2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

“Telling the Story of Feminism on the Web: What can be learned from the conflicts, compromises, and criticisms of doing digital feminist history?”

Ten years ago, Roy Rosenzweig and Daniel J. Cohen characterized digital history as fraught with both “promises and perils.”  Describing the Internet as “a less structured and controlled environment” than the conventional sources of historical analysis, they noted it could “have both positive and unsettling implications” for telling history.

In the decade since, many historians have embraced the greater flexibility of the web and the access it provides to a broader audience, but they have also confronted the complexities that come with those benefits.  From this pool of digital veterans, the creators of digital projects that address enduring social problems are a particularly interesting group, bridging the past and the present as they combine the rigor of historical analysis with the desire to enlighten as activists.

The team behind “Click! The Ongoing Feminist Revolution,” a multifaceted, multi-media web exhibit about the history of feminism in America since the 1940s, is one example of this digital history cohort. How did we envision sharing the history of feminism with a broad web audience?  What productive complications developed as part of the creative process? How will we handle the expectations of web users that the exhibit evolve and change? These and other questions shape our own difficult conversations about the telling of women’s history on the web and will be especially relevant for a heterogeneous 2017 Berks audience.