Chapter 10 The Women’s History Seminar

Background and founding

The year 1986 was a good time to start a seminar in women’s history. It was deep into the age of Margaret Thatcher, a woman who notoriously objected to any gendered analysis of her rise to power. But Thatcher and Thatcherism were not central to the founding of the Seminar. Of greater import was the advancement of second-wave feminism, which paralleled movements for racial equality and the insights of the New Left. These general movements had seen increasing numbers of women entering the academy and more and more of them were interested in understanding both women’s traditional roles in society and the ways these had been challenged. Additionally, academic research was developing that interrogated the breadth of women’s work and the specific way it had been both central to the working of modern society while at the same time being diminished as important or crucial to the economic and social structures underpinning every culture. Thus, the Seminar’s foundation represented an infiltration of the academy by forces that were already in evidence and gathering steam. It did not happen overnight but was the result of effective lobbying within the IHR and a recognition of the rising profile of women’s history within the larger category of history.

Women’s history had begun to take shape as a sub-disciplinary field of enquiry in the late 1960s and early 1970s as second-wave feminism began to forge ahead. It reflected the expansion of social history and its spotlight on non-elites as proper subjects of study. Also key was the increasing use of oral history as it systematically provided testimonies about everyday life that had not been available in the written record. This allowed access into lives back to the late nineteenth century.¹ By the 1970s there were more focused accounts of women’s fight for the vote, a recognition that their role in the industrial revolution was crucial, and that the division of labour between the sexes was not fixed but was often fluid from era to era. In the Anglophone world, in particular, this meant the increasing appearance of research and analysis of women’s roles throughout time and place. Sheila Rowbotham’s Hidden from History (1973) led the way.² Collections of essays like Clio’s Consciousness Raised (1974) and Suffer and Be Still (1972) brought together scholars from across the globe who studied periods from the ancient to the modern to offer analytical essays about women’s lives in the past.³ The London-based feminist publisher Virago (est. 1973) not only reprinted pertinent historical books from the past, it commissioned new ones, making women’s history a visible topic on bookshelves.⁴ As a student at a US women’s liberal arts college in the mid-1970s I was lucky to be able to take a semester-long module on European women’s history.⁵ The course was a bit over-ambitious with a reading list that ranged from John Stuart Mill’s On the Subjection of Women (1869), to George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession (1898), to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949). But for me the book we read that demonstrated how the history of women could be rigorously studied was Ivy Pinchbeck’s Women Workers in the Industrial Revolution. Published in 1930 this demanding economic history was exhaustive in laying out the many forms of women’s labour outside the home. It failed, in the short term, to spark studies that were female centred. However, by the 1970s women were once again on the agenda. As well as conferences where women’s past was explored, there were collections of essays published, and more academic research was begrudgingly supported on an institutional level.⁶ But the welcoming of women’s history was only slowly accepted and often depended on individual scholars cajoling funding from their institutions to support such ventures.

Scholars themselves often worked together to offer venues to present this new research. In Britain, the History Workshop movement unwittingly propelled some feminist activity when at a 1969 gathering at Ruskin College in Oxford, the mostly male audience ‘shrieked with laughter’ when Sheila Rowbotham suggested the history of women was a proper topic of research.⁷ Ruskin was a working-man’s college (adjacent to, but not part of, Oxford University), and thus, the historical study of trade unions was its general centre of attention. History Workshop itself was initially dedicated to history from below, especially by providing studies of work across a broad spectrum – but much of its scholarship illuminated men’s labour. Sally Alexander was one of two women enrolled at Ruskin at the time and she described how this spurred a group of women to organize what was to be a conference on women’s history, but swiftly shifted to women’s liberation when it was held in 1970.⁸ History Workshop itself was soon on board with women’s history, including the field in its conferences. The first volume of History Workshop Journal in 1976 included an editorial by Sally Alexander and Anna Davin that spelled out how central a feminist analysis would be in the publication.⁹ In spring 1982 its subtitle would make it explicit as it became A Journal of Socialist and Feminist Historians.¹⁰

More focused was the Feminist History Group (FHG).¹¹ Founded in 1973 and mostly made up of women researchers – many of whom were doctoral students – it had no institutional base. This London group met monthly in a variety of venues: for example, the Mary Ward Centre in Queen’s Square. It too produced a volume of essays: The Sexual Dynamics of History (1983).¹² The book’s title confirms the analytical nature of the field as it sought to tease out how gender relations were constantly re-shaped – usually to female disadvantage. And there were similar groups in Birmingham, Manchester and Bradford. But these groups operated outside formal academic settings. Many early researchers in the field remember being informed that their desire to explore women’s history did not fit into the structures of studying history. They were often actively discouraged from writing dissertations on the topic as undergraduates. By the 1980s there were no professors of women’s history in Britain and there were no designated entry-level jobs being advertised either. Few universities offered formal training in what was soon to become a thriving field of study. If there were institutions that had appointed more than one person working on women’s history topics it had been more by accident than design. If you were a budding women’s historian pursuing a postgraduate degree – and understood how things worked – you applied for a place in a programme that had someone you read and admired on the faculty. On a personal level, I was lucky. As an American, I applied to Rutgers University in New Jersey to work with Judith Walkowitz (b. 1945) because I had been wowed by an essay of hers in the edited volume Clio’s Consciousness Raised (1974). Because Rutgers at that time was made up of several different constituent colleges in and around New Brunswick, New Jersey, and was just beginning to reorganize itself into larger faculties across the university, it had at least half a dozen members of faculty working on aspects of women’s history. But it was the exception, not the rule. I was also fortunate that as a doctoral candidate at Rutgers I was teaching an undergraduate module in women’s history within a couple of years.

When I arrived in the UK to do my doctoral research in 1984, I had three groups my Rutgers doctoral advisor advised me to forge links with. History Workshop and the Feminist History Group were the first two. But most important was the Institute of Historical Research, as it offered a base for visiting international research students. Let me set the scene by saying a little bit about the IHR in the 1980s. The Institute was in many ways very lively back then with the Common Room a meeting place for historians at lunch, teatime before seminars, and as a spot to meet people to go for drinks. People streamed in just before 5 p.m. as that was when the backdoor to the British Museum was closed and it saved having to walk all the way around the block. It was generally hard to get a seat at teatime and the room was wreathed in cigarette and pipe smoke. The area was configured differently from how it is today, and the periodicals room always had five or six people hovering around the shelves and reading. Along the edges of the Common Room were bound issues of Punch. Despite always having women and men historians involved in its seminars, I think it would be fair to say that it still had a pretty masculine vibe.

I had registered at the IHR and examined the seminar lists for appropriate papers to attend. I was told it was generally best to write to a convenor of any seminar I wished to attend to introduce myself and secure permission to do so. However, no advice was given on where to send such a letter and it did not encourage me to plunge into the seminar scene.¹³ For decades, IHR seminars had been a creature of the University of London history departments and perpetuated a model that mixed the training of doctoral students with opportunities to hear invited speakers share their latest research. Professors, readers and lecturers attended the seminars as well so they could hear new work, but also to meet colleagues from other institutions and, perhaps, to spot upcoming talent. The IHR offered a venue like few others in the world, gathering dozens of historians under one roof on a daily or weekly basis. Seminars themselves, however, seldom offered papers on women’s history and gender history was not even thought of. The events could often be uncomfortable as some were renowned for their brutality and occasionally a speaker might be reduced to tears.

Research on the history of women could, of course, be presented elsewhere. As noted above, History Workshop welcomed the subject by the 1980s. At the Feminist History Group, discussion often turned to the topic of whether a place like the IHR might be persuaded to establish a seminar on the discipline. One of our current co-convenors, Cornelie Usborne, remembered the Feminist History Group as ‘an ideal platform to air work in progress, to receive ideas, information and general encouragement’ as well as the long-term friends she made.¹⁴ Both she and Alison Oram stressed that the group’s emphasis was on the word ‘feminist’ rather than ‘history’ in its name.¹⁵ Cornelie noted the tension between ‘the value of pure feminism (i.e. staying autonomous and outside universities)’ and ‘gaining a foothold inside academia to raise the profile of women but having to compromise ideals to fit in’.¹⁶ She also remembered that:

the idea to form a seminar in the IHR was, I think, aired on several occasions within the FHG. When it came to the preparatory meeting in the IHR Common Room (or was it a seminar room?) I remember quite a passionate discussion and a split between those … who argued for the old name of ‘Feminist History’ Seminar [and] who were also quite sceptical of submitting to rules and customs of the establishment, i.e., the IHR, and those [who wished] to consider … courting hostility and disapproval by insisting on this name. Well, that side won, women’s history it was and still is today.¹⁷

The founding of the Seminar, however, did not emerge from the Feminist History Group, but instead was the product of lobbying by established scholars from within the University of London who were both already embedded in the seminar culture of the IHR, and indeed, well known in their respective fields. Fascinatingly, women and gender had not necessarily been at the heart of their work, although in coming years it sometimes became more central. They included Janet (Jinty) Nelson, Pat Thane and Penelope (Penny) Corfield.¹⁸ Intriguingly, Penny remembered an initial plan to call it Seminar on the History of Women, but almost immediately people began to refer to it as the Women’s History Seminar and that was the name that stuck. No one remembers the specific negotiations to allow its foundation, but Penny ‘recollect[ed] that there was some hostile huffing and puffing from a few noisily conservative men at the IHR, which had the effect of rallying left/liberal support from the surprisingly large numbers of men and women who were initially sceptical’.¹⁹ Pat Thane confirms this. It was to be a bold experiment and it took place at a moment of some contention at the IHR. The spring of 1986 had been rocky, with postgraduate complaints about the invitation to Enoch Powell to speak (see Chapter 9 by Rohan McWilliam). This resulted in a large meeting to discuss the role of institutions. The IHR was opening up to new modes of working, which was to the credit of F. M. L. Thompson and Alice Prochaska, at that time respectively the director and the librarian (that is, chief administrator). They navigated a cultural shift as many organizations began to open up.

In the spring of 1986, the Women’s History Seminar had its first invited speaker, who was probably the eminent economic and social historian of agriculture Joan Thirsk (1922–2013). The first full term of the Seminar began on 6 June 1986 and Jinty’s diaries indicate the first speaker was Pat, who talked about ‘Ideologies of Gender’. Rohan McWilliam remembered the second seminar was given by Leonore Davidoff (1932–2014); Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850, her widely influential study of separate spheres (written with our soon-to-be seminar co-convenor Catherine Hall), appeared the next year. Lyndal Roper recalled that this was the first seminar she attended. At the time, Lyndal was a junior research fellow at Merton College, Oxford, but she would soon become a co-convenor of the Seminar after she was appointed to a permanent post at Royal Holloway.

Establishing the Seminar

Within a few years, the Seminar would be an unofficial part of the Royal Holloway MA in Women’s History founded by Lyndal and Amanda Vickery – also by that time a co-convenor of the Seminar.²⁰ That MA was designed to be taught on Fridays during the day at Royal Holloway’s Bedford Square outpost, ending with everyone trooping over to the IHR to hear the latest research on the subject. It was one of the reasons that we remained a Friday seminar and it also affected our starting time for many years. The third seminar that first term was a panel of postgraduates speaking about their current research and included medievalist Sarah Lambert, who is now at Goldsmiths, early modernist Rachel Weil, now at Cornell, and myself. Rohan McWilliam remembered that Anna Clark (now at Minnesota) chaired. What I do recall is that the crowd for that day was standing room only, and I think we were in the Common Room. Since then, we’ve been all around the IHR and Senate House and, of course lately, on Zoom.

What should be made clear is that in its earliest years there was a real enthusiasm to hear about research on women’s lives not just in Britain, but around the world, and not just from the past few centuries but across several millennia. Seminar papers confirmed that women did have a history which varied in terms of context, class, power, sexual identity, religion and other factors too numerous to mention. The point here is that the Women’s History Seminar was a huge success and quickly established itself as a key place to speak about the history of women. I would love to be able to tell you about speakers in the first couple of years, but there are no records except those that individuals have retrieved from their own diaries. My own diaries only go back as far as 1988, but from these I can tell you that in that year many of the women who spoke were relatively early in their careers and not always situated firmly in academic jobs. Many were presenting gestating research sometimes derived from doctoral studies. They also hailed from around the globe and were part of a web of relationships that echoed early suffrage networks. Many have returned to the Seminar several times since its founding.

A few examples of the first academic term for which we have complete records (autumn 1988) reveal the variety of speakers and of research interests. The Australian feminist historian Barbara Caine spoke about suffragist Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929). Co-convenor sociologist Jane Lewis explored both Beatrice Webb (1858–1943), the feminist, Fabian socialist co-founder of the London School of Economics, and Mrs Humphrey Ward (1851–1920), the anti-feminist popular novelist and social reformer. Other papers ventured beyond the British Isles. Mary Vincent investigated women in the Second Spanish Republic. (She would later co-author the Royal Historical Society’s 2018 report Promoting Gender Equality in UK History and is now a Trustee of the IHR.) The American historian Nancy Hewitt exposed us to the lives of women in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Tampa, Florida. At the end of the year there was a seminar on the term’s themes: women’s work, Christianity and gender. Other early speakers – many sharing their doctoral research which would result in important monographs and academic jobs around the world – included Catherine Hall, Amanda Vickery, Meg Arnot, Barbara Hanawalt, Elizabeth Ward, Anna Clark, Ulinka Rublack, Marilyn Lake, Carolyn Steedman, Paola di Cori (twice), Nell Painter, Barbara Taylor, Joanna Bourke, Sylvia Walby and Marina Warner. I could go on with the list, but the thing I would like to note is that many of these speakers successfully infiltrated women’s history into the academy and most of their work would illuminate and re-define aspects of both women’s history and other disciplines.²¹ Very few of these speakers have disappeared and many of these women have risen through the ranks to professorships at major institutions around the world. We have been privileged to be able to engage with many of the projects which set the agenda for women’s history over the years and seen many of the papers we’ve heard become part of landmark books and articles – not to mention the occasional radio or television programme.

The Seminar has also sought to schedule regular round tables where the latest scholarship on a specific approach was discussed.²² For example, ‘Complicating Categories, Crossing Cultures: Periodization in the History of Women from Medieval to Modern’ and ‘Women and Material Culture in Eighteenth-Century England’ were typical sessions of this type. In 2000 the question debated was ‘Women’s History or Gender History? A Discussion’. The Seminar began with an introduction by Penelope Corfield; formal comments were then made by Jinty Nelson, John Tosh, Seth Denbo and Hera Cook (the latter two were just finishing their doctorates at the time).²³ This session was notable as we packed out the Local History Room (then the largest room at the IHR). More recently, sparked by a recent survey, ‘Women’s History in the Curriculum’ saw the IHR’s first woman director, Jo Fox, chair a session featuring several of our co-convenors. Alana Harris (KCL), Clare Midgley (Sheffield Hallam) and Imaobong Umoren (LSE) discussed the past, present and future of women’s history in the British university curriculum.²⁴ During the pandemic we hosted several book launches and celebrated the publication of a volume in the Past & Present themed supplement series that explored mothering in a variety of guises.²⁵ Many of these works derived from research papers presented earlier at the Seminar. And we have also joined with other IHR seminars to co-present papers over the years.

The number of seminar convenors has waxed and waned. Since its founding, several others not mentioned above have been involved including Marybeth Hamilton and Lucy Delap.²⁶ I am currently joined by co-convenors Anna Davin (History Workshop), Amy Erickson (Cambridge), Laura Gowing (KCL), Alana Harris (KCL), Claire Langhamer (IHR), Carmen Mangion (Birkbeck), Clare Midgley (Sheffield Hallam), Krisztina Robert (Roehampton), Laura Schwartz (Warwick) and Cornelie Usborne (Roehampton/IHR).²⁷ What I’d call attention to here is that no longer does the University of London dominate the list, but there are representatives from a wider range of institutions from around the UK or sometimes no institution at all. This reflects the mobility of many convenors who frequently moved to new institutions during their careers, as well as the fact that post-1992 universities were some of the earliest to offer modules in women’s history. The latter were perhaps earliest to give women’s history a home because they welcomed mature students and many of the earliest researchers on women only entered higher education after pursuing other types of work or raising a family. Over the years we’ve received much support from the IHR, and I’m happy to think that the Seminar opened up the possibility for the wide range of topics that are covered today at the IHR. Indeed, an early A4 flyer found in the IHR archive shows an expansion to about forty seminars by 1991; today there are around sixty.

Debates and trends

The Seminar itself has engaged in debates over the years about its focus and its name. Several times there has been a discussion of whether to reshape the name to include Gender History, but at the end of each of these we’ve decided to retain the simple Women’s History. Retention of that name is a political statement about the necessity of interrogating women’s role in the past, present and future. This doesn’t mean that gender history hasn’t been central to the papers presented at the Seminar. From the beginning we’ve had speakers about masculinity and its historical meaning as well. We have also been a victim of women’s history’s success in permeating the mainstream. Papers on women and gender are now present in many seminars. (The email newsletter I send out each week about seminars of interest to women’s and gender historians generally lists three or four most weeks.) There is also now a separate seminar at the IHR that concentrates on Gender and History in the Americas. And additional organizations have emerged, like the Women’s History Network, which has a national programme. However, there remains a role for a seminar exploring the issues we find compelling. Women’s lives, their activities, their subjectivities, their emotions, their work, their centrality to the running of society, all remain of interest and I’m sure we’ll enjoy hearing about the new research into these topics in the future.

Changing trends in higher education have also somewhat re-shaped the terrain. In the 1980s and 1990s there was an expansion of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching of women’s history. The MA at Royal Holloway was not the only one in London; there was also an MA in Women’s History at Guildhall. Women’s Studies degrees were offered by a range of institutions, often under the direction of sociology departments, but always with a strong historical component. But more structural changes within higher education have seen falling numbers of students for not just these focused degrees on women, but for history degrees in general. Researchers in women’s history now often combine that interest with a variety of approaches too great to be enumerated here.

Although hearing about the latest research is the core function of the Seminar, it is but one aspect of what our seminar seeks to do. Perhaps more important is the long discussion that follows each paper. This is sparked by asking the speaker questions after the paper, but at its best becomes a colloquy amongst those in attendance. The group probes the conclusions, suggests other aspects that might be investigated, shares knowledge of other sources that might be explored, and offers a venue for historical problems to be interrogated. Seminar papers are expected to be works in progress that might benefit from a supportive engaged audience. The arrival of PowerPoint presentations has eased the sharing of images and data which often led to hurried trips to the photocopier in the past. In an effort to be non-hierarchical we are seated around a seminar table, which allows everyone in attendance a real as well as a metaphorical seat at the table. If there are more people in attendance than can fit around a table, the chair will strive to include them all. Two practices of the Seminar have allowed us to reinforce our role in establishing links between scholars. The first was that from its inception the Seminar has always striven to be supportive. To this end, at the beginning of each seminar we go around the room to introduce ourselves and say where we’re from and what we are working on.²⁸ This tradition, which is not employed by many other seminars, is important. It allows us to know what others are working on, but it also permits speakers to know who is in the room. You may find someone whose work you have admired and wanted to speak to. Or come across someone who would be good to talk to about putting a panel together for a conference. Or the speaker may discover that someone heavily criticized in her paper is present and can decide whether she may try to tweak the paper on the fly. A second innovation – unfortunately no longer practised since the IHR abandoned sign-in books for sign-in sheets – added a column for ‘interests’ for people to add as the sign-in book went around the seminar room. The book would then be re-circulated so attendees could take down details of people they wanted to speak to. Finally, after each seminar everyone is invited to join us for a drink in the IHR Common Room.²⁹ In the early years we frequently went out for a meal, but the practice has been abandoned with more and more speakers and attendees having other places they need to be. The IHR Common Room offers a pleasant place for informal talk. Here discussions continue, friendships are strengthened and networks are formed.

Networking, in point of fact, is one of the crucial functions of our seminar. In its earliest days it was one of the few places where people doing women’s history could casually meet others doing similar topics. Although today this objective may rely more heavily on social media, it remains to be seen if electronic networks will function as fruitfully as older ones that sprang from in-person meetings. Networking, of course, means different things at different stages of an academic career. When one is a doctoral student or an early career researcher, one connects with people who will be vying for the same jobs and trying to get published in the same journals, as well as discovering those who can be relied upon for a joint venture like a conference panel or a co-edited work. Later those people will be sitting on similar committees, searching for people to review books, to referee journal submissions, or to examine doctoral theses. Some scholars will leave academe to become book editors, to commission documentaries for radio or television, or to run institutions. Doctoral candidates from overseas in London either to study or research are welcomed, and, in the future, may offer an invitation to speak or a faculty exchange to someone they’ve met at the Seminar. This is not peculiar to the Women’s History Seminar, but historically women have networked in this way as far back as the abolition and suffrage movements of the nineteenth century. Links are particularly strong with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Europe and Japan. The Seminar is fortunate that most years we enjoy news of a returning member who is offering a paper for the coming year. In our first two decades, dinner after seminar meetings also strengthened these links, but the ability to have drinks in the Common Room more recently has seen that practice become rarer. All of these strands of networking become useful over the course of a career, especially in a time when fewer jobs are on offer, departments are under pressure and careers have to be constantly reinvented.

Our seminar discussions on women’s history and gender history have been complemented by interrogating other related issues, particularly the pressures on women working the university sector. Most recently, on Zoom, there was a discussion of the stresses of lockdown on women scholars who were often thrust into the challenges of full-time parenting while they also had to teach online.³⁰ New trends in historical research have allowed the Seminar to see how both new sources and analytical frameworks are enriching the field. The ability to explore new types of evidence on the internet has facilitated a deeper understanding of women’s work across the globe, and enabled comparisons across cultures. Recent panels included a comparison of businesswomen in Australia and London, a roundtable on women’s history in the British higher education curriculum, a foray into the lives of Chinese women migrants in the UK, a consideration of the intersection of race, gender and patriarchy in the seventeenth-century Atlantic, and a joint seminar with History of Sexuality to consider enforced female relationships in Second World War concentration camps. Thus ‘inclusion’ as it is often defined today has always been part of our DNA.

The recent pandemic period has provided us with an opportunity to welcome international speakers and attendees who otherwise might not have been able to join us at the IHR. Of course, this community was built on relationships formed over the past thirty years. Since 2020, our speakers have hailed from the UK, the USA, Sweden, Germany and New Zealand, while attendees have come from these places and Australia, Canada, Japan and India as well. The challenges here have been different. Most obviously time differences make it difficult for some, but the nature of the event itself has changed. The papers remain to be of a high standard, but Zoom has not been conducive to the best of discussions. Attendance numbers may be higher, but there are many who never turn their camera on, and the format seems to be more Q&A than deep discussion amongst the attendees. The pandemic period has, however, allowed us to see how women’s history has continued to thrive. Even as there is a return to in-house events it will be illuminating to see how hybrid sessions will change things. Perhaps in the best cases, the scholars we have recently met online will be able to speak in person in the future.

Conclusion

In 2016 the Seminar celebrated its thirtieth anniversary with a party. In our earliest days we heard agenda-setting debates over the role of separate spheres articulated by Leonore Davidoff, Catherine Hall and Amanda Vickery.³¹ In the late twentieth century presentations ranged over a wide variety of topics such as questions of work, feminism, sexuality, class, dress, politics, stages of life, periodization, witchcraft, education, imperial roles, wartime service and cross-dressing. All of these topics are alive today and have been joined by work on the body, subjectivities, emotions, race, single mothers, female love and friendship, and monarchy. Women in the British Empire are now examined in terms of new debates about race and class. Women’s bodies are interrogated not just in terms of the history of childbearing, but in terms of, amongst other things, the treatment of menstruation. Women’s labour is probed across several cultures to reveal the way gender and class may reinforce working practices. And the culture of celebrity allows the opening up of a variety of subjects beyond monarchs and suffragettes. In fact, suffragettes and the fight for women’s political rights remain popular topics and today we have more papers exploring second-wave feminism – exactly the context in which the seminar was founded. After four decades, the field remains strong, and researchers continue to expand and deepen their research. From a subject that was often derided fifty years ago, it has become a central part of any discussion and has been incorporated into the work of historians of multiple approaches, eras and cultures. It will be illuminating to discover the new aspects that will be delved into in the future.

Notes

1. * This chapter began as a paper to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Seminar’s foundation. I would also like to thank my fellow convenors for sharing their memories with me and Rohan McWilliam for his comments on both the original paper and this version.

2. 1.  Anna Davin (b. 1940) – pioneering feminist, community historian and co-founder of the History Workshop Journal [uniform title] (1976), as well as a former course teacher at both Birkbeck College and the IHR – has been explicit about how oral history may be used to uncover women’s lives. See Anna Davin interviewed by Michelene Wandor (n.d.), in M. Wandor (ed.), Once a Feminist: Stories of a Generation (London, 1990), pp. 55–70 at p. 62. This book is an excellent source for researchers looking at the way select women came to feminism and then women’s history. For Davin’s personal archive, see The LSE Library, Women’s Library Archives: GB 106 7ADA.

3. 2.  S. Rowbotham, Hidden from History: 300 Years of Women’s Oppression and the Fight Against It (London, 1973).

4. 3.  M. Hartman and L. Banner (ed.), Clio’s Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women (New York, 1974); M. Vicinus (ed.), Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age (Bloomington, IN, 1972); M. Vicinus (ed.), A Widening Sphere: Changing Roles of Victorian Women (Bloomington, IN, 1977); B. Carroll (ed.), Liberating Women’s History: Theoretical and Critical Essays (Urbana, IL, 1976). See also D. Beddoe, Discovering Women’s History: A Practical Manual (London, 1983); Interviews with Sheila Rowbotham, Natalie Zemon Davis and Linda Gordon, in H. Abelove et al. (ed.), Visions of History, [for MARHO The Radical Historians Organization] (Manchester, 1984), pp. 47–70, 71–96, and 97–122; and J. Hannam ‘Women’s History, Feminist History’ (online, 2008): https://archives.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/womens_history.html [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

5. 4.  Virago set out to be the first mass-market publisher dedicated to women writers and readers. Virago’s commitment to reprinting works by early twentieth-century women authors was formative to teaching and learning in modern women’s history. Valuable titles included: F. Bell, At the Works: A Study of a Manufacturing Town, new intro. A. John (London, [1907] 1985); M. Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week, new intro. S. Alexander (London, [1913] 1977); C. Black (ed.), Married Women’s Work, new intro. E. F. Mappen (London, [1915] 1983); B. Drake, Women in Trade Unions, new intro. N. Branson (London, [1920] 1984); M. L. Davies (ed.), Life as We Have Known It by Cooperative Working Women, new intro. A. Davin (London, [1931] 1977); and Ada Nield Chew: The Life and Writings of a Working Woman, comp. and bio. by D. Chew, foreword by A. Davin (London, 1982). For further context, see C. Riley, The Virago Story: Assessing the Impact of a Feminist Publishing Phenomenon (New York, 2018); and D.-M. Withers, Virago Reprints and Modern Classics: The Timely Business of Feminist Publishing (Cambridge, 2021).

6. 5.  Mount Holyoke College (founded as Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1837), was one of the first institutions of higher learning for women in the USA. In the nineteenth century, it became one of the ‘Seven Sisters’, a group of all-female liberal arts colleges to rival the traditionally all-male Ivy League. When co-education took hold in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Mount Holyoke remained and is still a women’s college.

7. 6.  The most notable was the USA’s Berkshire Conference, established in 1973 and still going strong: Berkshire Conference of Women Historians (Berks): https://berksconference.org/ [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

8. 7.  Sheila Rowbotham, Sally Alexander and Anna Davin each speak of this in their interviews with Michelene Wandor in the latter’s Once a Feminist, pp. 28–42, 81–92, 55–70: Rowbotham saw the laughter as ‘patronizing’, p. 28; Alexander remembered the ‘shrieks of laughter’ (p. 81); Davin characterized it as a ‘guffaw’ (p. 55). For further context, see S. Rowbotham, Daring to Hope: My Life in the 1970s (London, 2021). Rowbotham’s personal archive is at the LSE Library, Women’s Library Archives: GB 106 7SHR. For more information on the History Workshop movement, see B. Taylor, ‘History of the History Workshop’ (22 Nov. 2012): https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/museums-archives-heritage/the-history-of-history-workshop/ [accessed 23 Feb. 2023].

9. 8.  Sally Alexander’s experience of the culture of traditional history departments at the time is depicted in the comedy-drama film Misbehaviour (2020), directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, which deals with the feminist disruption of the 1970 Miss World contest in London: Alexander is portrayed by Keira Knightley. See also Sally Alexander, ‘In Conversation with Poppy Sebag-Montefiore’ (11 Mar. 2020): https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/beyond-misbehaviour/ [accessed 20 Oct. 2022].

10. 9.  S. Alexander and A. Davin, ‘Feminist History’, History Workshop: A Journal of Socialist Historians, i (1976), 4–6.

11. 10.  This was volume xiii, the last one to sport this subtitle was volume xxxix (1994).

12. 11.  A. Davin, ‘The London Feminist History Group’, History Workshop: A Journal of Socialist Historians, ix (1980), 192–94.

13. 12.  London Feminist History Group (ed.), The Sexual Dynamics of History: Men’s Power, Women’s Resistance (London, 1983).

14. 13.  This system was breaking down and I quickly found that if you just arrived at a seminar, you wouldn’t be turned away – although you might not be called on if you wished to pose a question. Seminar culture at the IHR, however, was beginning to change.

15. 14.  Cornelie Usborne (b. 1942) – professor emerita of history at the University of Roehampton and senior fellow at the IHR – is a leading historian of women in modern Germany.

16. 15.  Alison Oram (b. 1956) – professor emerita of social and cultural history at Leeds Beckett University, senior fellow at the IHR, and co-convenor of the IHR’s History of Sexuality Seminar – has published widely on the history of sexuality, particularly lesbian and queer history.

17. 16.  Private correspondence with me in anticipation of the Seminar’s thirtieth anniversary in 2016.

18. 17.  Private correspondence with me in anticipation of the Seminar’s thirtieth anniversary in 2016.

19. 18.  None of these women were professors at the time but all were involved in convening other seminars at the IHR; their subsequent careers proved extraordinary. Janet Nelson (b. 1942) – emerita professor of medieval history at King’s College London – was the first female president of the Royal Historical Society (2000–2004) and Vice-President of the British Academy (1999–2001), and she was appointed dame commander of the British Empire in 2006. Pat Thane – formerly professor of contemporary history at King’s College London and currently honorary fellow at Birkbeck, University of London – was sometime chief scientific adviser to the UK Government’s department for work and pensions and co-led the Equalities in Great Britain, 1946–2006 project. Penelope Corfield – professor emeritus of history at Royal Holloway, University of London, and co-convenor of the IHR’s British History in the Long Eighteenth Century Seminar – served as president of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (2008–10) and also President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (2019–23). For further insights, see J. Nelson, ‘Interview with Danny Millum at the Institute of Historical Research’ (30 May 2008): https://archives.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/interviews/Nelson_Janet.html; and P. Corfield, ‘Interview with Danny Millum at the Institute of Historical Research’ (28 Apr. 2008): https://archives.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/interviews/Corfield_Penelope.html [accessed 1 Nov. 2022].

20. 19.  Private correspondence with me in anticipation of the Seminar’s thirtieth anniversary in 2016.

21. 20.  Lyndal Roper is the first woman to hold the regius professorship of history at the University of Oxford (2011–present); Amanda Vickery, a PhD student of Penelope Corfield, is professor of early modern history at Queen Mary, University of London.

22. 21.  The accomplishments of these speakers are too numerous to explore here, but over the years they and our many other speakers helped to define and re-define the central questions in the field as well as to bring these questions to bear on other types of history. Gender is now explored across a historical range of topics.

23. 22.  Details here reflect the speaker’s institutional affiliation at the time; many have moved to other locales in the intervening years.

24. 23.  For context, see P. Corfield, ‘History and the Challenge of Gender History’, Rethinking History, i (1997), 241–58; J. Purvis and A. Wetherill, ‘Playing the Gender History Game’, Rethinking History, iii (1999), 333–8; and, P. Corfield, ‘From Women’s History to Gender History: A Reply to “Playing the Gender History Game”’, Rethinking History, iii (1999), 339–41.

25. 24.  Alana Harris – reader in modern British social, cultural and gender history at KCL – has interdisciplinary interests that stretch across religion, gender, ethnicity and sexuality in modern Britain; Clare Midgley – formerly research professor in history at Sheffield Hallam University and president of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (2010–15) – has published on women who worked to eradicate the slave trade, both in Britain and across the British Empire; and Imaobong Umoren – associate professor of international history at the LSE – works on race, gender, activism and political thought in the Caribbean.

26. 25.  S. Knott and E. Griffin (ed.), Mothering’s Many Labours [Past & Present Supplement 15] (Oxford, 2020).

27. 26.  Marybeth Hamilton – formerly reader in American history at Birkbeck College, University of London – has published on twentieth-century American women, sexuality and popular culture. Lucy Delap – professor in modern British and gender history at the University of Cambridge – has published on both domestic service and sexual violence in twentieth-century Britain as well as feminisms in global contexts.

28. 27.  Amy Erickson – professor of feminist history at the University of Cambridge – centres her research on female entrepreneurs and shopkeepers during the long eighteenth century, particularly in London. Laura Gowing – professor of early modern history at KCL – focuses on women, gender and the body in early modern London, especially through the lens of crime and court proceedings. Claire Langhamer – director of the IHR and professor of modern history at the University of London – is known for her exploration of the history of everyday life and the history of feeling, especially as they relate to twentieth-century women and girls. Carmen Mangion – senior lecturer in history at Birkbeck – examines the links between gender and religion in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain. Krisztina Robert – honorary research fellow at the University of Roehampton – explores the founding of women in the British military during the First World War. Laura Schwartz – reader in modern British history at the University of Warwick – has published on women’s education, religion and domestic labour in twentieth-century Britain. See above for information on the others.

29. 28.  In a recent email to me (28 Sept. 2022), Lyndal Roper thought the practice derived from the Oxford Women’s History Group which was established by Christine Collette and Anne Gelling in the early 1980s. This group was crucial, she thinks, in the recent establishment of the Hilary Rodham Clinton chair in Women’s History at Oxford, but it also was a place to hear the early work of women’s historians who would find success around the world.

30. 29.  Who pays has changed over the years, but the seminar budget has been used for the last few years to provide a free glass of wine for all.

31. 30.  The seminar, which included discussants Sarah Knott (Indiana) and Margot Finn (UCL) and took place on 16 Oct. 2020, was sparked by S. Crook, ‘Parenting during the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020: Academia, Labour and Care Work’, Women’s History Review, xxix ([online publ. 10 Sept.] 2020), 1226–38; as of Jun. 2022, the online version of the article had received 7930 views.

32. 31.  L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes; Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (London, 1987); A. Vickery, ‘Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History’, Historical Journal, xxxvi (1993), 383–414.

References