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

June 01 - 04, 2017

In 2013, the American Historical Association released “The Many Careers of History PhDs,” which revealed that approximately 25% of historians with PhDs work beyond the professoriate.  Within history and other disciplines, there has been a growing conversation about the career paths of PhDs. Telling stories of “quitting” the academy or of career aspirations that were always beyond it, it is women’s voices that frequently dominate the conversation. Yet the data show, in history at least, that women are not disproportionately represented inside or outside the academy.  Is choosing whether to work beyond the professoriate a feminist issue, or merely a feminized one?

It is this question, and related ones, that this panel seeks to investigate. Drawn from work in media, museums, and public humanities, the panelists will speak about the relationship between their graduate training and their career paths and choices.  The co-moderators will guide the conversation based on their work on Humanities Without Walls and the AHA’s Career Diversity for Historians initiative, both Mellon-funded programs aimed at expanding the career horizons of historians. Ultimately, the panel will seek to address the issues that unite historians working inside and outside the academy. How can graduate training be reimagined to better prepare future historians for the many careers open to them, and what are the stakes of the conversation? And perhaps most importantly, what tools and lessons learned from the study women, gender, and sexuality in history might be useful in this 21^st-century conversation?