Politics and Professionalism: Women Historians in the 1980s

Those of you who think keynote speakers are chosen for their knowledge, wisdom, or fame should be disabused of those beliefs, at least in my case. I was asked to give this talk because I ventured an opinion about the subject that should be addressed in this year\u27s keynote address during a meeting of the program committee over a year ago. At that time the American Historical Association\u27s Committee on Women Historians (CWH) was preparing its update of the 1971 Rose Report on the Status of Women in the Historical Profession and the figures gave little reason for optimism either about what we had gained in the decade of the 1970s or about what lay ahead in the contracting economy of the 1980s. In addition, I was then chairing the Committee on the Status of Women at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I was painfully aware of the stubborn resistance of departments and deans to the recognition, promotion, and tenuring of women faculty members. Over a nd over again I watched the power of shared male biases perpetuate inequality even as federal affirmative action plans cleaned up procedures and forced at least formal accountability to good faith efforts. So, when the program committee turned to the question of the keynote , I urged that we think in terms of subject matter, not personalities, and I said (probably in an impassioned voice) that we needed someone to address the question of political action by women such as us in the face of economic retrenchment and cultural backlash. My outburst produced thoughtful silence , then approbation, then the assignment. I agreed to consider doing it and eventually decided I could

La historia del feminismo

Este artículo rastrea el desarrollo de la historia de las mujeres en los Estados Unidos. Relaciona los principales temas de debate al activismo y las demandas de las historiadoras académicas. Su principal contribución es el enfatizar cómo los temas históricos relevantes a la historia de las mujeres han tenido un impacto decisivo en la disciplina histórica como tal. Por lo tanto relaciona las perspectivas feministas en la historia de las mujeres y establece las conexiones con la historia social, la historia cultural y cómo las nuevas herramientas y perspectivas históricas que la visión feminista de las historia de las mujeres destapó dieron por resultado conceptos claves como los estudios de la intersexualidad, la homosexualidad, el lesbianismo, los estudios poscoloniales, transnacionales y globales, la mayoría de los cuales son actualmente usados ampliamente no solo en historia sino en todas las otras disciplinas de las ciencias sociales. Reitera la contribución básica de la disciplina histórica, la siempre cambiante interpretación histórica y reconoce las múltiples causas del desarrollo histórico. Finalmente traza la agenda para investigaciones históricas con enfoque feminista y avizora los múltiples retos y sorpresas de nuevas preguntas y perspectivas.This article traces the development of women’s history in the US. It links the main issues of debate to the activism and demands of the academic historians. Its main contribution is to emphasize how the historical themes relevant to women’s history had a decisive impact on the perspective of the discipline as such. Thus it relates feminist perspectives on women’s history and its links and connections with social history, cultural history, and how the new historical perspectives that feminist women’s history unveiled gave birth to such key analytical concepts as queer studies, postcolonial, transnational and global, most of which are now widely used both in history as in all of the other social sciences disciplines. It reiterates the basic contribution of the discipline: the ever changing historical interpretation as well recognized the multiple causes of historical development. Finally it traces an agenda for future feminist historical research and envisions the multiple and challenging surprises of new questions and perspectives

The Political Uses of History

The study of history enables us to explore the ways in which prevailing relations of power are asserted, imposed, challenged, and modified (if not entirely displaced). This, in turn, lets us think the relationship of past, present, and future as a problem to explore, and not as a fixed set of factual truths, moving in a singular, ever improving, continuous line of development. I want to use my definition of history – as the study of contested relations of power – to examine the ways in which, in our current moment, “history” functions rhetorically for political ends. Interestingly, although there are different meanings of “history” at play, they all rely on variations of what I have termed the conventional disciplinary approach. An exploration of the popular uses of this conception of history reveals (among other things) the extent to which politics is inseparable from the workings of the discipline itself.O estudo da história nos permite explorar as formas nas quais relações prevalecentes de poder são afirmadas, impostas, desafiadas e modificadas (quando não inteiramente deslocadas). Isso, por sua vez, nos leva a pensar na relação entre passado, presente e futuro como um problema a explorar, e não como um conjunto fixo de verdades factuais que se movem em uma linha de desenvolvimento singular, sempre aprimorada e contínua. Pretendo usar minha definição de história – como o estudo das relações contestadas de poder – para examinar as maneiras como, em nosso momento atual, a “história” funciona retoricamente para fins políticos. Curiosamente, embora existam diferentes sentidos de “história” em jogo, todos eles se baseiam em variações do que eu chamei de abordagem disciplinar convencional. Uma exploração dos usos populares dessa concepção de história revela (entre outras coisas) a medida na qual a política é inseparável do funcionamento da própria disciplina

Principles of precision medicine in stroke

The era of precision medicine has arrived and conveys tremendous potential, particularly for stroke neurology. The diagnosis of stroke, its underlying aetiology, theranostic strategies, recurrence risk and path to recovery are populated by a series of highly individualised questions. Moreover, the phenotypic complexity of a clinical diagnosis of stroke makes a simple genetic risk assessment only partially informative on an individual basis. The guiding principles of precision medicine in stroke underscore the need to identify, value, organise and analyse the multitude of variables obtained from each individual to generate a precise approach to optimise cerebrovascular health. Existing data may be leveraged with novel technologies, informatics and practical clinical paradigms to apply these principles in stroke and realise the promise of precision medicine. Importantly, precision medicine in stroke will only be realised once efforts to collect, value and synthesise the wealth of data collected in clinical trials and routine care starts. Stroke theranostics, the ultimate vision of synchronising tailored therapeutic strategies based on specific diagnostic data, demand cerebrovascular expertise on big data approaches to clinically relevant paradigms. This review considers such challenges and delineates the principles on a roadmap for rational application of precision medicine to stroke and cerebrovascular health

Joint analysis of stressors and ecosystem services to enhance restoration effectiveness

With increasing pressure placed on natural systems by growing human populations, both scientists and resource managers need a better understanding of the relationships between cumulative stress from human activities and valued ecosystem services. Societies often seek to mitigate threats to these services through large-scale, costly restoration projects, such as the over one billion dollar Great Lakes Restoration Initiative currently underway. To help inform these efforts, we merged high-resolution spatial analyses of environmental stressors with mapping of ecosystem services for all five Great Lakes. Cumulative ecosystem stress is highest in near-shore habitats, but also extends offshore in Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Michigan. Variation in cumulative stress is driven largely by spatial concordance among multiple stressors, indicating the importance of considering all stressors when planning restoration activities. In addition, highly stressed areas reflect numerous different combinations of stressors rather than a single suite of problems, suggesting that a detailed understanding of the stressors needing alleviation could improve restoration planning. We also find that many important areas for fisheries and recreation are subject to high stress, indicating that ecosystem degradation could be threatening key services. Current restoration efforts have targeted high-stress sites almost exclusively, but generally without knowledge of the full range of stressors affecting these locations or differences among sites in service provisioning. Our results demonstrate that joint spatial analysis of stressors and ecosystem services can provide a critical foundation for maximizing social and ecological benefits from restoration investments. www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1213841110/-/DCSupplementa