Women and Social Movements in the US 1600 to 2000

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 Spanish North America to 1850.” The editor for this initiative, Patricia Cleary of California State University, Long Beach is now accepting proposals for document projects in this period. She may be contacted at cleary@csulb.edu. Feel free to contact her 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 1850 is intended to strengthen the site’s offerings in the colonial and early national eras for all areas that were eventually incorporated into the United States. Proposals with a focus on Spanish Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico, and California are especially invited.

Topics of particular interest include:

• Property law and marriage
• Women as healers
• Sexuality and social control
• Women and religious practice
• Indigenous resistance
• Gender and empire
• Women and the economy

American Jewish Women and Postwar Social Movements

  The online journal Women and Social Movements in the U.S., 1600-2000 is launching a new initiative entitled, “Jewish women and Postwar Social Movements, 1945-1982.” This call for proposals for document projects asks how Jewish women’s personal and historic experiences shaped the ways in which they participated in both Jewish communal affairs and in the larger American society.   Shira Kohn and Rachel Kranson, both of New York University, and Kathleen Laughlin, of Metropolitan State University – St. Paul, will serve as the editors for this initiative and will begin accepting proposals for document projects on this topic.

This initiative will build upon the website’s current offerings, which include projects concerning Protestant women, Native American women, African-American women, Jewish women, and most recently Catholic Women and Second Wave Feminism. We encourage document projects in the same format as those currently posted on the website. They should pose a question and organize documents that address the question. To begin the submission process, please send email to the editors for this initiative describing the project you are interested in developing.  They will get back to you with further details on the submission process and the nature of the proposal you will need to prepare for the peer review process. Examples of potential topics include:

• Jewish Women and Civil Rights
• Jewish Women and Second Wave Feminism
• Jewish Women and Radical Feminism
• Jewish Women and the Red Scare
• Jewish Women and Wars (Korea, Vietnam, etc.)
• Jewish Women and the “Feminine Mystique”
• Comparative Projects between Jewish and non-Jewish Women
• Jewish Women’s Clubs and/or Voluntary Organizations (i.e. Hadassah, National Council for Jewish Women, etc.)
• Jewish Women and Religious Institutions
• Jewish Women and Suburbia
• Jewish Women and Zionism
• Icons of American Jewish Womanhood
• Jewish Women and New Professions
• Jewish Women and Education
• Jewish Women and Lesbian Rights

Shira Kohn                   shiram19@aol.com
Rachel Kranson            rachel@honksandsirens.com
Kathleen Laughlin        Kathleen.Laughlin@metrostate.edu

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

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

Thomas Dublin