines how women's histories are explored and explained around the world
Making Women's Histories showcases the transformations that the intellectual and political production of women’s history has engendered across time and space. It considers the difference women’s and gender history has made to and within national fields of study, and to what extent the wider historiography has integrated this new knowledge. What are the accomplishments of women’s and gender history? What are its shortcomings? What is its future?
The contributors discuss their discovery of women’s histories, the multiple turns the field has taken, and how place affected the course of this scholarship. Noted scholars of women’s and gender history, they stand atop such historiographically-defined vantage points as Tsarist Russia, the British Empire in Egypt and India, Qing-dynasty China, and the U.S. roiling through the 1960s. From these and other peaks they gaze out at the world around them, surveying trajectories in the creation of women’s histories in recent and distant pasts and envisioning their futures.
Contributor Bios
Pamela S. Nadell is Professor of History and Director of the Jewish Studies Program at American University. She is the author of Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination, 1889-1985, which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and co-editor of Women and American Judaism: Historical Perspectives. Kate Haulman is Assistant Professor of History at American University. She is the author of The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth- Century America.Reviews
"This outstanding collection contributes to the usable past" and should help readers understand the present and shape the future. Summing Up: Highly recommended." ~ Choice
"Making Womens Histories is an innovative collection that brings together state-of-the-art essays on developments in national, continental, transnational, and thematic areas. In its attention to the politics of womens historypersonal and structural connections to womens movements, the impact of nationalism and imperialism, the impact of globalizationthe volume reminds us how important the history we write and teach is for making the world a better place." ~ Leila J. Rupp,University of California, Santa Barbara
"[T]his collection is well worth reading by serious scholars of women's and gender history." ~ Simone M. Caron, American Historical Review
"A smart, insightful, and thought-provoking book. The juxtaposition of nationally/regionally based historiographical essays by leading scholars offers striking new insights into the origins and diverse trajectories of womens and gender history, and into the ways in which feminist scholarship is informing comparative, transnational, and international histories. A must-read for anyone interested in world-historical scholarship." ~ Birgitte Soland,The Ohio State University
"Making Womens Historiesis an invaluable guide for undergraduate and graduate students with varying levels of experience in history, gender and feminist studies, and historiography." ~ Feminist Collections
"Fusing the personal, political, and professional, Making Women's Histories situates women's, gender, and sexuality history as an unfinished global project of activist scholarship." ~ Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
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