Book Description

As one twentieth-century historian described it, "the subject matter of history is always men in the midst of other men - men in collectives and groups." Simply put, until the late 1960s women were not viewed as an integral part of the historical record. The few who did appear had predictable roles as the mothers and daughters, wives and mistresses of famous men. Extraordinary figures like the queens of sixteenth-century Europe or the nineteenth-century reformers in the United States, though praised for having taken on male roles, still could not escape patronizing phrases and denigrating stereotypes. Not only was history the study of "man", but the profession itself had a skewed definition. The writing of history seemed a masculine prerogative, the historian a "gentleman scholar" mediating between the past and the present. In this first full-length study of the impact of feminism on history, Judith P. Zinsser traces the ways in which self-declared feminist scholars have worked since the early 1970s to present "the other half of history." They created a new field - the study of women - and a new perspective - gender. Zinsser vividly conjures up the heady excitement of the first women's history programs, as well as the protracted struggles over access to and equal status in faculty departments, scholarly publications, and professional organizations such as the American Historical Association. Feminist scholars have, in fact, forced the inclusion of women as fully participating members of the profession and the academy. Zinsser also writes about feminist initiatives outside of colleges and universities. She gives the first detailed account of the most influential of these "grassroots" initiatives, the National Women's History Project. In surveying the impact of all that has changed and all that has remained the same, Zinsser concludes that for feminist historians it appears to be a question of "a glass half full or a glass half empty."