Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: ohaping the Public Good
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 5/17/1937
WEBSITE:
CITY: Portland
STATE: OR
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Armitage * https://history.wsu.edu/faculty/emeriti-faculty/ * http://www.blackpast.org/contributor/armitage-susan
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born May 17, 1937.
EDUCATION:Wellesley College, bachelor’s degree, 1959; San Jose State College, master’s degree, 1965; University of London, Ph.D., 1968.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Historian, educator, writer, and editor. University of Colorado, Boulder, assistant professor of history, 1973-78, also directed of the Boulder Women’s Oral History Project; Washington State University, Pullman, began as director of women’s studies and assistant professor of history, also directed the American Studies program, then professor emeritus, 1978–; Women of the West Museum, Denver, Colorado, 1991-97. Also Mellon scholar at the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley, MA, 1984; Hilliard scholar at the University of Nevada at Reno, 1990; Distinguished Fulbright Chair in American History at Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia, 1995; and senior fellow at the Bienecke Library and at the Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders at Yale University, New Haven, CT, 2003-04.
WRITINGS
Editor of Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, 1995-2003. Papers are in a collection at the Washington State University Libraries.
SIDELIGHTS
Writing the Range
Historian Susan Armitage who focuses primarily on U.S. women’s history, especially women settlers and other women in the early American West. Armitage is coeditor with Elizabeth Jameson and author of an intrudcution to Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women’s West. The book features twenty-nine essays focusing on the role of women from all races in the settlement of the American West and its subsequent development. Discussing issues such as gender, race, and class, contributors present the voices of women whose role in the American West is largely unknown, from Spanish-Mexican settlers and American Indians on what was once the northern frontier of New Spain to a host of women immigrants from countries around the world. The essays include reflections concerning the twentieth century as contributors discuss movie stars such as Dolores del Rio and the movement of Navajo Indians and African Americans westward during World War II.
“The volume’s content is so rich that even a selective reading introduces stimulating new perspectives for examining the history of women, gender, and the human experience,” wrote Kriste Lindenmeyer in a review for the Historian. Glenda Riley Ball, writing for Journal of American Ethnic History, remarked: “Writing the Range is a mighty book, running over six hundred pages and bringing together pioneering work that is already reshaping Western history and may revise national history, as well.”
So Much to Be Done
Armitage is coeditor with Ruth B. Moynihan an Christiane Fischer Duchamp of So Much to Be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier. The book features the voice of 19 women who kept records of their experiences on the American frontier during the nineteenth century. For example, one woman recounts her observations concerning hard-drinking miners and frontier justice in California mid-nineteenth century, including the death of her father in a barroom fight. Another women recounts how she went from being a captive of Indians into a female cattle baron. Yet another Indian woman discusses the forced resettlement of her tribe.
The book is broken up into three parts, beginning with a focus on California, Nevada, and the Northwest from 1800-1883. The second part features the stories of women living in the high plains and the Rocky Mountains from 1870-1890. The third and final section features women from the southwestern desert area from 1863 to 1900. So Much to Be Done includes illustrations. The “defeats and triumphs of the harsh 19th-century American frontier are portrayed vividly,” wrote Publishers Weekly contributor Penny Kaganoff.
Women's Oral History
In Women’s Oral History: The Frontiers Reader, editors Armitage, Patricia Hart, and Karen Weathermon present reprints from Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies from issues published between 1977 and 1998. The journal was on the vanguard of the what was the emerging file of women’s oral history, publishing an issue in 1977 devoted to the subject. The essays in the book focus on the development of and approaches to women’s oral histories. It also includes descriptions of a number of interviewees, from farm women to Paiute Indians and urban Chicanas.
“While Women’s Oral History cannot by itself bear the full weight of guiding those who interview women, it succeeds as a thoughtful and inspiring selection of essays,” wrote Oregon Historical Quarterly contributor Laura McCreery. Kathryn L. Nasstrom, writing for Biography, remarked: “These essays … reveal that the theoretical frameworks for analyzing women’s oral history are expanding and deepening, as authors draw on frameworks as diverse as social work and post-colonial studies to understand what women say in their oral histories.”
Speaking History
Armitage and Laurie Mercier are the compilers of Speaking History: Oral Histories of the American Past, 1865-Present. The editors feature the personal reflections of ordinary people in connection with historical events or themes. Designed to supplement historical texts, Speaking History presents the oral histories in chronological order within five sections, beginning with a section focusing on the time from 1965 to 1900. Themes within this section include race relations, the American frontier, and immigration.
The book’s section section covers from 1900 to 1920 and includes oral histories about World War I and race and work in the American South. The third section, 1920-1945, includes a look at the Great Depression and World War II. The next sections covers 1945 through 1965 and includes reflections about the Civil Rights movement and common everyday life. The final section, covering 1965-2000, focuses largely on social change, from the gender revolution to economic changes and challenges. Armitage and Mercier “have created a truly exciting, useful book for undergraduates to learn about U.S. history,” wrote Choice contributor J.B. Wolford.
Shaping the Public Good
In her book titled Shaping the Public Good: Women Making History in the Pacific Northwest, Armitage writes about the largely forgotten but important role women’s community building and cooperative skills played in the development of societies in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, and British Columbia. Focusing on both the famous an the forgotten, Armitage’s history dates back to 10000 BCE. Throughout the book, Armitage emphasizes that women were far more than mere observers when it came to society and the public good. From the Native Indian women of the region to recent immigrants, Armitage presents their stories within the context of their times.
Writing in the book’s introduction, Armitage notes that the inspiration for her book is the story called “She Who Watches,” a Wishram people story of Tsagigla’lal, a woman chief of all who lived in her region. Then the Coyote came and told her times were changing and would soon be a world in which no women were chiefs. He then turned Tsagigla’lal into a rock to watch down over her tribe forever. “Tsagigla‘lal’s continuing watchfulness epitomizes the ways in which women have always made history,” writes Armitage. Calling Shaping the Pubic Good “a wonderful book,” Choice contributor B.C. Sarjeant went on to note: “An annotated list of sources follows each chapter, piquing readers’ interest.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Armitage, Susan. Shaping the Public Good: Women Making History in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon State University Press (Corvallis, OR), 2015.
PERIODICALS
Biography, fall, 2003, Kathryn L. Nasstrom, review of Women’s Oral History: The Frontiers Reader, p. 725.
Booklist, March 15, 1997, Brad Hooper, review of Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women’s West, p. 1209.
Choice, October, 2010, J.B. Walford, review of Speaking Histories: Oral Histories of the American Past, 1865-Present, p. 366; June, 2016, B.C. Sarjeant, review of Shaping the Public Good: Women Making History in the Pacific Northwest, p. 1529.
Historian, summer, 1999, Kristen Lindenmeyer, review of Writing the Range, p. 910.
Journal of American Ethnic History, winter, 1998, Glenda Riley, review of Writing the Range, p. 91.
Publishers Weekly, June 1, 1990, Penny Kaganoff, review of So Much to Be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier, p. 55.
Oregon Historical Quarterly, summer, 2004, Laura McCreery, review of Women’s Oral History, p. 338.
ONLINE
Black Past Web site, http://www.blackpast.org/ (May 18, 2017), author contributor profile.
Washington State University Department of History Web site, https://history.wsu.edu/ (May 18, 2017), author faculty profile.*
Susan Armitage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Susan Armitage is an American historian.[1][2][3] She is an authority on women in the American West, and was one of the first scholars to consider the role of women in the American West.[1]
Biography
In 1959 Susan Armitage earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Wellesley College, in 1965 she earned a master's degree in American history from San Jose State College, and in 1968 she earned a PhD from the University of London.[3]
Armitage was a visiting assistant history professor at the University of Colorado from 1973 to 1978, and directed the Boulder Women's Oral History Project while there.[3] In 1978 she became Washington State University's first director of women's studies and also became an assistant history professor there.[3] She also directed the WSU American Studies program, and developed and taught the first two undergraduate U.S. women's history courses at WSU.[3] In 1991 she was recruited by the founder of the Women of the West Museum in Colorado, and she worked with the museum until 1997.[3] From February to June 1995 she was the Distinguished Fulbright Chair in American History at Moscow State University.[3] As well, from that year until 2003 she edited Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies.[1]
In 1984 she was a Mellon Scholar at the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, and in 1990 she was a Hilliard Scholar at the University of Nevada at Reno. In 2003-2004, she was a Senior Fellow at the Beinecke Library and also the Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders at Yale University.[3] In 2003 she was invited to the White House due to her work.[3] In 2008 she was declared Washington State University Woman of the Year.[3]
In 2008 she donated a collection of her papers to the Washington State University Libraries.[3]
Selected works
Out of Many, Volume 1: A History of the American People, co-written with John Mack Faragher, Mari Jo Buhle, and Daniel Czitrom, Prentice Hall, 2005.
Shaping the Public Good: Women Making History in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon State University Press, 2015.
Speaking History: Oral Histories of the American Past, 1865-Present, co-edited with Laurie Mercier, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
The Women's West, co-edited with Elizabeth Jameson, University of Oklahoma Press, 1987.
Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West, co-edited with Elizabeth Jameson. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Sue Armitage lives in Portland, Oregon. In 2010, she and Laurie Mercier published Speaking History (Palgrave Macmillan), a collection of oral history excerpts illuminating U.S. history since 1865. She remains a coauthor of the US history textbook Out of Many now in its eighth edition. Most recently, in October 2015, she published Shaping the Public Good: Women Making History in the Pacific Northwest, which presents a new view of the history of the Pacific Northwest and how women of all races and ethnicities created it.
Her email remains armitage@wsu.edu.
Susan Armitage is Claudius O. and Mary Johnson Distinguished Professor of History at Washington State University and Director of the Center for Columbia River History. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of London (London School of Economics and Political Science). An authority on women in the U.S. West, she is the co-editor of The Women’s West (1987), So Much to Be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier (1990) and Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women’s West. Armitage is the is a co-author of the U.S. history textbook, Out of Many (Prentice Hall) and from 1995 to 2003 she edited Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. - See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/contributor/armitage-susan#sthash.o5OnHHOa.dpuf
Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West
Brad Hooper
93.14 (Mar. 15, 1997): p1209.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1997 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
This significant anthology of 29 essays brings out from the overarching shadow of "male" history the participation of women in the settlement and development of the American West. With topics ranging from interracial marriage to cross-gender sexual behavior, to female Asian immigrants, struggles to secure adequate food and shelter, these writings expand the parameters of western history in terms of race and class as well as gender. Each essay represents exacting scholarship, but all points made are as accessible as they are learned. The compilation takes important steps toward a wilder recognition "of all the stories and of all the actors" that western history represents.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hooper, Brad. "Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West." Booklist, 15 Mar. 1997, p. 1209+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA19269168&it=r&asid=c235c393c934d4274b1b6e5eaa3a20d8. Accessed 2 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A19269168
So Much to Be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier
Penny Kaganoff
237.22 (June 1, 1990): p55.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1990 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
SO MUCH TO BE DONE Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier Challenges, defeats and triumphs of the harsh 19th-century American frontier are portrayed vividly through the words of 19 women who wrote of their experiences. Mrs. Lee Whipple-Haslam, whose father died in a barroom fight, describes hard-drinking mineres and frontier justice in 1850s California. Mrs. J. W. Likins supports herself and her daughter by traveling to different towns as a "lady agent" selling engraved pictures of General Grant. A particularly intrepid woman, Mrs. Nat Collins, is captured by Indians and loses her possessions in a fire but ultimately triumphs to become "Cattle Queen of Montana." Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, daughter of a Piute chief recalls the forced midwinter relocation of her tribe from their Nevada homeland to the Yakima reservation in eastern Washington. In Colorado territory, Sister Blandina Segale (a nun) stops a lynch mob and prevents an illegal attempt to take over a mine. Moynihan wrote Rebel for Rights: Abigail Scott Duniway; Armitage is co-editor of The Women's West; and Dichamp edited Let Them Speak for Themselves: Women in the American West, 1849-1900. Illustrations not seen by PW. BOMC, QPB and History Book Club selections. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kaganoff, Penny. "So Much to Be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier." Publishers Weekly, 1 June 1990, p. 55. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA9075567&it=r&asid=c57606f7dacc795bc0027afb17ef6a19. Accessed 2 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A9075567
Armitage, Susan. Shaping the public good: women making history in the Pacific Northwest
B.C. Sarjeant
53.10 (June 2016): p1529.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Armitage, Susan. Shaping the public good: women making history in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon State, 2015. 349p bibl Index ISBN 9780870718168 pbk, $22.95; ISBN 9780870718175 ebook, contact publisher for price
(cc) 53-4519
HQ1438
2015-30645 CIP
Armitage (emer., women's studies, Washington State Univ.), a scholar of women in the western US, has drawn upon her years of research to write a wonderful book on the influence of women in the "Greater Northwest"; i.e., the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho; the western portion of Montana; and the province of British Columbia. Armitage writes about "the famous, the forgotten, and the women in between" from 10000 BCE to today. She includes all racial and cultural groups, from Natives to recent immigrants, and their influences and experiences woven into the times in which they lived. Examples include the influence of Native and Metis women during the fur trade, for example, and the influence that women in Oregon and Washington had nationally on labor reform. An annotated list of sources follows each chapter, piquing readers' interest in pursuing them. As the book progresses to the contemporary period, so does the level of detail presented, no doubt due to the abundance of sources available for more recent times. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries.--B. C. Sarjeant, Northern Michigan University
Sarjeant, B.C.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Sarjeant, B.C. "Armitage, Susan. Shaping the public good: women making history in the Pacific Northwest." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1529. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942930&it=r&asid=65ba5f41e32903d6cb58e924107248de. Accessed 2 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942930
Speaking history: oral histories of the American past, 1865-present
J.B. Wolford
48.2 (Oct. 2010): p366.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
48-1074
E661
2009-23411 CIP
Speaking history: oral histories of the American past, 1865-present, [compiled] by Sue Armitage and Laurie Mercier. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 200p bibl ISBN 9781403977823, $90.00; ISBN 9781403977830 pbk, $26.95
Palgrave has established a solid reputation as a premier publisher of oral history scholarship, and this book furthers it. The primary significance of this work is that it beautifully bridges the gap between book-driven history and field-driven history. In five chronological sections, covering 1865-2000, compilers Armitage (Washington State Univ., Pullman) and Mercier (Washington State Univ., Vancouver) adeptly integrate the narrator's personal reflections and experiences with a crucial historical theme, event, or movement. Students will be able to understand major historical points through conventional archive- and library-derived histories and the words of people who lived through those times. Oral histories are excellent at humanizing specific times, events, incidents, or groups, but one that integrates firsthand, oral, historical observations with conventional history over the broad sweep of the 1865-2000 period is rare. Armitage and Mercier do this masterfully, Covering the major themes of race, labor, immigration, migration, gender, civil rights, leisure, war, and the economy in concise and contextualized sections, these scholars have created a truly exciting, useful book for undergraduates to learn about US history and understand it from the inside out. Summing Up: Essential. **** All levels/libraries.--J. B. Wolford, University of Missouri--St. Louis
Wolford, J.B.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Wolford, J.B. "Speaking history: oral histories of the American past, 1865-present." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Oct. 2010, p. 366. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA249220990&it=r&asid=b5f2aa5f8dd61c9e586dda23a39b65f7. Accessed 2 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A249220990
Women's Oral History: the Frontiers Reader
Laura McCreery
105.2 (Summer 2004): p338.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 Oregon Historical Society
http://www.ohs.org/homepage.html
Women's Oral History: The Frontiers Reader Edited by Susan H. Armitage, with Patricia Hart and Karen Weathermon
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2002. Photographs, notes, index. 408 pages. $29.95 paper.
SOME PRACTITIONERS OF oral history subscribe to the notion of a thirty-year rule. That is, they have come to believe it takes about thirty years after a major historic event for society to look that event squarely in the eye. Any lesser span of time is somehow awkward; the aftermath of the event is too evident, the participants too raw, and public opinion too subjective. But let a full generation pass, and the time for oral history becomes ripe. Think of the civil rights advances of the 1960s or the height of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s.
There's a certain moment in Women's Oral History: The Frontiers Reader when one realizes with full force that the research method we call women's oral history now meets the thirty-year test. Here is the anthology that recollects and deconstructs that moment, that fork in the road, when interviews on women's lives were pronounced distinct from men's. The assessment of where things started and what has changed comes from key participants and witnesses in their own words, making the book a sort of meta-history of women's oral research on the lives of other women.
Central to this long view is the essay "Reflections on Women's Oral History," based on an electronic exchange between the anthology's lead editor, Susan H. Armitage, and Sherna Berger Gluck, both professors of history and women's studies who have shaped this concept from its inception. The book consists of reprints from issues of the women's studies journal Frontiers published between 1977 and 1998, along with Armitage's and Gluck's recent comments on the state of women's oral history. (The electronic discussion with one another is odd, though, for people who have built their careers on live conversations.)
The big questions are familiar. What are the pros and cons of being an insider or an outsider among those you interview? What are the considerations before starting a project, and what are the responsibilities during and after? How can we best make allowances for cultural and language issues? Finally, as Armitage asks, "Is there really a female subculture in all times and places, and does it really function as a defense against male dominance?" (p. 68) The treatment of some questions is thoughtful and routine, but the matter of women's subculture has the scholars politely sparring. We need this.
Do not fear that Women's Oral History is solely an exercise in academic navel-gazing, which the authors caution against. The collection is far broader than a scholarly assessment. Its three parts--Basic Approaches, Oral History Applications, and Oral History Discoveries and Insights--include myriad voices from many academic communities, and the interviewees described in the essays range from coal-mine strikers and millworkers to farm women, Paiute Indians, and urban Chicanas.
A number of the essays have been anthologized or developed into book-length studies since their original appearance in Frontiers. Judy Yung's study of her Chinese American forebears, Sally Roesch Wagner's biography of suffragist Matilda Joslin Gage, and Amy Kesselman's work on Northwest shipyard workers in Portland and Vancouver (presented here with co-authors Tina Tau and Karen Wickre) have all appeared as books. Even Gluck's useful essay from 1977, "What's So Special about Women?" has been widely available for years in Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (1984).
The book's treatment of oral history methods in general and of women's issues in particular is not new. Those approaching the practical aspects of oral history for the first time will want to look elsewhere for the basics. Others who use this anthology in the classroom may want to pair it with other substantial works in women's studies and oral history methods. While Women's Oral History cannot by itself bear the full weight of guiding those who interview women, it succeeds as a thoughtful and inspiring selection of essays.
Now that some oral historians of women have accomplished so much, those coming along later are fortunate to build upon groundwork already laid. The "invention" of women's oral history may not rank with civil rights or war as an event in our collective consciousness, but if the thirty-year rule holds, we can now face that invention with a clearer eye. To that end, this volume is essential.
Reviewed by Jerry R. Galm Eastern Washington University, Cheney
McCreery, Laura
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
McCreery, Laura. "Women's Oral History: the Frontiers Reader." Oregon Historical Quarterly, Summer 2004, p. 338. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA118951656&it=r&asid=b1d6f4d59e3ea5fa1beaa93c67d72d90. Accessed 2 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A118951656
Women's Oral History: The 'Frontiers' Reader
Kathryn L. Nasstrom
26.4 (Fall 2003): p725.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 University of Hawaii Press
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/t-biography.aspx
Susan H. Armitage, with Patricia Hart and Karen Weathermon. Women's Oral History: The 'Frontiers' Reader. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. 392 pp. ISBN 0-8032-5944-1, $29.95.
Women's Oral History reprints a selection of essays on the practice and interpretation of women's oral history that were originally published in the journal Frontiers between 1977 and 2001. The result is a sampler of a quarter century of women's oral history, and a collection that, somewhat necessarily, chooses breadth of coverage over depth. The volume is organized into three sections: Basic Approaches, which the editors identify as the "why" and "how" of doing women's oral history; Oral History Applications, which covers the uses of oral history in media presentations, teaching, life review, and various forms of writing about women's lives; and Oral History Discoveries and Insights, which contains examples of oral history's significance in recovering "lost segments of women's history" (xi). The contributors to this volume range over many disciplines (history, literary studies, anthropology, linguistics, ethnic studies, American studies, psychology, along with women's studies), while some describe themselves as artists, writers, poets, and activists. The geographic scope of the volume is also far-ranging. Of the essays that focus on the particular experiences of a woman or group of women, the majority are about the United States (although representing a range of racial, ethnic, and class subgroups); two concern England; and one each deals with East Africa and the Middle East. A reader will leave the volume with a sense of the vitality and diversity of women's oral history, both where it has been and its recent manifestations.
Since Frontiers has consistently published women's oral history, this volume provides a fascinating genealogy of the field. Reading the volume straight through, as I did for this review, reveals an evolution of women's oral history. The field had its origins in the ferment of second-wave feminism in the 1970s, and the early years were characterized by a sense of discovery, excitement, and political import. Based on the selections in this volume, it seems that the process of doing oral history captured early practitioners' attention more than the content and meaning of the interviews themselves. By the early 1980s, the field had developed to a point that it was grappling with a range of complexities related to the practice of oral history, the meaning of the material recorded, and the relationship between the interviewee and interviewer at both the level of process and interpretation. Today, we are still working in that often murky terrain, but the most recent essays in this volume show a greater attention to the interpretation of oral history material, even though the practice of oral history is still very much under discussion. These essays also reveal that the theoretical frameworks for analyzing women's oral history are expanding and deepening, as authors draw on frameworks as diverse as social work and post-colonial studies to understand what women say in their oral histories.
While the volume effectively shows the development of women's oral history, it has certain drawbacks. Since all of the essays derive from the pages of one journal, these are not necessarily the best nor the most representative works in women's oral history. For a full sense of where the field has been and where it is going, readers would have to turn additionally to other volumes, notably Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (eds. Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai [New York: Routledge, 1991]), and to the pages of journals such as Oral History Review, the International Journal of Oral History, and as oral history is increasingly "mainstreamed," to other field-specific journals. Also, the reader will not get more than an introduction to any given application of women's oral history. The pieces in the applications section on teaching and media uses of oral history, for example, describe wonderfully creative work, but they do not provide a sense of how these cases fit into the range of practice, nor do they give much guidance on how to replicate such exemplary projects. Some of these drawbacks could have been partially offset by a longer introduction to the volume as a whole, as well as to each section, and ideally, to each individual essay. Each of these pieces was written at a particular moment in the development of the field of women's oral history. Having those moments explicated by the editors would have helped the reader understand the significance of each piece, both within this volume and within women's oral history. No single volume can contain or do all of this, of course, and the editors' intent, which is to gather material so as to "illustrate the important role that women's oral history has played in our developing knowledge about the history of women," is met admirably (xii).
Nasstrom, Kathryn L.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Nasstrom, Kathryn L. "Women's Oral History: The 'Frontiers' Reader." Biography, vol. 26, no. 4, 2003, p. 725+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA113146903&it=r&asid=8afb3b29144c92a0aeab99a8211b2c23. Accessed 2 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A113146903
Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West
Kriste Lindenmeyer
61.4 (Summer 1999): p910.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1999 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc.
Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West. Edited with introductions by Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Pp. xii, 656. $21.95.)
Writing the Range is an excellent collection of 29 essays organized under seven themes that share an emphasis on women and/or gender in the history of the American West. The majority of the articles have appeared elsewhere, but that does not diminish the refreshing contribution this book makes to American history.
Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage include brief opening remarks for each section and a wonderfully thorough introduction that opens with a reference to Armitage's 1983 address at the first Women's West Conference. At the time, Armitage described the existing historiography of the American West as "`Hisland'--a mythical place perpetuated in Western history texts and survey courses, where seldom was heard a discouraging word, and never a woman's voice" (3). This book, as well as their 1987 volume, The Women's West, successfully exposes the weaknesses of "Hisland" history by including the complexities of race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, and religion in the story of the American West. Nonetheless, as the authors ask, "How then, in all this historical variety, do we find common lenses through which to view diverse experiences?" Jameson and Armitage answer that Peggy Pascoe's model of gender as a "common crossroads" is the best means to linking such diverse histories--a convincing argument when examining this excellent collection (9). Indeed, the authors of this volume write creative and well-supported histories that provide useful frameworks for anyone seeking similarly inclusive studies of other regions, eras, and topics.
For example, the volume's fifth section, entitled "Empowerment" pushes readers to "question the cultural biases that have kept us from recognizing the full range of women's activism" (350). The articles discuss the impact of race and ethnicity in women's efforts to control their lives. The authors challenge not only traditionally focused "white male history" but also women's history that fails to question generally accepted assumptions about race, ethnicity, and class.
Although this collection is a welcome and well-crafted anthology, the volume's heavy emphasis on articles that examine the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is a weakness for any "inclusive" history. The editors' choice of a thematic organization, rather than one based on chronology, may partly explain this situation. It also suggests how little is known about women and gender in the West before the American Civil War. The book also lacks attention to the recent environmental history arguments--particularly as they might relate to gender in the U.S. West. Nonetheless, here again the problem may be a lack of attention by historians, rather than poor judgement on the part of this volume's editors.
These slight weaknesses do little to hamper the important contribution of this work. Writing the Range is thick, and its content is dense. It is certainly something that would fit a graduate-level course, but the book is perhaps too much for most undergraduate women's or U.S. Western history classes. Yet, the volume's content is so rich that even a selective reading introduces stimulating new perspectives for examining the history of women, gender, and the human experience.
Kriste Lindenmeyer
Tennessee Technological University
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lindenmeyer, Kriste. "Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West." The Historian, vol. 61, no. 4, 1999, p. 910. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA56909097&it=r&asid=a301082f4fba1ff016b530086d24e9f5. Accessed 2 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A56909097
Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West
Glenda Riley
17.2 (Winter 1998): p91.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1998 University of Illinois Press
http://www.iehs.org/journal.html
Long in the making but well worth the wait, this collection brings together twenty-nine essays about women of varied racial, ethnic, and social class backgrounds who lived in the American West. The articles, which begin with early Native Americans and conclude in the 1960s, constitute a "must read" for ethnic historians, especially those anxious to understand what issues currently engage historians of western women, as well as the diverse directions such topics can take.
Some original and others previously published, the essays provide a model for what could and should be done for other parts of the United States. Writing the Range brings together authors with expertise in anthropology, English, history, sociology and American, Asian, Indian, Regional, and Women's Studies. Subjects range from widowhood and captivity in colonial New Mexico to Asian and African American women during World War II. If the collection is light on any one group it is the latter, African Americans.
The bibliographies at the end of the volume alone are worth the price of the volume. As Jameson and Armitage note, because race and ethnicity are not the same, they have sometimes "collapsed ethnic distinctions into racial categories for purposes of establishing legal and social power relationships" (p. 7). As a result, the bibliographies are arranged primarily by race: they include a general bibliography as well as lists of work pertaining to African American, Asian American, Euro-American Ethnic, Native American women, and Latinas/Hispanas.
Despite its thoughtfulness, however, the volume fails to come to grips with some basic questions. Perhaps most latent and powerful is the issue of the purpose "dominant group" history has served in the past. Underlying Writing the Range is the assumption that previous neglect of racial and ethnic groups was evil and misguided, a situation to be remedied as soon as possible. Although there is some validity to this viewpoint, rewriting a nation's collective past demands more analysis, philosophical investigation, and explanation than it receives here, especially for the unconverted.
Also, the collection's overall tone (along with some specific statements) tries too hard to establish the ethnic/racial approach to Western women's history as "new." The result is neglect of the historiographical background showing the gradual development of including such critical factors as race in historical studies. In 1982, for example, Sandra Myres's Westering Women encompassed Hispanic women. Other similar examples not only abound but also paved the way for more specific studies.
In addition, why the West? Is there some reason for analyzing racial and other types of women grouped according to a region of the country? Did the West have a higher proportion of such women than did other regions, or did Western patterns of interaction provide a model for other regions? Many speculations are possible, but it would be helpful to have had the essays set in regional context for us.
Still, Writing the Range is a mighty book, running over six hundred pages and bringing together pioneering work that is already reshaping Western history and may revise national history, as well. For example, the editors suggest that the "time lines and periods" of American history may change. "Accurate histories must include the relationships among all the actors," they argue (p. 13). It is impossible, at least for this reviewer, to disagree.
Glenda Riley Ball State University
Glenda Riley teaches in the History Department at Ball State University. Her books include Inventing the American Women: An Inclusive History, 2 vols. (1995) and ed. Prairie Voices: Iowa's Pioneering Women (1996).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Riley, Glenda. "Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West." Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 17, no. 2, 1998, p. 91+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA20564005&it=r&asid=21a9aa18a1fd25311274f75aa07eebfe. Accessed 2 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A20564005
9 Introduction Preceding page: Tsagigla’lal, still watching from the banks of the Columbia River (courtesy of Kristine Birch) 11 T his book takes its inspiration from the story of Tsagigla‘lal, She Who Watches, whose face is carved into a rock overlooking the Columbia River. The Wishram people tell her story this way: A woman had a house where the village of [Wishram] was later built. . . . She was chief of all who lived in this region. That was long ago, before Coyote came up the river and changed things, and people were not yet real people. After a time Coyote in his travels came to this place and asked the inhabitants if they were living well or ill. They sent him to their chief, who lived up in the rocks, where she could look down on the village and know all that was going on. Coyote climbed up to her home and asked: “What kind of living do you give these people? Do you treat them well, or are you one of those evil women?”—“I am teaching them how to live well and to build good houses,” she said. “Soon the world is going to change,” he told her, “and women will no longer be chiefs. You will be stopped from being a chief.” Then he changed her into a rock, with the command,“You shall stay here and watch over the people who live at this place.” All the people know that she sees all things, for whenever they are looking up at her those large eyes are watching them. Tsagigla‘lal’s continuing watchfulness epitomizes the ways in which women have always made history. Although, as the story tells us, after “people [became] real people” women were stopped from being chiefs, with Coyote’s help Tsagigla‘lal kept right on guiding her community and guarding its development. Today women hold a number of official leadership positions, but their mothers, grandmothers, and women before them followed Tsagigla‘lal’s way. Excluded from positions of public authority, women worked persistently and cooperatively with other women to protect their families and build their communities, and in so doing they made our regional history. Like She Who Watches, women have never been mere observers, but in fact have been watchful guardians and active shapers of the public good. It is time for the history of the Greater Northwest—the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia—to reflect that reality. In the past several decades, there has been an outpouring of books, articles, films, and exhibits on women. Each one has added to our knowledge about individual women, 12 INTRODUCTION but few have changed popular understanding, leaving the impression that women were only minor characters in the making of our regional history. I aim to change that with this book. First, let me locate my boundaries. The region that environmental historian William Robbins has called “the Greater Pacific Northwest,” which I have shortened to “Greater Northwest” for e