The Boston Seminar on the History of Women, Gender, & Sexuality is a collaboration of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
This series, whose five meetings in 2017-2018 will alternate between the Radcliffe Institute and the MHS, aims to seed fresh conversations on the history of women, gender, and sexuality in America without chronological limitations. Some sessions will offer the opportunity to discuss new scholarship presented in pre-circulated essays. These sessions begin with remarks from the essayist and an assigned commentator, after which the discussion is opened to the floor. Other meetings will feature panel discussions and “state of the field” conversations. At the end of each program, the organizers will offer light refreshments and time for informal networking.
Attendance is free and open to everyone. Subscribers who remit $20 for the year will receive online access to any pre-circulated materials via a password-protected interface. Subscriptions also underwrite the cost of the series. Pre-circulated materials will be available to non-subscribers who have RSVP’d for a session on the Monday prior to the program.
October
The “New Labor History” is highly gendered, global, and often situated in spaces that are transitory or obscured. This session will consider the new directions that the path-breaking work of these three scholars indicates: on female, trans, and intersex truck drivers and state surveillance (Balay), on Puerto Rican needleworkers and the global working class (Loiselle), and on African American women workers in the post-Civil Rights Era (Parker). Note: There are no pre-circulated essays for this session.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
MoreDrawn from McElya’s larger book project, this essay examines the centrality of the Miss America pageant, its local networks, and individual contestants to the rise of activist conservative women and the New Right in the 1960s and 1970s. It analyzes the celebration, power, and political effects of normative beauty, steeped in heterosexual gender norms and white supremacy, and argues for the transformative effect of putting diverse women’s voices at the center of political history and inquiry.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
MoreAfter the Patent Act of 1790, patents played an important social and political role in the formation of American nationhood and citizenship. Part of a larger book project, this paper demonstrates how nineteenth-century American women mobilized patents granted to women as justification for civil rights claims. It identifies the creation of the “woman inventor” as a cultural trope and political weapon of resistance.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
MoreThis program is canceled due to illness.
This paper argues that fantasies of racial and gendered mastery—seen in law, racial performance, and sexual violence—were important world-making tools in the nineteenth century. It looks at how white supremacist fantasies took shape in the courtroom and in blackface dramas, what their impact was, and how historians might begin to find and examine these fantasies in the archives.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
MoreAll high school students in the United States study American history, and many of them seek mastery in the subject, which is the second most popular at the Advanced Placement level. Yet relatively few female actors appear in high school textbooks, and graduates arrive on college campuses with widely varying levels of exposure to the history of women, gender, and sexuality in America, especially prior to the 1990s. This panel discussion, featuring university faculty, secondary educators, and activist curriculum specialists, aims to seed an ongoing discussion between high school and post-secondary instructors of American history about gendering the U.S. History curriculum. What topics in women’s and gender history and in the history of sexuality get covered when, where, and how? How can college- and university-based scholars do more to connect their work with high school classrooms? How are secondary educators—and their students—advancing and reshaping the field?
This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 10 PDPs with the completion of a lesson plan.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
More
The “New Labor History” is highly gendered, global, and often situated in spaces that are transitory or obscured. This session will consider the new directions that the path-breaking work of these three scholars indicates: on female, trans, and intersex truck drivers and state surveillance (Balay), on Puerto Rican needleworkers and the global working class (Loiselle), and on African American women workers in the post-Civil Rights Era (Parker). Note: There are no pre-circulated essays for this session.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
closeDrawn from McElya’s larger book project, this essay examines the centrality of the Miss America pageant, its local networks, and individual contestants to the rise of activist conservative women and the New Right in the 1960s and 1970s. It analyzes the celebration, power, and political effects of normative beauty, steeped in heterosexual gender norms and white supremacy, and argues for the transformative effect of putting diverse women’s voices at the center of political history and inquiry.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
closeAfter the Patent Act of 1790, patents played an important social and political role in the formation of American nationhood and citizenship. Part of a larger book project, this paper demonstrates how nineteenth-century American women mobilized patents granted to women as justification for civil rights claims. It identifies the creation of the “woman inventor” as a cultural trope and political weapon of resistance.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
closeOn Fantasy 20 March 2018.Tuesday, 5:30PM - 7:45PM Location: Fay House, Radcliffe Institute Rhae Lynn Barnes, Princeton University, and Emily Owens, Brown University Comment: Jasmine Johnson, Brown University
This program is canceled due to illness.
This paper argues that fantasies of racial and gendered mastery—seen in law, racial performance, and sexual violence—were important world-making tools in the nineteenth century. It looks at how white supremacist fantasies took shape in the courtroom and in blackface dramas, what their impact was, and how historians might begin to find and examine these fantasies in the archives.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
closeAll high school students in the United States study American history, and many of them seek mastery in the subject, which is the second most popular at the Advanced Placement level. Yet relatively few female actors appear in high school textbooks, and graduates arrive on college campuses with widely varying levels of exposure to the history of women, gender, and sexuality in America, especially prior to the 1990s. This panel discussion, featuring university faculty, secondary educators, and activist curriculum specialists, aims to seed an ongoing discussion between high school and post-secondary instructors of American history about gendering the U.S. History curriculum. What topics in women’s and gender history and in the history of sexuality get covered when, where, and how? How can college- and university-based scholars do more to connect their work with high school classrooms? How are secondary educators—and their students—advancing and reshaping the field?
This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 10 PDPs with the completion of a lesson plan.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
close