“Can the Sistas Get Some History, Too?”

2020 ◽  
pp. 76-86
Author(s):  
Cherisse Jones-Branch
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Southern History ◽  
Intellectual Labor ◽  
Women's Stories ◽  
Scholarly Production ◽  
Women’S History

This chapter explores black women’s contributions to southern history by considering the contours and nuances of their intersectional experiences. Jones-Branch highlights the scholarly production that has resulted from often overlooked or underutilized resources that reveal the intellectual labor in which black women engaged as they carefully assessed and navigated the temporal and geographical times in which they lived. This chapter, additionally, demands a reconceptualization of the ways that southern women’s history has been understood and consumed in the absence of black women’s stories. It challenges historians to generate scholarship that elucidates black women by mining and reading traditional archival sources against the grain and creatively finding ways to access nontraditional sources to augment their voices.

scholarly journals In Search of the Black Women's History Archive

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley D. Farmer
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Black Internationalism ◽  
Black Women's History ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Women’S History

Questions of evidence have sat at the center of black women's history since the field entered the academy over thirty years ago. Historians of black women's lives and labors have filled bookshelves by “mining the forgotten” to render them visible. Scholarship pioneered in the 1980s and 1990s established black women as prominent and indispensable historical actors, and key to understanding such eras as slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement. Subsequent works built upon the bedrock that these initial studies provided, incorporating nuanced gender analyses into the history of black women's thought, experiences, and political action. The past ten years have seen a proliferation of publications that have extended the reach of the field to include such genres and approaches as girlhood studies, intellectual history, and black internationalism. This groundswell of research has foregrounded a persistent methodological quandary for scholars of black women's history: how should they address the paradox of simultaneously finding copious archival records on some black women, while also accounting for the deafening archival silence on others?

scholarly journals Representações das histórias das mulheres na coleção indumentária do Museu Julio de Castilhos (1995-2010)

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 411
Author(s):  
Andréa Reis Da Silveira
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
Chronological Age ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
Rio Grande Do Sul ◽  
Narrative Constructions ◽  
Women's Stories ◽  
Women’S History

O artigo apresenta a investigação sobre as representações das histórias das mulheres no acervo de indumentária do Museu Julio de Castilhos (MJC), PoA, RS, no recorte temporal de 1995-2010. Analisa os objetos de três exposições que abordaram perfil das mulheres rio-grandenses. Avalia as doações e a musealização feitas por mulheres, nas quais denominei intelectuais mediadoras. Os dados assinalaram que as construções narrativas da historicidade das peças passaram pela interpretação desse grupo de classe média, branco e de idade cronológica média, que compôs as informações que constam na documentação museológica do banco de dados Donato, e, no Livro Diário do acervo. Os resultados apontaram permanências de estereótipos sobre as histórias das mulheres, problematizando as ações educativas realizadas pelo MJC.Palavras-chave: Museu; Coleção indumentária; História das mulheres.AbstractThe paper presents the investigation about the representations of the women's stories in the collection of clothing of the Julio de Castilhos Museum (MJC), PoA, RS, in the 1995-2010 period.  The objects of three exhibitions that addressed the profile of women from Rio Grande do Sul are analyzed. It evaluates donations and musealization made by women, which I have called mediating intellectuals. Data indicated that the narrative constructions of the historicity of the pieces went through the interpretation of this group of middle class, white and middle chronological age, which composed the information contained in the museum documentation of the Donato database, and in the Daily Book of the collection. The results pointed to the permanence of stereotypes about the women's stories, problematizing the educational actions carried out by the MJC.Keywords: Museum; Collections; women's history.

Hagar and Mariya

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Urban
Keyword(s):  
Women's History ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Female Figures ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
Women's Stories ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Women’S History

The chapter discusses representations of Hajar and Mariya, two prominent female figures from the early Islamic tradition, widely treated in Arabic-Islamic biographical dictionaries, Quranic exegeses, and Tales of the Prophets literature. It treats the varied images of both women, with a focus on two elements: Both women were slaves and both bore children to prophets. Islamic sources, penned almost exclusively by men, expunge nearly all other aspects of these women’s stories. But, slave women had an impact not just on family structures and notions of marriage and sexuality that people often associate with “women’s history,” but also on official, predominantly male-oriented ideologies. The two images informed the loftiest notions about who deserved to rule and who counted as a noble Arab.

Barbarians at the Doorbell

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-33
Author(s):  
Catherine Clinton
Keyword(s):  
Women's History ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Southern History ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Consumption ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Field Transforming ◽  
Past Half ◽  
Women’S History

The great expansion of southern women’s history over the past half century has been fueled in part by the pioneering archival projects launched by women historians and other specialists. The SAWH became an important resource for growing the field. A steady parade of researchers stopped begging for crumbs and began to make demands. These demands included marching right up to the front door, ringing the bell and refusing to be denied entry. The creation of guides to resources and digitization of resources has advanced research and writing in the field, transforming archives and collections by including issues of gender and sexuality. By applying pressure in a positive and persistent manner, historians and activists pushed ahead and created the framework for southern women’s history to flourish. A flurry of handbooks emerged as librarians and archivists began to amass new materials, to prepare and publish elaborate and engaging guides, and to connect these resources to larger questions in the field. The project of southern women’s history has become less about gatekeeping and more about raising the roof. The SAWH stimulated the expansion of southern history to be collected, recorded, sorted, and digitized for public consumption.

Olive and me in the archive: a Black British woman in an archival space

2021 ◽  
Vol 129 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
Oumou Longley
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Complex I ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Social Consciousness ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Womanhood ◽  
Black British ◽  
External Impact ◽  
Therapeutic Space ◽  
Women’S History

This article aims to explore how the archival life of Olive Morris might radically rebuff the devaluation of Black womanhood and identity in Britain. Harnessing a Black feminist framework, I approach Lambeth Archives, where the Olive Morris Collection is found as a therapeutic space. Through an understanding of Olive as complex, I disrupt hegemonic expectations of Black women and propose that within the space of this research, Black womanhood be allowed the freedom of self-definition. In a conglomeration of the documents and voices of the community that remembers Olive, marginalised epistemologies are legitimised. Their sometimes-conflicting accounts generate an unbounded image of Olive as a figure of Black British women’s history that harbours meaning as it is mobilised in social consciousness. Incorporating my own auto-ethnographic reflections, I explore the internal and external impact of Olive and my existence in this archival space.

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