Originally published as: "Generations of Historians Explore Women's Past at Big Berks", off our backs, Vol. 23, No. 10, November 1993, pp. 7, 24. Permission to copy electronically is given by author provided that copies are not made for financial gain and the paper is distributed in its entirety, including title and author. No more than one paper copy may be made without permission of the author. This file was prepared for electronic distribution by the inforM staff. A Group of One's Own Filling the Gaps in Women's History by Jo Freeman jfrbc@cunyvm.cuny.edu 410 East 8th Street Brooklyn, New York 11218 One of the enduring institutions of the women's liberation movement is a triennial conference on women's history. First held in 1973, the Ninth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women brought 2300 people from 220 schools in 35 countries to Vassar College the weekend of June 11-13 for the largest ever gathering of feminist scholars. For three days they heard almost 900 speakers on 180 panels discuss topics as diverse as "Discourse/Counter Discourse: The Women in the Lives of Auguste Comte and Claude Bernard" to "Middle-Class Black and White Women Construct Race, Gender and Sexuality in the United States" to "Power, Class/room, and the Necessity of Queer History" to "Midwives and 'Old Wives': The Medical Practices of Women in Pre-Modern Europe: A Workshop on Methodology". In the evenings were more general discussions on "The Wolf Girls of Vassar" and "The Politics of the Transition in Eastern Europe"; slides on "Speaking in Tongues: The Language of Yoruba Women's Attire"; recitals of "Songs of 19th and 20th Century Women Composers"; films on "Margaret Sanger: A Public Nuisance" and "A Midwife's Tale". The "Berks" as it is popularly known, was the response of a small group of women historians organized into the Berkshire Historical Conference to the contemporary feminist movement and its demand for greater knowledge about women's past. This group, now known as the "little Berks", began in the late 1920s as an annual weekend retreat by women historians to fight the isolation they felt in their profession. According current BHC President Barbara Harris, a professor at the University of North Carolina, it was "a product of the first wave of American feminism" and was modeled on retreats organized in the mid-1920s for select male members of the American Historical Association. The men's group eventually dissolved. The women's group, although never more than a few hundred women, continues to meet every Spring at an inn in the Berkshires for conversation and conviviality. As is true of many such groups, this "networking" was not only pleasant, but a way for members to share information about their profession and to help each other advance. The first "Big Berks" conference in 1973 attracted over five hundred people; far more than any of the founders thought would be interested in women's history. Many of the papers presented were published in what became one of the earliest anthologies of women's history. Since then, every two to three years, the "little Berks" organizes another conference on women's history at a (formerly) women's college in the Northeast. Although focused on women's history and attended primarily by academic historians, this conference has become the gathering place for women scholars from many disciplines, as well as a large scattering of writers and activists without academic affiliations. It is the second largest regular historical conference (after the annual meeting of the American Historical Association) and the largest meeting of feminist scholars (including a few men). Many of the international scholars had their way paid by foundations and governments, but some, including a large contingent from Australia, paid their own way, as did those who live on this continent. Financial assistance was also provided to graduate students. Over time the content of the programs have changed to reflect the changing styles of both the history profession and the feminist movement. In 1993 the influence of the former could be seen in the frequent use of current jargon such as "postmodern" and "discourse". The latter could be seen in the several panels on lesbian and minority themes (especially African American, but some Third World) as well as special events. The lesbian caucus held its own reception and had a room reserved for its use throughout the conference. The keynote address was by an African American lawyer -- Patricia Williams of Columbia University Law School who spoke about Lani Guinier and Clinton's nomination and withdrawal of her to the post of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. During the noon break on the last day conference participants gathered at the Chapel for a Celebration of the Life and Work of Audrey Lourde [sic]. The Berks has a very different tone than the typical scholarly conference. Most such meetings are organized by disciplinary associations at large hotels in large cities. As Harris pointed out, "Instead of being cooped up in an overheated, stuffy hotel, we spread out over an entire college campus at the end of the academic year in surroundings that encourage us to relax and have fun and to mix scholarship, beauty, and pleasure..." These relaxed surroundings did not lead to laxity. Indeed, the quality of the papers was much higher than is typical of the disciplinary meetings. This was partially because the presenters were allotted enough time to give their papers rather than just synopsize them as is more typical elsewhere. It was also because the questions, comments and contributions from the audience were helpful and relevant to the topics. At the normal academic conference audience participation is usually aimed at scoring points and showing off the questioner's expertise regardless of the relevance to the topic. The availability of a place to give papers on women's history, as well as prizes for books and articles, has encouraged its growth. Many women said they had given their first professional paper at the Berks; few had done so at AHA. They talked about the valuable feedback they received from senior scholars who actually knew something about their topics. Women who were pioneers in the field -- writing about women when it was not viewed as good for their careers -- had the pleasure of seeing their students and grandstudents give papers and of hearing references to their own works as landmarks in the fields. At least one of these, Anne Firor Scott of Duke University, was honored at her own reception. In the last twenty years women's history has gone from a new and daring idea to become an established field in the historical profession -- one that did not even exist before the feminist movement. According to professor Hilda Smith of the University of Cincinnati virtually every department now has at least two slots for women's history. She said there were six such positions out of twenty-five in her department. However, she pointed out that women's history is becoming transformed into gender history (which includes men) and the desirability of this change is a topic of much heat and major political debate. Smith's own career parallels the growth of feminist influence in the historical profession. When the feminist movement began in the sixties she was a graduate student at the University of Chicago where doing research on women was distinctly not encouraged. Nonetheless she persisted in writing a dissertation on Seventeenth Century British women and was one of the founders of the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession (the "women's caucus" equivalent in AHA). She is now an editor of the Journal of Women's History, which is publishing its' fourth volume. Women's history has also been a commercial success. Over sixty publishers -- ranging from the Feminist Press and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press to major university presses -- paid for space in the exhibit hall to display hundreds, thousands, of books on women's history and to sign up new authors. Once told by publishers that "there's no market for books on women" senior scholars at the Scott reception toasted "HQ1101" -- the Library of Congress catalog number for women's history. The growth of women's history was aided by changes within the study of history itself. Every academic discipline is subject to trends and changes in emphasis. Although women were academic historians during the Nineteenth Century Woman Movement, as well as the Twentieth Century Suffrage Movement, then the emphasis in the historical profession was on the study of elites, events and institutions. Women were underrepresented in what historians studied as well as in the studies themselves. In the sixties historians became more interested in social history, or looking at the experiences of ordinary people. Women's history fit within this framework; the rise of social history created a more receptive audience for the study of women than was true of such disciplines as political science and economics where the growth fields were quantitative analysis of demographic, voting and survey data in which women were merely degendered respondents. The convergence of opportunity and demand has meant there are incentives to fill in the gaps in women's history. Anyone doing research on women twenty-five years ago found little published historiography and most of that made broad generalizations about broad topics, usually on the national level. One had to either spend enormous amounts of time finding and reading original sources or accept the generalizations at face value and use one's imagination to fill in the gaps. One scholar's conclusions were rarely challenged or built upon by another because no one wanted to repeat what another had done or spend much time on a topic that had no professional prestige. One consequence of this lack of scholarly inquiry was that past press coverage was often the only source of information to modern writers. Another was that assumptions were made consistent with traditional stereotypes. For example one popular misconception was that feminism had failed after Suffrage; women had not used the vote to better their circumstances and feminists had retreated to their private lives. Another was that the addition of "sex" to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibiting employment discrimination was a joke perpetuated by a Southern Congressman hoping to discredit the entire bill. These and other myths are now retreating as in depth exploration and analysis of the historical record grows. The Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, by expanding our knowledge of our history, may well rewrite our consciousness of ourselves.