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

June 01 - 04, 2017

This roundtable seeks to bring attention to the history of women's history by gathering together a cross-section of influencers to reassess their touchstone works and the shape of the field they helped foster.  Around fifty years after inception, it is fitting to bring attention to the work cultures and realities these scholars made visible as we face persistent inequities and new constraints.  Most centrally, we ask the question: should women's history sustain its singular foothold in the academy?  What critical edge do women's historians offer today?  Is there unfinished business to which we need to attend?  We ask these questions in light of and in connection with growing engagement in subjectivities (gender, LGBTQ, race/ethnic, religion, conservatism) and structural/spatial interests (global/transnational, neoliberal/capitalism, digital space). We intend for this panel to bring forward a "useable past" as much as refocus theoretical, conceptual, and activist-historian intentions in the field of women's history.  Co-moderators are junior faculty writing an intellectual history of the field, and seek to mark out the contours of our intellectual inheritance alongside new directions in scholarship. We envision this roundtable to launch a series of conversations and oral interviews about the professionalization of women's history and its variant intellectual strands. 

 Please note: Leandra Zarnow and Katherine Turk are Co-Commentator/Organizers