scholarly journals Presidential Address: National Unity and the Politics of Political History

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail Cuthbert Brandt
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social History ◽  
Political History ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Ethnic History ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
Women’S History

Abstract The latest lengthy round of constitutional discussions has once again highlighted Canadians' desire and need to know their history. But which history? In the opinion of some historians, Canadianists have done a disservice to their compatriots by forsaking national political history in favour of increasingly specialized research into areas such as women's history, regional history, working class history and ethnic history. This call for a renewed emphasis on national political history raises the central issue of how to produce a history that accurately represents the experience of the diverse elements which constitute the Canadian community. An examination of some selected themes from women's history suggests that a reconceptualization of political history and its relationship to social history would result in a more integrated and meaningful approach to our collective past.

History's Noncrisis

1994 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 86-88
Author(s):  
Louise A. Tilly
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
American Historical Association ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Working Class History ◽  
Epistemological Debate ◽  
Women’S History

Ira Katznelson's evocative and stimulating essay is an effort to chart how we got from there to here and to point to new directions in which labor history might fruitfully move. By some irony of coincidence (or, more likely, by a logic that easily could be traced) I was at all the events he mentions (except the recent “ambitious talk by a political theorist”—I was out of town that day), even the founding meeting of the European Labor and Working-Class History group and newsletter convened by Robert Wheeler at the American Historical Association 1971 Annual Meeting.I also read most of the key articles and books he cites at about the same time he did. My reading of this history and the present situation of labor history differs from his not because I disagree with the facts about labor history, but because I disagree with the scope of the epistemological debate behind its “loss of elan, directionality, and intellectual purpose.” Thus the fact that labor history is not in crisis, as he insists, must be extended to history in general, with the caveat that an epistemological debate is going on not just in labor history, but throughout the discipline of history, including women's history.

Response

1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-480
Author(s):  
Louise A. Tilly
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Women's History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Women's Experience ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Answering Questions ◽  
Women’S History

Judith Bennett has persuaded me that in the oral version of this paper I conflated five points: (1) All women’s history has a feminist motivation and message. (2) Descriptive women’s history has discovered valuable evidence about women in the past; this has now been accepted as historical “fact.” (3) Sociological use of gender as a concept adds an analytical edge to descriptive accounts. (4) Social history that makes gender and women’s experience problematic and analyzes it systematically can add to the achievements of descriptive/interpretive women’s history. (5) Both types of women’s history (descriptive/interpretive and analytical) can only benefit from explicitly demonstrating the ways in which their findings contribute to answering questions already on the historical agenda. I have revised my paper somewhat to clarify these points.

Men Are from the Gilded Age, Women Are from the Progressive Era

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Israels Perry
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Women’S History

This is an expanded version of the presidential address I gave to the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE) at their meeting in 2000. In Part I, I use the catchphrase “Men are from the Gilded Age, Women are from the Progressive Era” as a way of making a critique of Progressive-era historiography from the perspective of women's history. In Part II, I suggest four specific ways in which Progressive-era historians might respond to that critique.

Gender, Women’s History, and Social History

1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise A. Tilly
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Social History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Analytical Problem ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Olympe De Gouges ◽  
Women’S History ◽  
The Revolution

Recently, I attended a seminar at which a historian of women presented a dazzling interpretation of the polemical writing of Olympe de Gouges and its (not to mention her) reception during the French Revolution. A crusty old historian of the Revolution rose during the question period and inquired, in his own eastern twang, “Now that I know that women were participants in the Revolution, what difference does it make!” This encounter suggested to me what I will argue are two increasingly urgent tasks for women’s history: producing analytical problem-solving studies as well as descriptive and interpretive ones, and connecting their findings to general questions already on the historical agenda. This is not a call for integrating women’s history into other history, since that process may mean simply adding material on women and gender without analyzing its implications, but for writing analytical women’s history and connecting its problems to those of other histories. Only through such an endeavor is women’s history likely to change the agenda of history as a whole.

scholarly journals Restoring the 'Mam': Archives, Access And Research Into Women’s Pasts In Wales

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 47-64
Author(s):  
Mandi O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Local History ◽  
Community Groups ◽  
General Lack ◽  
Working Class Women ◽  
Women’S History

In this article I look at issues around access to material for researching the pasts of women in Wales and two archives in Wales are discussed: The Butetown History and Arts Centre (BHAC) which has recorded oral interviews with women from the community of Butetown (‘Tiger Bay’) in Cardiff, as well as collecting other material about the community, and Archif Menywod Cymru/Women’s Archive of Wales (WAW), which is working to ‘rescue’ sources of women’s history across Wales. Access to all archives is vital as there is a general lack of material about women’s pasts in Wales which can be used to challenge stereotyped representations of Welsh women, particularly of working-class women. Both BHAC and WAW have relied on public funding to differing degrees and this has been an increasingly important element in helping a large number of groups and organisations in Wales in the areas of community and local history to carry out their own research. However, public funding often comes with obligations regarding access to material which might not tie in with the aims and ethos of some more specialist archives. The changing nature of county record offices/archives is also important as they continue to become much more involved in collaborative projects with community groups and other organisations.

Women's History and Ottoman Sharia Court Records: Shifting Perspectives in Social History

Hawwa ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Agmon
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
North American ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Middle Eastern Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Turn ◽  
Women’S History

AbstractThis paper revisits some methodological and conceptual aspects of scholarly works on the social history of Middle Eastern women based on Ottoman court records that were published in the last three decades. It discusses the main approaches employed by historians in the field for analyzing court records, and the circumstances that shaped these patterns. It shows that, during the 1970s and 1980s, this body of scholarly works on women's history, as part of Middle Eastern social history, adhered to historiographical approaches that did not follow the "cultural turn" characterizing West European and North American historiography. This situation, however, has recently changed.

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