CATHOLIC
WOMEN AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
The Women and Social
Movements in the U.S. website seeks to broaden its coverage on women and religion
in American history by publishing document projects and documents focusing
on “Catholic Women and Social Movements.” Carol K. Coburn of Avila
University, co-author of Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture
and American Life, 1836-1920 (1999), will serve as the editor of the
initiative and will begin accepting proposals for document projects on this
topic.
The website currently
offers a variety of projects concerning Protestant women, Native American
women, African-American women, Jewish women, and most recently Catholic Women
and Second Wave Feminism. To expand this important topic, we encourage proposals
on Catholic laywomen or women religious from any time period in U.S. history.
We encourage document
projects in the same format as those currently posted on the website. They
pose a question and organize documents that address the question.
Examples of potential
topics include:
• Gender and American Catholic women
• American Catholic women and social justice movements
• Catholic women and ordination
• Catholic women and Civil Rights activities
• Catholic sisters and the American West
• Catholic women’s colleges in the 20th Century
• Catholic women and Post-Vatican II organizations
• Sister Formation Conference
• Catholic sisters and war nursing
• Catholic women and suffrage
To discuss potential
proposals contact Carol.Coburn@avila.edu
Earlier
Calls for Proposals
Second Wave
Feminism
The Women and Social Movements website will strengthen its coverage
of recent women's history by publishing document projects and documents focusing
on Second Wave feminism in the United States, 1960-1990. With an editorial
group led by Judith Ezekiel of the University of Toulouse, author of Feminism
in the Heartland (2004); Stephanie Gilmore of Ohio State University, editor
of Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism
in the United States (forthcoming 2005), and Kathryn Sklar, the
website is now accepting proposals for document projects on women and social
movements, 1960-1990.
Timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the 1977 Houston conference, this initiative seeks proposals
for publication in 2006 and 2007.
We encourage document projects in the same format as those currently posted
on the website. They pose a question and organize documents that address
the question. For proposals in this format contact Kathryn
Sklar.
We also encourage document projects with a geographic focus, which bring together
documents related to the Second Wave in one locale. For proposals in
this format contact Judith Ezekiel.
We also encourage document projects with a thematic focus, which bring together
documents related to particular themes in Second Wave feminism, such as consciousness
raising. For proposals in this format contact
Stephanie Gilmore.
Women
and Public Life in the Colonial and Early National Eras
Women and Social
Movements seeks to strengthen its coverage in early American history by
publishing document projects and documents focusing on "Women and Public
Life in the Colonial and Early National Eras, 1600-1830." The editors
for this initiative, Patricia Cleary of California State University, Long
Beach, and Thomas Dublin, WASM co-editor, are now accepting proposals for
document projects in this period. They may be contacted at cleary@csulb.edu
or tdublin@binghamton.edu. Feel
free to contact either of the editors to discuss proposal ideas. To learn
more, visit our submission
guidelines.
In the first years of
its development, the Women and Social Movements website focused primarily
on women in the Progressive era, 1870-1930. The editors have steadily expanded
the website's chronological coverage and now the site offers extensive documentation
of women and social movements after 1830. Our call for proposals for projects
before 1830 is intended to strengthen the site's offerings in the colonial
and early national eras.
Topics of particular
interest include:
- Anne Hutchinson and her
support group
- Women's captivity
narratives
- Salem Witch Trials
- Women in the colonial
Southwest
- Women and taverns
- Women's conversion
narratives
- Women and the Great
Awakening
- Women and early academies
- Women and early national
politics
- Mothers' associations
- Women writers and
their audiences
- Women in the Atlantic
World
Selected
Syllabi and Teaching Discussion Group
For five years, Women
and Social Movements has been publishing teaching tools related to the
document projects that comprise the central feature of its online database.
Teaching tools have included document-based questions and teaching strategies
related to specific document projects.
Faculty have frequently
included all or part of document projects as readings in undergraduate courses
on United States History and U.S. Women's History. To provide users of the
website with examples of such assignments, we invite colleagues to send us
course syllabi that use the website. We will post selected syllabi on our
Teaching Tools section. Professor Paivi Hoikkala of California State Polytechnic
University, Pomona has agreed to serve as editor for this section. If you
use the website in your teaching, please send a copy of your syllabus to Paivi
Hoikkala for consideration for publication on the "Selected Syllabi"
page. Professor Hoikkala will be in touch with you about your prospective
contribution.
In September we are
also launching a Teaching Discussion Group. Moderated by Professors Nancy
Page Fernandez and Paivi Hoikkala, the group will offer website users
an opportunity to discuss course syllabi and teaching strategies that use
WASM resources. Look for links to the teaching discussion group on our editorial
homepage in September. We look forward to posting a wide array of teaching
materials on the website and hope to hear from you soon.
Enhancing
Images on the WASM Website
Women and Social
Movements has undertaken an initiative to enhance the use, integration,
and interpretation of visual images on its website to further the study of
women and social movements. We seek to develop the potential for images to
help document the rich history of women in social movements in the United
States. We want to illustrate, interpret, and explore visuals as a part of
the evidence the website provides for scholars, teachers and students. Our
initiative takes three particular directions, and we encourage submissions
in all categories
First, Women and
Social Movements will seek more images to augment projects that already
appear on the website. We see images as aesthetically extending the evidence
and documents in text-based projects. We will review images available in the
extensive collection of full text sources now digitized on the Women and
Social Movements site and link them to relevant document projects that
now exist. We will also work with editors and contributors to provide images
for new projects as they appear. We believe a visually rich website will be
both aesthetically and intellectually valuable, providing complementary opportunities
to "see" the history documented by texts, and to extend our understanding
of the work of women in social movements. We invite suggestions for images
that work with projects currently available.
Second, we will develop
interpretative materials, both for individual images in projects and for particular
categories of images, grouped by theme, subject, symbol or medium. These interventions,
to appear on the website as "Teaching Tools," will provide both
content about specific materials and examples of how materials can be analyzed
to further the understandings of scholars and students who seek to integrate
visual materials into their work. Our first such project will be an essay
that analyzes the image entitled "The Slaves of the Sweaters," published
in Harper's Weekly on April 26, 1890, that appears in the document
project "How Did Florence Kelley's Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago
in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?"
on the Women and Social Movements site. Using both formal art history
techniques and contextual research, this study will demonstrate how this sophisticated
image "worked" as an important piece of public relations in Kelley's
campaign. We are also developing an essay on women's portraits in which we
will explore changing styles and technologies of portraiture as well as the
functions that portraits played for women and for their communities. We will
continue to develop essays about visuals relevant to WASM and we seek proposals
for other essays.
Third, we encourage development
of more visually based projects. Posters, photographs, cartoons, drawings
and paintings often do more than illustrate the social movements to which
they are relevant; as documents themselves they are "evidence,"
that is, texts offering opportunities for interpretation, and important interventions
representing women's social activism. The document project "How and Why
Did the Guerrilla Girls Alter the Art World Establishment in New York City,
1985-1995?" pioneered this approach, making the movement's posters the
central documents for the exploration of the endeavor of young artists to
change the art world's treatment and perception of women. We encourage the
development of further commentary and analysis to accompany visually rich
projects currently available on Women and Social Movements, and the
creation of new image-based contributions. Web publishing and technology provide
an ideal environment for the exploration and interpretation of images, and
such projects will provide new ways to comprehend and analyze women's work
in social movements.
Through these three linked
initiatives, we seek to make visual images in Women and Social Movements
more than simple "illustrations." We believe that scholars, teachers
and students can "do" history with images when we bring to visuals
the same critical tools that we bring to our work with text-based materials.
Understanding context, audience, conditions of creation, and iconographic
language in visuals can extend our knowledge of women and power. We look forward
to working with collaborators and contributors as we seek to collect more
images, suggest strategies for interpretation, and turn to the visual record
for the distinctive view of the history of women and social movements it can
provide.
For more information,
please contact
Carol
Lasser
Oberlin College
