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Newsletter 31 News from National Committees
UNITED STATES
In late July, the Fifth Women's West Conference was held at Washington State
University in Pullman, Washington State under the sponsorship of the WSU History
Department and the Coalition for Western Women's History. The conference, with
the theme "Gender, Race, Class and Region in the North American West,"
drew almost 200 people from the US and Canada, and included twenty-seven panels
during a three-day period, as well as performances, a quilt exhibit, and an
exhibit of Native American women's art.
In late September, some 200 historians and activists gathered on the campus
of Smith College in New York State for a conference that examined the past,
present, and future of social activism, while at the same time exploring the
relationship between social movements and the historians who study them. The
event, hosted by the Sophia Smith Collection, the oldest women's history archive
in the US, marked the opening of eight collections pertaining to twentieth-century
"Agents of Change:" donations of Constance Baker Motley, Gloria Steinem,
Frances Fox Piven, Mary Metlay Kaufman, Dorothy Kenyan, Jessie Lloyd O'Connor,
Jan Peterson (representing the National Congress of Neighborhood Women), and
Brenda Feigan (representing the Women's Action Alliance). Historians Linda Gordon,
Linda Kerber, and Barbara Epstein delivered keynote and plenary addresses to
a full house of historians. Among the facilitators were Daniel Horowitz, Eileen
Boris, and Nancy MacLean. Third Wave activists Rebecca Walker, Amy Richards,
Erin Howe, and Crystal Daugherty raised fascinating questions about the nature
and extent of intergenerational continuity and change, noting the importance
of historical records in building ties between present and past movements.
Future conferences include the Third International Charlotte Perkins Conference,
which will be held at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina
from March 30 to April 1, 2001. Tthe annual meeting of the American Historical
Association in January 2001 had some two dozen panels featuring women's and
gender history. The Coordinating Council for Women in History sponsored a roundtable
on "Transforming the Personal and the Professional: Balancing, Juggling
or Just Plain Stressing" and held its awards luncheon featuring a panel
discussion on "Going Public with History," in addition to sponsoring
the annual reception and the drop-in room for graduate students. Full information
on these events can be found on the CCWH web site: www.theccwh.org.
Among publications is the Pacific Historical Review's newly published special issue on "Woman Suffrage: The View from the Pacific," with articles on China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Washington State, California, Colombia, and Chile.
-complied by June E. Hahner