Writing women's history since the Renaissance / Mary Spongberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spongberg, Mary, 1965-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--History.

Women.

History.

Women--Historiography.

Women historians--History.

Women historians.

Feminism--Historiography.

Feminism.

Physical Description:

xii, 308 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Summary:

The complaint of Catherine Morland in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, that history has 'hardly any women at all', is not an uncommon one. Yet there is evidence to suggest that women have engaged in historical writing since ancient times. This study traces the history of women's historical writing, reclaiming the lives of individual women historians, recovering women's historical writings from the past and focusing on how gender has shaped the genre of history. Mary Spongberg brings together for the first time an extensive survey of the progress of women's historical writing from the Renaissance to the present, demonstrating the continuities between women's historical writings in the past and the development of a distinctly woman-centred historiography. Writing Women's History since the Renaissance also examines the relationship between women's history and the development of feminist consciousness, suggesting that the study of history has alerted women to their unequal status and enabled them to use history to achieve women's rights. Whether feminist or anti-feminist, women who have had their historical writings published have served as role models for women seeking a voice in the public sphere, and have been instrumental in encouraging the growth of a feminist discourse.

Contents:

Introduction: 'Hardly Any Women At All?'? Women Writers and the Gender of History 1

Gendering History 1

Gender and Genre 5

Women Writing History 8

Part I Men's History

1 The Classical Inheritance 15

The Classical Heritage 16

Ancient Historians and the Gendering of History 20

2 'All Histories Are Against You': Women and the History Men 34

Reforming History 35

The Historical Defence of Women 38

The Science of History 44

Enlightened History? 46

The Romantic Reaction 51

The History Men 57

Part II Women's History

3 'Above Their Sex'? Women's History 'before' Feminism 63

History as Feminine Pedagogy 64

Before Feminism 65

Reforming Women 67

Local Heroines 77

The History Women 80

4 History's Romantic Heroines: Women's History and Revolutionary Feminism 86

The Salon 87

Revolutionary Feminism 89

Foreign Correspondence 93

Romantic Revolutionaries 101

The Staelian Legacy 105

5 'Heroines of Domestic Life': Women's History and Female Biography 109

Domestic Woman 110

Domestic Heroism 113

Female Biography 115

History as Domestic Science 118

Feminising History 124

6 Women's History and the 'Woman Question' 130

Women's History and Feminist Consciousness 131

Before Suffrage 134

First-wave Feminism 136

First-wave Feminism and the Social Sciences 142

The Social Sciences and Social History 145

7 Amateurs or Professionals? Women's History in the Academy 150

Women and Higher Education 151

The European Experience 155

The Impact of War 160

Women's History in the Academy 165

History and the Feminine Mystique 167

8 'Clio's Consciousness Raised'? Women's Liberation and Women's History 172

The Emergence of Women's Liberation 173

Radical History? 176

Women's Historians and Women's Liberation 179

Clio's Consciousness Raised? 184

9 Liberating Women's History? Feminism and the Reconstruction of History 189

Radical Feminism and the History of Women's Oppression 189

Victim History? 192

The Culture of True Womanhood 194

The Class Challenge 199

Women's Culture and Cultural Feminism 203

10 Surpassing the History of Men: Women's History and Lesbian History 209

Sex Wars 209

Women's History and the Lesbian Continuum 212

The Elusive Qustion of Female Friendship 213

Lesbian Sex and Sexology 217

Sex Radical, Butch/Femme 221

Doing 'It'? 225

Making Things Perfectly Queer? 227

Conclusion: Dealing with Difference 229

All the Women Were White? 231

Dealing with Difference 236

Poststructuralist Postscript 239.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-292) and index.

ISBN:

0333726685

OCLC:

50314726