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

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

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

On Rereading Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures 50 Years after the Fact

The essay offers two readings of Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures, one from the author’s perspective in the 1970s and a later one from her thinking in the present. The present thinking, influenced by post-structuralism, questions the sharp distinction between politics and scholarship that Geertz offers in this work

El eco de fantasía: la historia y la construcción de la identidad

“Durante algún tiempo he estado escribiendo críticamente sobre la identidad, insistiendo en que las identidades no preexisten a sus demandas políticas estratégicas, que las categorías de identidad que damos por establecidas al creerlas enraizadas en nuestros cuerpos físicos (género y raza) o en nuestra herencias culturales (étnicas, religiosas) están, de hecho, vinculadas retrospectivamente a esas raíces; no se derivan predeciblemente o naturalmente de ellas (Scott, 1995, págs. 3-12). Hay una igualdad ilusoria que se establece refiriéndose a una categoría de personas (mujeres, obreros, americanos, africanos, homosexuales) como si esa categoría nunca cambiara, como si sólo sus circunstancias históricas variaran con el tiempo. De esta manera las mujeres historiadoras (para referirme al ejemplo que más conozco) se han preguntado cómo los cambios del estado legal, social, económico y médico de las mujeres afectaron sus posibilidades de emancipación o igualdad; pero con menor frecuencia se han preguntado cómo estos cambios alteraron el significado (socialmente articulado, subjetivamente entendido) del término mismo mujeres

Women's Work and European Fertility Patterns

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50872/1/95.pd

Studies Related to Nutrients Entering Groundwater From the Heber Valley Sewer Farm and Dairies

Foreword: This report includes the results from a two year study in the Heber Valley to determine amounts of nutrients that are entering the groundwaters of the Heber Valley, and might ultimately enter Deer Creek Reservoir. Since Deer Creek Reservoir in Heber Valley, Utah supplies approximately 65 percent of the water distributed to Salt Lake County, the maintenance of its quality is of considerable importance. To maintain the quality of this reservoir and limit its eutrophication best management practices for surface water have been implemented gradually during the past decade in Heber Valley. These practices have significantly improved the qualities of surface streams flowing into the reservoir. However, data for amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen in groundwater inflows to the reservoir are several times larger than predicted from 1967 data. Concern has been voiced that perhaps cleaning up the surface inflows by spreading treated sewage on land, retaining dairy wastes in lagoon, etc, have only delayed the arrival time of nutrients into Deer Creek Reservoir, and that their transmission through gruondwaters into the reservoir will result in eutrophication unless other measures are implemented. To provide data for better understanding of the processes assocaited with soil sorption and transmission of chemicals (with a focus on phosphorus and nitrogen) into the saturated groundwater and ultimately into Deer Creek Reservoir, a three pronged research program was initiated by Utah State University during the Spring of 1989. This program consisted of: 1. Installation of unsaturated zone (Vandose zone) samples that extract water from the partially saturated soil at 6 sites (with two samplers at different depths at each site) within the land disposal area of the Heber Valley Special Service District (referred to as the sewer farm hereafter), and adjacent to two liquid manure lagoons at dairy farms. 2. Laboratory sorption studies on soil columns that were acquired in an undistrubed state from the 6 sites in the above sewer farm , and 3. Development of computer solutions to estimate the transmission of nutrients through the unsaturated top soil into the groundwater. An earlier 1990 preliminary report Interim Report for Studies related to Nutrients Entering Groundwater from the Heber Valley Sewer Farm and Dairies provided information related to the results of the laboratory sorption studies, and tentative results from the field studies based on the data collected during the summer of 1989. Since the field data given in the earlier report covered only a portion of ayear, and the study was continued for a second year that report is superceded by this report. This report provides the data collected over the two year period of the study, 1989-1990. Included in this report are field data obtained from the most critical spring period of 1990 when the surface soils recieve the relatively large quantities of snow melt water. The 1990 water year was again a dry year in which precipitation was considerably below normal. Thus the field collection period did not include a truly wet condition as will undoubtedly occur during years of above normal precipitation. Above normal rainfall did occur during the months of April and May, 1991. However this was not anticipated and the field samplers were unfortunately removed prior to these occurences to allow more easy working of the farm area. Since only a few copies of the above mentioned interim report were reproduced, this report duplicates the description of the field instrumentation, and the laboratory sorption studies. The data tables contained in that report have been updated to include field data from the second year through 1990. The results from the computer solutions that were contained in the interim report as Appendix A are not included herein, however. That report must be consulted for this detail. Field data collected from the first year indicated that larger quantities of nitrogen in the form of nitrate (NO3) than phophorus were within the unsaturated surface soils of the farm irrigated by the treated sewage, and by the dairy lagoons. Based on this information an additional research program, or changing the emphasis of the research, was directed to studying the nitrogen cycle in the groundwater system of Heber Valley to determine in natural processes reduce the amount of NO3- reaching Deer Creek Reservoir through the Heber Valley aquifers. More specifically the additional emphasis was deirected to determine whether conditions exist that favor denitrification and the extent by which such process might be reducing the amounts of NO3- input to Deer Creek Reservoir from the irrigated farm of the Heber Valley Special Service District, and two dairy lagoons. Denitrification is a process whereby bacteria transfer electrons from compounds, known as electron donors, to NO3-, an electron acceptor. The end products of this reduction are gases of N2O and N2, both of which escape to the atmosphere and thus reduce the amount of nitrogen in the water. The results of this sadditional research will be reported in a forthcoming project report consisting of the Ph.D. dissertation by Scott F. Korom Denitrification in the Unconsolidated Deposits of the Heber Valley Aquifer. This dissertation is being written in the format now allowed by Utah State University where different sections are designed as separate papers for submission to professional journals. Therefore the results of the denitrification phases of the research should also be available in future professional journal papers