Telling histories : Black women historians in the ivory tower / edited by Deborah Gray White.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

White, Deborah G. (Deborah Gray), 1949-

Series:

Gender & American culture.

Gender & American culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American women--Historiography.

African American women.

African American historians--Biography.

African American historians.

Women historians--United States--Biography.

Women historians.

African American women--Biography.

African American women--Social conditions.

Historiography--Social aspects--United States.

Historiography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (291 p., [12] p. of plates : ill. ; 25 cm.).

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, c2008.

Summary:

The field of black women's history gained recognition as a legitimate field of study only late in the twentieth century. Collecting stories that are both deeply personal and powerfully political, Telling Histories compiles seventeen personal narratives by leading black women historians at various stages in their careers. Their essays illuminate how--first as graduate students and then as professional historians--they entered and navigated the realm of higher education, a world concerned with and dominated by whites and men. In distinct voices and from different vantage points, the personal histories revealed here also tell the story of the struggle to establish a new scholarly field. Black women, alleged by affirmative-action supporters and opponents to be "twofers, " recount how they have confronted racism, sexism, and homophobia on college campuses. They explore how the personal and the political intersect in historical research and writing and in the academy. Organized by the years the contributors earned their Ph.D.'s, these essays follow the black women who entered the field of history during and after the civil rights and black power movements, endured the turbulent 1970s, and opened up the field of black women's history in the 1980s. By comparing the experiences of older and younger generations, this collection makes visible the benefits and drawbacks of the institutionalization of African American and African American women's history. Telling Histories captures the voices of these pioneers, intimately and publicly. Contributors: Elsa Barkley Brown, University of Maryland Mia Bay, Rutgers University Leslie Brown, Washington University in St. Louis Crystal N. Feimster, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Sharon Harley, University of Maryland Wanda A. Hendricks, University of South Carolina Darlene Clark Hine, Northwestern University Chana Kai Lee, University of Georgia Jennifer L. Morgan, New York University Nell Irvin Painter, Newark, New Jersey Merline Pitre, Texas Southern University Barbara Ransby, University of Illinois at Chicago Julie Saville, University of Chicago Brenda Elaine Stevenson, University of California, Los Angeles Ula Taylor, University of California, Berkeley Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Morgan State University Deborah Gray White, Rutgers University Telling Histories compiles seventeen personal narratives by leading black women historians at various stages in their careers, illuminating how they entered and navigated higher education, a world concerned with--and dominated by--whites and men. In distinct voices and from different vantage points, the personal histories revealed here also tell the story of the struggle to establish the fields of African American and African American women's history. The contributors are Elsa Barkley Brown, Mia Bay, Leslie Brown, Crystal N. Feimster, Sharon Harley, Wanda A. Hendricks, Darlene Clark Hine, Chana Kai Lee, Jennifer L. Morgan, Nell Irvin Painter, Merline Pitre, Barbara Ransby, Julie Saville, Brenda Elaine Stevenson, Ula Taylor, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, and Deborah Gray White. The editor is Deborah Gray White. -->

Contents:

Introduction: A telling history / Deborah Gray White

Un essai d'ego-histoire / Nell Irvin Painter

Becoming a Black woman's historian / Darlene Clark Hine

A journey through history / Merline Pitre

Being and thinking outside of the box : a Black woman's experience in academia / Rosalyn Terborg-Penn

My history in history / Deborah Gray White

The politics of memory and place : reflections of an African American female scholar / Sharon Harley

History without illusion / Julie Saville

On the margins : creating a space and place in the academy / Wanda A. Hendricks

History lessons / Brenda Elaine Stevenson

The death of dry tears / Ula Taylor

Looking backward in order to go forward : Black women historians and Black women's history / Mia Bay

Journey toward a different self : the defining power of illness, race, and gender / Chana Kai Lee

Bodies of history / Elsa Barkley Brown

Experiencing Black feminism / Jennifer L. Morgan

Dancing on the edges of history, but never dancing alone / Barbara Ransby

How a hundred years of history tracked me down / Leslie Brown

Not so ivory : African American women historians creating academic communities / Crystal N. Feimster.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

979-88-908796-7-7

979-88-9313-202-1

1-4696-0476-0

0-8078-8912-1

OCLC:

742045933