Opinion: The role women historians play in preserving history

Though U.S. history textbooks acknowledge the contributions of Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Marie Curie and Harriet Tubman, multitudes of women whose invention, innovation and entrepreneurship  shaped our world have largely been excluded from the historical record.

Women such as Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Bessie Coleman, Victoria Cruz, Donna Hitchens, Grace Hopper, Hedy Lamarr, and Junko Tabei deserve to be preserved and shared with future generations. This has been the work of historians. Women historians.

These days, the historical profession, as a whole, is besieged by cutbacks, declining enrollments and — worst of all — attacks by authorities in various governmental jurisdictions. In the United States and abroad, these attacks are on critical thinking and truths — particularly but not limited to studies of gender, race and sexuality — that we attempt to impart to our students at all levels of education.

As a member of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, I see the necessity to challenge actively the critical justice issues of the day, as did our foremothers.

For almost a century, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians — no longer limited to women members — has challenged an evolving spectrum of injustices through its promotion of history. Founded in 1930 in response to that era’s marginalization of women historians in a male-dominated profession, they initially gathered annually in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. There they created opportunities for women to collaborate, recognize one another’s scholarship and bring the work of their sisters from the past into the light. From this gathering, the names of women historians such as Louise Brown, one of the group’s founders, an award-winning author who later became a Fellow of the Britain’s Royal Historical Society, Viola F. Barnes, a Fellow of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and Emily Hickman, who was appointed an aide to the U.S. delegation at the U.N. Conference in San Francisco in 1945, helped to elevate the standing of women in the profession.

Enthusiasm for women’s history among “second wave” feminists in the 1960s and 1970s made the Berkshire Conference a magnet for a new generation of ambitious scholars and activists. The emerging women’s movement set new goals for millions of women, giving rise, in 1973, to the expansion of the Berkshire Conference as a major national meeting. That conference resulted in the first edited collection in the field of women’s history, “Clio’s Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women” (Harper & Row, 1974). This work elevated the historical importance of gender as a category of analysis. Several of the contributors to the volume — including one of the editors, Lois Banner — are still active scholars.

Now, the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities, sometimes shortened to “Big Berks,” is a triennial gathering for those who seek to broaden history to include and sustain ignored voices and to reexamine the past to advance social, political, racial and gender justice from a global perspective.

From June 28 to July 2, more than 800 women historians and their allies from around the world will gather at Santa Clara University for Big Berks. We will address topics in the histories of every corner of the earth, focusing on gendered activism in politics, transnational movements, anti-violence movements, the arts, religion, reproductive justice, transgender justice, indigeneity, sexualities, disability movements, environmental movements, historical archives, biographies and many other areas.

Like our foremothers from the 1970s, who will be speaking in a plenary session on ”We Have Changed History,” our new generation of historians will also change history in two ways –both with new approaches to the writing of history and by working for the advancement of gendered justice. Indeed, we are certain that the current cohort of historians of women, genders and sexualities will help set the stage to fight back against anti-critical race theory, anti-LGBTQ history and misogynist laws and theories.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the “Big Berks,” we will honor our foremothers’ past scholarship and activism as we continue to face these challenges right here, right now.

Barbara Molony is a professor of history at Santa Clara University and co-president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians.