(00:00:00) This to look business (00:00:01) is getting me in a lot of trouble people are calling me a rape breaker (00:00:05) and an overachiever. (00:00:07) You need to know that one of them is like three years late. It's a little retarded. It's not that I'm that I'm overdoing. It's that one want to was slow and they were not (00:00:17) supposed to come out at the same time. In fact, I wish they hadn't because it's kind of hard to enjoy them both and there is as as I'm sure (00:00:26) you know just from finishing anything big that you work on a long time. There is a nice feeling that comes from finishing and well running a (00:00:33) program like this and watching it happen and knowing it's really there. So I am trying to enjoy this as much as I can. (00:00:41) I am also (00:00:42) extremely pleased to be here. I'm a great admirer of Susan gross. I'm sure somebody introduce Susan to you before right you don't need introduction. I wanted to make sure that all that people to Spokane introduce. (00:00:57) I've known Susan certainly (00:00:58) through the Story ends of the Midwest and I've been a great admirer of her work in the Upper Midwest women's History Center. I've also worked with Kathy Nelson who has a number of people around me have mentioned over the course of the morning is someone to whom you can't say no (00:01:16) and as a highly Dynamic person who gets things done and I'm just really thrilled that they (00:01:24) that they organized this Workshop in that I can participate in it. I've worked in curriculum revision efforts (00:01:33) actually (00:01:33) now over quite a number of years. The first time I taught in a workshop was in the summer of 1976 and that was for primarily for college teachers know that was for secondary school teachers, and then it was in 1980 that I did one as just one of several faculty members with college teachers, but (00:01:54) It's a project to which I am committed and in some ways. It's a project (00:01:58) that in (00:02:00) how does a lot to do with my wanting to write (00:02:03) born for Liberty to try to pull together this enormous literature and women's history that has now been produced in the last two decades in a way that makes it accessible. I feel a bit. I feel like it's a kind of giving back of what a lot of us have been trying to protect struggling to produce in the last 20 years (00:02:24) my job here my assignment from Kathy Nelson is to talk to you about the history of women to make a case (00:02:35) for its importance. Although I have the (00:02:38) feeling I'm talking to the (00:02:39) already convinced, but I'm going to make the case anyway because I know (00:02:44) even the convinced have to (00:02:45) justify what they're convinced about two other people in order to be able to do it. So if I give you some ammunition then I will Satisfied that I've done what I set out to do (00:02:58) I will also talk a little bit (00:02:59) about (00:03:01) how to use it in curriculum revision. And there you (00:03:04) will also find them sure Echoes of things you've already talked about or we'll be talking about soon (00:03:10) and Kathy said and tell them about your book. Well, what's going to happen is that (00:03:18) bits and pieces of my book are going to be woven in here because I really can't talk about this topic without also talking about the ways. I've been thinking about it for the last 10 years in five and a half of those were actively working on that particular book. Okay, let's go to the question of why is women's history important. In (00:03:42) fact the title that I wrote at the top of (00:03:44) this page is the necessity of women's (00:03:47) history. (00:03:50) II have to start this a little autobiographically (00:03:54) there were quite a few (00:03:56) people like myself in the (00:03:57) late 1960s and early 1970s who made a decision to study the history of women now (00:04:05) some were people already in graduate school. If (00:04:07) you were already on faculties (00:04:09) a lot of us, like myself decided to go to (00:04:12) graduate school specifically to study the history of women and (00:04:17) together we created what is now a very (00:04:20) large and one of the most active Fields within subfields within the historical (00:04:26) profession. We did this with a real sense of mission. First of all, we had to (00:04:33) unravel the origins of women's oppression. (00:04:36) We were (00:04:37) active in a women's movement that had erupted all around us and we were part of that eruption. We needed to (00:04:45) understand why our society thought women were inferior. Year Wyatt relegated to women women to specific kinds of (00:04:52) roles and specific kinds of jobs and paid them less when they worked in them why it's (00:04:58) sanctioned discrimination why it taught many women to develop vicarious identities to understand (00:05:06) themselves through relationships to other people and to have a (00:05:09) hard time (00:05:12) having independent identities, (00:05:14) and we needed to know why these things existed so we could challenge (00:05:17) them. We were real clear about that. We were about the business of a change and we wanted to know (00:05:24) better what it was that we were (00:05:26) trying to (00:05:27) change. (00:05:30) We also we're setting out to build a social (00:05:32) movement for Change and that raised a lot of questions (00:05:35) to in order to create a movement. We needed to understand what social (00:05:39) movements were like what they were about whether they had what had existed before (00:05:44) and I think in a very deep concrete and personal way as women (00:05:49) who wanted to change history and that I mean, we really in fact we were awfully naive about that. I think many of you were were there with me at the time. We thought we would do it sort of overnight, but (00:06:03) we needed to know if any women had ever done this (00:06:05) before (00:06:07) could we make history? If no women had ever made (00:06:10) history before what made us think we could do it. So there was that that sense that was driving us to (00:06:18) so we began asking (00:06:19) questions. Which essentially that movement drove us to (00:06:23) ask we asked about what's the nature of collective (00:06:26) Consciousness? That was certainly one of my first questions. How do women come to think of themselves as a group? How (00:06:34) does social movements get built we asked about what's the relationship between ideologies about (00:06:39) women and men (00:06:41) and the realities that people live are they the same if they're not the same how do those ideologies (00:06:48) impact people mean? Obviously there they turn out not to be the same. You can't simply study popular culture and find out what people's lives are really like (00:06:58) What have been the historical changes in (00:06:59) family structures and socialization practices in sexuality in women's work? (00:07:07) Only later did we start (00:07:09) complicating all of those questions? I mean we start out by just saying that we've now complicated all of that and added a lot (00:07:17) more by recognizing that not one of those (00:07:21) questions could be answered in a simple way about women as a group women as a group of now disintegrated around the issues of rate the differences of race class religion region nationality all the other things that you're also talking about in your time here, but simply to ask those questions at first was incredibly inflammatory and that confirmed our perception that these Were Somehow powerful questions to ask there were shouting matches. I don't know how many of you attended the American historical Association meetings, but it's a very staid occasion (00:08:00) several thousand people at that time most of them in suits and ties. (00:08:06) So (00:08:06) Wander quietly down the holes of a large hotel and (00:08:10) go into rooms and sit quietly and listen to papers and get up and leave. I mean there's it's very (00:08:16) staid. Well, there were shouting (00:08:18) matches their about women's history in 1970. (00:08:24) And so my (00:08:24) question here is why I think it's because women's history and the feminist critique of traditional historiography, (00:08:32) which they went together. We couldn't ask these new questions without noticing that they hadn't been asked before and then we turned around and began to look at what it was written before and said, why didn't they ask it and what are the consequences of they're not asking it (00:08:46) and doing a lot of Emperor has no clothes sort of things and some of those Representatives papers at the AHA (00:08:56) and what they in (00:08:56) affected was challenged the accepted definitions of History itself definitions that I would argue are directly related to relations of power that That's why these questions turn out to be dangerous. Now I would argue that that the power of History (00:09:15) lies in its function as a story about the past which explains something about the present (00:09:21) and provides material from which we draw visions of the future. (00:09:25) You can see this. (00:09:27) I'm sure all of us if we think about either our own histories or if you've ever done an oral history project interviewed someone else about their life the store you get in an oral history is a story that could carry the (00:09:40) title how I came to be who I am. Right? Well the who I am determines the rest of the story in a (00:09:49) sense, it's not that people distort. Deliberately. (00:09:55) They don't usually tell you they (00:09:56) were born someplace else and where they were really born (00:10:00) but there is a narrative there that has an end (00:10:02) purpose to explain whoever they are which means they're (00:10:06) always rewriting that story as they (00:10:08) change their sense of who they are the story gets Rewritten because they need to understand how they got to be whoever it is. They think they are and those of us who work in the field of oral history (00:10:20) know we often have to hear (00:10:22) that first story before we can get to whatever. Specific thing we wanted to talk about which is could have dropped out of the story altogether because it just isn't relevant to how I got to be who I am. (00:10:32) They can still remember (00:10:33) that stuff, but they have to tell you what they (00:10:35) think is important first. Well, there is a sense in which a lot of the histories that we have been (00:10:41) taught and that we get in the form of text Berg's to teach (00:10:46) are a national version of that (00:10:50) and they tend to be celebratory in this country. They are often organized around the proposition something like how we came to be the greatest nation on Earth. (00:11:04) Now there are a lot of assumptions (00:11:05) there. What is the history is about greatness? Another is (00:11:11) that we (00:11:13) whoever we are are the (00:11:15) greatest and then that we if you look up close to it and say who is (00:11:21) this week because it's it's (00:11:23) comes comes across as if it's very (00:11:25) inclusive all of us, (00:11:26) right, but you look close and you look at the stories that go with it and it turns out to only include a small handful of upper class (00:11:34) white men which circles us back to what was the real definition of greatness built in here. And what is the implicit definition of what is historic? Certainly that story takes place on a public stage. It's (00:11:49) primarily political it certainly (00:11:52) includes Wars. But I mean that those are the major narrative events (00:11:56) involved. If you revise that story (00:12:00) tourists to explain (00:12:03) other things you would come out with a slut somewhat different story if you want to explain how the United States came to be a (00:12:10) Your Imperial is power. For example, (00:12:13) you would have a lot of the same stories in their lot of the same facts, but they would be organized somewhat differently or if you wanted to explain the origins of Afro American culture (00:12:24) and the nature of race relations in American society. You would also have come up with a different story that would (00:12:31) include what the same ear (00:12:32) has at least and some of the same events but they would look quite different the key here in part aside from the simply that what it is you want to explain and that's I think where Women's history Clash head-on with the profession because we set out to explain something that the profession in part didn't want to think needed explaining women have always been the same. What's there's no history there. I even had my son's seventh grade social studies teacher and this is not so many years ago laugh at me when I (00:13:08) said I thought (00:13:10) Women's history, and he it was that kind of (00:13:13) uncomfortable. Oh, really? You mean you have enough for all course. The key here and this is key to all the different (00:13:26) pieces of what your Enterprise is in. This Workshop is who constitutes the we not only what it is we want to explain but who is going to be the we (00:13:38) because those included in the we (00:13:41) are in a real sense those with the power to shape the future in part because they know that they have shaped the past and that's where I'm arguing history is enormously powerful. (00:13:53) So history is an essential prerequisite (00:13:57) for those who see themselves as capable of affecting (00:14:01) change (00:14:03) Alexis de tocqueville pointed out that the reason historians and aristocratic societies favor the great man theory of history is because those historians themselves were aristocratic men now, he (00:14:16) said Aristocrats and forgot the men in part, but it's obviously they're in He assumed it (00:14:23) because they were aristocratic men. They believe (00:14:26) themselves capable of molding the course of events. And therefore they could write history from a point of view that as that made that as its basic assumption. I would argue that a historical (00:14:39) tradition which makes women and (00:14:42) minorities invisible (00:14:44) in Deeds, (00:14:44) which assumes that historic action is quintessential email and usually white has been an important force in maintaining the subordination of women and minorities and we can expand this to other categories as well. (00:15:01) The empowering nature of of history for women is really clear. If you look at all the times that women (00:15:10) have organized themselves to (00:15:12) make change self-consciously every time they do it. They've demanded and (00:15:19) created when they couldn't find it a history. It happens over and over and over again in order to act to change the future. (00:15:27) They had to break through the static vision of women as governed by unchanging biological and (00:15:34) familial roles that I think is one of the strongest pillars upholding a status quo which assumes women to be inferior passive unchanging, you know, women are women and men are men and they can't be changed. (00:15:48) They have to break through that because otherwise they are Outsiders to the great sweeping changes wrought by men in power and they (00:15:55) must always be that's the the implication. (00:15:59) So let me give you a few (00:16:00) examples here there. There are many different threads I could pick up and follow through but let me just use this one because it seems to me that it supports what I'm arguing in terms of the necessity of history for those. Who who (00:16:17) Are (00:16:18) not the most powerful and who want to make change towards some greater degree of equality equity and participation. I got the title of my book born for Liberty from a broadside published by women in Philadelphia in 1780. It's called Sentiments of an American woman. (00:16:42) And basically argued during the American (00:16:44) Revolution. There's plenty of evidence that women were extraordinary caught up in the politics of that war. And in fact their domestic work took on powerful political overtones not you couldn't have a tea boycott unless women didn't by T for example (00:17:03) and yet in their letters they often apologized (00:17:06) for thinking so much about politics or for wanting to talk about it because you know, they would say I'm just a woman I'm not supposed to talk about this but and they go on for some length. (00:17:19) These were women who intended to publicly (00:17:22) support the Revolutionary cause and what they say one of the things they said (00:17:27) was our ambition is kindled by the fame of those heroines of antiquity who have rendered their sex illustrious and if prove to the (00:17:37) universe that if the weakness of our constitutions if opinion and (00:17:43) manners did not forbid us (00:17:45) to march to Glory by the same paths as many as the men (00:17:49) we should at least equal and sometimes (00:17:52) surpassed them in our love for the public good. What they had to do was (00:17:58) was go back to Antiquity and find some women some (00:18:02) heroines to assert (00:18:03) their own right? In fact, not only to be (00:18:06) Patriots to bit but to be effective in the Revolutionary (00:18:08) cause they went on to claim that they like men (00:18:12) were quote born for Liberty. I'm quote and would refuse to Bear the irons of a tyrannic government. (00:18:21) Another example one that (00:18:24) is probably very familiar to you if you think about it is the Seneca Falls declaration in 1848. When women gathered in the first Women's Rights Convention in American history. (00:18:38) It's really significant that they chose to model their Declaration on the Declaration of Independence and they wove into their statement just as the Declaration of Independence rewrites the history of the colonies around the Tyranny (00:18:52) of George King George, (00:18:55) they described a vision of History which explained women's oppression in which demanded Collective action. They began with the self-evident (00:19:04) truth (00:19:05) that all men and women are created equal. And then they spelled out the history of mankind as a as quote a history of repeated use of patients in injuries on the part of man toward woman having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her what they built into that (00:19:27) historical analysis was an assertion of female citizenship (00:19:32) in essence what the women did at Seneca Falls was to include women into the enlightenment Vision though, the founding fathers never intended them to be there. (00:19:43) In (00:19:44) fact, they were were fairly explicit when pushed about the fact that the (00:19:50) citizens on Whose consent. The legitimacy of the government rested would not include women slaves. Children the insane (00:20:00) or men without property there were actually quite a lot of (00:20:03) people excluded from that (00:20:06) what what they did in the Seneca Falls Declaration was (00:20:09) essentially redefined that territory and make a claim on citizenship by asserting that women were citizens deprived of their rights unjustly as King. George had deprived the (00:20:21) colonists they could draw out the parallel between women and men as between the subjects of a political (00:20:29) Tyrant and the Tyrant (00:20:31) they place man in the position of King George and called for a (00:20:34) righteous revolution of women to overthrow this illegitimate. Tyranny, the ultimate goal of their struggle. The reclaiming of female citizenship was most (00:20:43) symbolically and most (00:20:45) radically expressed at that time in the demand for women's suffrage. (00:20:50) Now later on in the suffrage movement which began at that point (00:20:56) the suffrage movement which continued for nearly a century. (00:21:00) It's really interesting that the leaders of that movement set out late in the (00:21:04) 19th century to document their struggle. We have this massive multi-volume history of women's suffrage that was edited by leaders of the women's suffrage movement (00:21:18) it contains in it. And by the way, (00:21:21) if you haven't used it there there is a condensed version now edited by Paul and Mary Jo Buell that's available in paperback, but I really there are some of the state campaigns and some of the speech is there this is where we have the recording for example of that famous speech by Sojourner Truth (00:21:40) the documents in the (00:21:42) history of women's suffrage are wonderful for classroom use I often assigned pieces of them and then we reenact a suffrage convention and Have created a whole variety of characters. I allow characters who would not necessarily live near Seneca Falls to appear at our sin and our (00:21:59) Women's Rights Convention. In order to have the the interaction of points of view that really did (00:22:04) exist in the mid-nineteenth century re-enacted in the classroom, (00:22:09) but it's so what they did was put descriptions of every state campaign and Convention, they included speeches and letters and newspaper (00:22:18) articles. The participants in the women's suffrage movement knew that they were making history and they believed it must be recorded. (00:22:29) They were very aware at the time that memories are short (00:22:32) and that the struggle is long. (00:22:34) And in fact, they were right there volume sat Gathering (00:22:38) dust for decades and decades and decades on Library (00:22:43) shelves with only an occasional (00:22:45) lonely researcher going there and opening it up to read (00:22:50) but it was there for us when we wanted it again, when we were clear again about the fact that we had to have that history (00:23:00) and it was really sought out once the women's movement revived itself. (00:23:06) And then that brings me back to the the most recent example, and the fact is that the the Reach For Women's (00:23:14) history in the late sixties and early 70s (00:23:17) paralleled and learned from (00:23:19) the reach for black history within the Civil Rights Movement (00:23:24) those who had gone to the South for (00:23:26) example during the Summers of 64 and 65 most of the women who went South taught in Freedom schools and the main subject they taught in Freedom schools was black history a history, which those children never received in the public schools. At least not in the curriculum given to them by the state of Mississippi often their teachers taught it anyway, (00:23:53) but many of the students in the freedom (00:23:55) schools had never learned black history and had accepted all kinds of stereotypes about Africa (00:24:02) about slavery (00:24:05) about that slave. He was that people never struggled back for example never resisted that there were no families under slavery that life was totally disorganized. I had students when I taught in the mid-70s at the University of North Carolina who accepted most of those views. (00:24:22) And so I think that the women's movement had already the president of the (00:24:27) search for black history and the beginnings of a (00:24:30) new literature in the (00:24:32) field of black history and the history of slavery (00:24:36) it also had as you (00:24:38) know, we were we were (00:24:39) goaded on by the intersections between these all of these (00:24:42) new histories as they emerged in the late 60s and early 70s. (00:24:49) Black history immigration history Native American history (00:24:54) the history of ethnicities in America (00:24:56) working-class history the history of Labor (00:24:58) struggles which (00:25:00) few of us knew anything about (00:25:02) until we begin to unearth them and look at working (00:25:05) people not just look at (00:25:06) histories of unions, but also look at working people's lives in there in the broadest sense (00:25:12) and in each case these responded to demands from members of those groups for access to their own past and for the grounds from (00:25:20) which they could make a claim for equity and participation in American Life. (00:25:27) So what I'm arguing then is that women's history is necessary for the empowerment of women. (00:25:33) Just as I would argue for any particular group that having a past is essential. (00:25:39) Furthermore a history grounded in the great diversity (00:25:42) of American Experience is a (00:25:44) truer Fuller and more usable rendition of our past. Specifically in terms of the classroom. I think it is essential for the kind of self-respect and self-confidence. We so desperately need (00:25:58) to impart to Children and Youth in our nation. (00:26:03) They have to receive a history that they can believe is really there's not just the history of what some people unlike themselves did in the past that was important and that people like (00:26:16) themselves never did important things which I think is the message that comes through a lot of the traditional versions (00:26:23) they in turn then can understand that in Myriad ways throughout their lives. They can and also will make (00:26:29) history as active and participating citizens. (00:26:33) What does does is (00:26:34) placed the burden of the future of democracy on your shoulders you understand this as teachers? (00:26:44) So let me talk just a little bit about what this might mean for teaching inclusively and I know that in some ways I'm in the presence of people with more concrete hands-on experience about doing this (00:26:59) in a much wider variety of classrooms. Then I have personally experienced. (00:27:05) So let me just suggest if you take up points about (00:27:08) how to do this with history specifically. first of all, (00:27:14) as a number of people have pointed out when you begin this kind of shift in the way you teach it's important to understand you can do it piece by piece and you don't have to do it all at once you can start with with the beginning of the stages. You don't have to LEAP to Total (00:27:29) Transformation of everything (00:27:32) at once. You don't have to totally (00:27:34) abandon the stories. For example that you're most familiar with and most used to teaching your (00:27:39) students. But you do have to reorient your perspective and your students perspective towards those stories one kind of question to ask and this is just about how to critically use the given curriculum. That's that's not (00:27:55) terribly Multicultural and hopefully most of you have stuff that's better than this (00:28:00) but simply asking where were the women where were the blacks where were the Indians? Where were the immigrants that that turns out to be a very subversive question and takes you in some interesting directions this this came really home to me once when I did a workshop for people who And (00:28:20) its historic sites for the National Park Service (00:28:24) some of those sites when they would come and say but but mine is a fort. Or you know, I've got a revolutionary Battleground. What do you want? There are men here? Ask ask where were they? Guess what they were there (00:28:46) almost you can hardly find a place where they were there. And I mean a lot of different days (00:28:53) those male revolutionary battle grounds. For example turns out there were lots of (00:28:59) women there all along they were doing the laundry. (00:29:03) They were cooking those people would have starved. They didn't have the kind of bureaucratic setups that our army has now they literally would have starved if there hadn't been bands and bands of camp followers many of them many of them just the families of the soldiers who, you know went around behind and the generals always screamed about how slow everybody (00:29:27) move because there were all these women, (00:29:28) but in fact they needed them (00:29:30) desperately so (00:29:36) You can always ask that that's the first thing no matter what the curriculum you have to work (00:29:41) with. You can always ask that (00:29:44) and that changes your perceptions of what what it's about. I think it's also something students like doing I mean (00:29:53) it's allows (00:29:54) them to be detectives and teaches them some critical skills that are quite useful (00:29:59) the story. They've been told is not the whole (00:30:01) story. That's a good thing for them to learn to learn. They can ask important questions and and reveal pick (00:30:08) holes essentially in in a given story (00:30:13) and they can start thinking and hypothesizing about where would they be and what would they be doing? And what difference did it (00:30:19) make? (00:30:21) Along the way I also think it's important to include (00:30:24) lots of stories. Our students need stories. They can identify with (00:30:31) as well as ways to use (00:30:32) their imaginations and (00:30:34) experience what I call historical empathy that is to say you need some stories where you see (00:30:40) potentially yourself in the story. (00:30:43) You also need to be able to empathize (00:30:45) with people who are not like yourself and history is a great (00:30:50) chance to do that that I think is maybe less threatening than than if everything is totally (00:30:56) contemporary (00:30:57) so that you can empathize you have to empathize with your own ancestors because they're really different from you their lives are very very (00:31:04) different and that's that's a good exercise. I think along the way (00:31:09) too (00:31:11) I would argue that in addition to the critical approach (00:31:16) to the traditional histories (00:31:19) and the adding in that comes from that because a lot of stuff gets added in immediately. When you start asking these questions we have to do several other kinds of things one is that I do think we need to add in exemplary stories (00:31:34) of Women and minorities now, this is the great person (00:31:40) approach. It is insufficient. It is the ad women and (00:31:44) stir to use a phrase that the Peggy is fond of I know (00:31:51) but I (00:31:53) think that those stories of exemplary individuals do shatter images of what was and therefore what is possible. These are people who are unusual who are exceptional but they're very exceptionality. As long as these aren't the only (00:32:09) stories students here is also important (00:32:13) stories of Eliza Lucas Pinckney being an agricultural scientist in the 18th century and figuring out how to grow Indigo of Harriet Tubman (00:32:24) of Sojourner (00:32:25) Truth of Susan B. Anthony of I to be Wells Barnett conducting a one-woman crusade against lynching in the 1890s when no one was willing to (00:32:35) challenge that (00:32:36) Practice (00:32:38) of illegal killing and terrorism (00:32:41) of Jesse Daniel Ames who has a southern white woman continued. I to (00:32:45) be with Barnett by the way, in case you she is unfamiliar to you as a black woman who was a newspaper editor in the 1890s in Memphis, Tennessee and conducted a campaign against lynching was of course driven out of the (00:32:57) south in the 1930s responding in part to pressure from black women, Jessie Daniel Ames led a campaign of southern white women who essentially took on that ideology and said, you may not do this in our name (00:33:10) anymore. We don't need terrorism to defend the honor of white (00:33:14) women. Frances Perkins, I mean, you know we can go on and on we can make our lists of great women. In fact, I was given a really nice one (00:33:22) in a workshop. I was just (00:33:23) in but I think we have to connect (00:33:26) those exemplary stories to the broader stories of what women have accomplished collectively (00:33:32) that if change the shape and texture of both public and private life in this can take you into some newer territories that requires some newer so resources (00:33:43) in order to do it (00:33:44) women have always tested stretched changed and sometimes openly challenged the boundaries of restricted assumptions about sex as well as race and (00:33:55) class. (00:33:58) One of the ways I put this in my introduction was from their earliest roles as helpmates and family economies to the Republican Motherhood of the revolutionary era to the female politics of 19th century reform to contemporary struggles to Define women's public roles in the meaning of gender equality American women have continually challenged and redefined the boundaries of public and private life. They have demanded public attention. In action on issues that arise first in the domestic Arena issues such as health education and poverty. They have entered Public Work by laboring for wages outside the home even though by the 19th century being a wage earner had become an integral part of the cultural definitions of both public and manliness women created female professions such as teaching nursing and social work making public roles, which originated in Domesticity they developed a distinctively American form of public life through voluntary associations that made the vision of Citizenship a sustainable one even as economic individualism on the one hand and massive bureaucracy (00:35:03) Zone the other eroded the original Jeffersonian (00:35:06) dream. That's one way of arguing for the consequences of those Collective actions. Let me give (00:35:13) you a (00:35:15) story that goes with that my daughter to my great joy has come home the last couple of years with stories about the civil (00:35:23) rights movement because of Martin Luther King day (00:35:27) that that day has suddenly opened up (00:35:29) black history. I think (00:35:31) I feared that she would only ever come (00:35:33) home with stories about Martin Luther (00:35:35) King last year. She came home (00:35:37) with stories about Rosa Parks. They did a whole unit on Rosa Parks. (00:35:41) What I want her to do next is to learn about the women of Montgomery who were behind Rosa Parks. Because that boycott happened because it was a women's organization that had thought about it and planned it for more than a year that was ready to go that got leaflets out on every street corner literally overnight. And they they did them on a xerox machine in a college where one of the women was an English teacher that's a piece of the story that I want her to learn next so that you don't only have individuals acting alone apparently alone outside of this of a collective context and I would argue further that women had been especially good at those Collective context at the kind of voluntary associations and organizations that are the backbone of a lot of things that happen that that remain invisible until you look behind the exemplary individuals that stand out in front of (00:36:46) them. (00:36:49) If you begin doing these kinds of things these kinds of additions (00:36:54) these sorts of add women and stir (00:36:56) what happens along the way is that you inevitably begin to transform the meaning of History itself and whole new subjects present themselves for study. And a big piece of this I would call the history of everyday life and this (00:37:10) has wonderful possibilities for classroom. Use you (00:37:15) can talk about the family at different periods of time. The family shouldn't be seen as some static unchanging thing. We all know now that's not (00:37:25) true. We all know in fact it what what some of us grew up with Dick and Jane mom and dad and spot Vivid memories of that as the (00:37:34) family that's an illusion that family probably never existed certainly in so force is statistically exist. Now, it's about 15% but back in the golden age when supposedly it existed. (00:37:51) It wasn't necessarily very dominant and there were many variations are very the very meaning of family is different over time and across cultural groups. (00:38:04) And it means for those kinds of dramatic changes in the meaning of family. I think give students tools for understanding the diversity in their own (00:38:13) world. You can talk about the Puritan family or the family under slavery or the family during the era of industrialization and immigrant communities and so (00:38:23) forth work (00:38:25) work has to get redefined from something that men do in in public arenas for pay to what people do what old people do all the time to produce their lives. That means the work that women did in the home is also a work and there's a wonderful history here and several great books about the changing Technologies and economics of housework. What does it mean when you cook over an open fire in a fireplace at 7 feet wide? What's the technology you use? What kind of you start with baking powder from the store or what? How do you make your Red puff up, you know, there's lots of Hands-On things that (00:39:06) students can work with (00:39:10) your students can imagine cooking meals on a Westward Trek in a slave cabin in a sod Hut on a wood stove, you know, I mean you can kind of go on and on with (00:39:18) this it's it's a lot of (00:39:19) fun ideology. What were the (00:39:22) definitions of a different historic moments of femaleness and (00:39:27) maleness what was considered appropriate (00:39:30) for men and women to do or not (00:39:32) do how did that differ by race and class and where did those differences clash (00:39:37) with each other within the culture? (00:39:40) For example, it's very clear that white observers most of whom were men who encountered Native American (00:39:48) cultures and wrote about it early (00:39:50) on had a set of gender roles in their heads about what women should do and what men should do the societies. They looked at had women doing all kinds of things that they thought. Only men should do like (00:40:03) agriculture or building (00:40:05) houses. And so you get these descriptions of their work some of which are fairly detailed and very useful ethnographically, but they they say the women were slaves and the men that I you know, just went off in kind of wandered in the woods hunting which which these people saw as sport because they came from an economy. It settled (00:40:28) agriculture. (00:40:31) What was going on was a very different division of labor about what men do and what women do in gender had a different set of connotations and they couldn't see through this lens very well, but that's an interesting thing for students to think about. What does it mean to look at another culture which does have a sexual division of labor but divides the work (00:40:52) differently. (00:40:53) What does it mean to be a man and a woman in (00:40:55) that setting as opposed to in your own? (00:41:01) As you pursue such a course all of these different things. I think you would find inevitably that you're moving through Peggy mcintosh's stages towards a (00:41:11) redefinition of History not to mention the entire curriculum to to conclude with the concluding paragraph of my own introduction for my book (00:41:22) historian. Mary beard writing in the 1940s called women a force in history. To understand the force of women's experience. We need to transform the traditional stage of public life and history by taking as Central what was previously understood to be a backdrop or an unnoticed stage prop. We must adjust our vision so that we can see the world not only through the major male figures in the foreground, but also Through The Eyes of female figures a Puritan Good Wife and African slave and Iroquois matron a westering woman a female immigrant a (00:41:59) settlement house worker a secretary. (00:42:02) We need to see the household and daily work of middle-class women and migrant workers of domestics and Factory hands the changing experiences of Labor and childbirth the statistical realities of fertility and mortality in the female spaces of clubs benevolent (00:42:20) associations churches and settlement houses. (00:42:23) Then and only then can we understand how these stories so diverse among themselves affected and transformed the dynamic interplay of public and private life in our past and how the experience of women in America actively shaped the broader history that we women and men all claim as our own only then can we begin to imagine what it will really mean for women to be (00:42:45) citizens full participants in the decision making processes that shape our future. Thank you. (00:43:07) You know the first time I ever taught the US History survey, I was at Brash graduate student very into women's history and we were making it up as we went. So, you know that made us all the (00:43:19) Brasher (00:43:20) I left that World War II. I mean I covered it domestically but I really didn't do the battles in the treaties and you know, all of that. I just let it go and I had some fairly indignant young men in my glass who wanted Yalta. I mean, you know, you can leave that out. Well, I agree (00:43:41) that was important that I was probably a little over Brash to to (00:43:45) drop it completely on the other hand. I taught them a whole lot of things they would never have learned otherwise and we're going to have to squeeze some things out to let some other things in and at the same time, I think it helps to be to see it as a rethinking of the Hope because if you only squeeze out But then you end up probably feeling like you've just (00:44:09) butchered your old curriculum and you've given them (00:44:12) pieces decontextualized pieces of what used to work. But if you can re contextualize those pieces in relation to the other materials you're bringing in then you've got in fact a much richer story a much richer set of narratives to tell but I think there's a real pain there because people love these things they've been teaching them a long time and they everything they drop out hurts. Yes. How much of our the history we've received is (00:44:45) structured around the story of the nation state and and what is women's history do with that (00:44:51) a whole lot of it is in most of the histories that we teach (00:44:55) because we live in a world that for the last few centuries has been very much defined in terms of nation (00:45:03) states bringing in women, but also bringing in And the multiplicity of American (00:45:09) culture and I think people teaching US History have an advantage this way frankly (00:45:16) because the diversity of cultures in this one (00:45:19) country is so great that it's it's easier (00:45:25) not to have a sort of mono focus on the national state we're talking about (00:45:31) people people who are a people who become a people (00:45:37) but that that (00:45:38) diversity is something that we still are struggling with as a country. (00:45:46) I think that's still a basic structure mean. Otherwise, if you're not going to do that, you'd have to redefine it so that you're not teaching US (00:45:54) History, right? Just the definition of the course has you inside the boundary of the nation-state now, some of my colleagues who are (00:46:01) colonialist argue strenuously that for the colonial era that makes absolutely no sense. Those boundaries are not the proper boundaries. There is an Atlantic (00:46:13) Community. There's oh Joan is (00:46:14) nodding making me feel great Atlantic Community. There's the economic economics of that time period wouldn't draw those boundaries that way at all and so in some ways Colonial history gets very distorted because it's all oriented towards getting you to the American Revolution. The sacred 13, right? So we'll drop out the (00:46:37) Caribbean for example (00:46:40) now there is there is something about talking about the history of this (00:46:44) state United States. Once it's in formation and (00:46:47) the ways its Traditions came into existence and have been contested (00:46:50) all along (00:46:52) but to draw those boundaries too tightly is also to miss tell (00:46:55) the story people in American studies at the University of Minnesota. For example are really (00:47:00) getting into an international (00:47:01) comparison now because they feel that the (00:47:04) field of American studies has become much too insulated has tended to think things are uniquely American when in fact, they're not (00:47:12) uniquely American (00:47:13) they may be about the process of (00:47:15) industrialization which is happened in more than one place (00:47:18) and therefore one could find out about regularities and irregularities there. So I think there's so what I guess what I'm arguing is that there's several kinds of ways (00:47:29) to dilute though. You never going to get rid of That state Focus unless you can just totally redefined. It course depends how much Liberty you have (00:47:40) to redefine your courses, but it's to keep a comparative perspective always in mind that the American people are (00:47:47) never one people they come in genders and they come in races and they come in regions, which is very important as a southerner who's been teaching in Minnesota for the last 13 years. I'm extremely aware of of the (00:48:01) different history of this region and how much the Southern United States is a foreign country (00:48:07) to people who've grown up in Minnesota (00:48:10) and also to use comparative (00:48:12) International comparative perspectives, wherever you (00:48:14) can so that what is (00:48:17) American doesn't seem either so unique or so inevitable or or whatever.