University of Illinois Press

Today’s edition of Inside Higher Ed includes a Q&A with the editors of the new book Contesting Archives:  Finding Women in the Sources.  Nupur Chaudhuri, Sherry J. Katz, and Mary Elizabeth Perry, answered IHE‘s questions via e-mail.

“Q: Why is it important for women’s historians to ‘contest’ archives? What is entailed by this?

Chaudhuri: As historians, we all have to consult archives. When I started to work on women’s history, I hardly found any primary sources on them, unless they were famous women. Most of these women, if they were married, were subsumed under their husbands’ or fathers’ papers. The entire world was viewed from a male perspective. Naturally, questions came to my mind: Who were these people collecting these papers, and how did they categorize these papers?”