Making Women’s Histories This page intentionally left blank Making Women’s Histories Beyond National Perspectives Edited by Pamela S. Nadell and Kate Haulman a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2013 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. This book was published with the generous support of American University’s Patrick Clendenen Fund for Women’s and Gender History. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Making women’s histories : beyond national perspectives / edited by Pamela S. Nadell and Kate Haulman. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8147-5890-8 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-0-8147-5891-5 (paper : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-0-8147-5892-2 (ebook) — ISBN 978-0-8147-5922-6 (ebook) 1. Women—Historiography. 2. Sex role—Historiography. 3. World history—Historiography. 4. Historiography—Social aspects. 5. Historiography—Political aspects. 6. Women historians. I. Nadell, Pamela Susan. II. Haulman, Kate. HQ1122.M345 2012 907.2’02—dc23 2012032444 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In memory of Robert Griffith (1940–2011) This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Writing Women’s History across Time and Space: Introduction 1 Pamela S. Nadell and Kate Haulman Imagining New Histories: Late-Twentieth-Century Trajectories 1. Women’s Past and the Currents of U.S. History 17 Kathy Peiss 2. New Directions in Russian and Soviet Women’s History 38 Barbara Alpern Engel 3. Putting the Political in Economy: African Women’s and Gender History, 1992–2010 61 Claire Robertson 4. Sexual Crises, Women’s History, and the History of Sexuality in Europe 91 Anna Clark Engendering National and Nationalist Projects 5. Gender and the Politics of Exceptionalism in the Writing of British Women’s History 115 Arianne Chernock 6. Amateur Historians, the “Woman Question,” and the Production of Modern History in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Egypt 137 Lisa Pollard 7. Women’s and Gender History in Modern India: Researching the Past, Reflecting on the Present 161 Mytheli Sreenivas >> vii viii << Contents Exploring Transnational Approaches 8. World History Meets History of Masculinity in Latin American Studies 187 Ulrike Strasser and Heidi Tinsman 9. Connecting Histories of Gender, Health, and U.S.-China Relations 211 Cristina Zaccarini 10. A Happier Marriage? Feminist History Takes the Transnational Turn 237 Jocelyn Olcott About the Contributors 259 Index 263 Acknowledgments Sometimes scholars cannot recall the precise origins of a project. That, how- ever, is not the case with this volume. It was the spring of 2008, in the midst of the American University conference “‘With Vision Flying’: New Perspec- tives on Women’s and Gender History,” when the idea came to life. That such a conference ever happened, and that this book is now in your hands, is due in part to the efforts and encouragement of our colleague, friend, and then department chair, the late Professor Robert Griffith. When a fund created in the 1890s for the “education of young women alone,” unexpectedly fell into his lap, Bob, with his characteristic grand vision, imagined a series of proj- ects which would advance the field of women’s and gender history now that the academy had long moved beyond the need to provide for the “education of young women alone.” American University’s Clendenen Fund for Wom- en’s and Gender History was born. Making Women’s Histories: Beyond National Perspectives has not collected the papers originally presented at “With Vision Flying” (which took its title from a work by the nineteenth-century poet Rachel Luzzatto Morpurgo). But the conversations that conference engendered caused us to imagine a book in which prominent scholars of women’s history, trained in various national histories, would reflect on the intellectual and political production of wom- en’s and gender history. With that vision to guide us, we invited contributors; the result is this volume. Our debts are many, and it gives us great pleasure to acknowledge them. First, we thank our contributors. (With the exception of one pair of authors who revised a previously published essay for our purposes, all wrote new chapters for this volume.) They distilled their considerable knowledge of the historiographies on women and gender in their particular fields into their chapters. With good cheer and collegiality, all of them—Arianne Chernock, Anna Clark, Barbara Alpern Engel, Jocelyn Olcott, Kathy Peiss, Lisa Pol- lard, Claire Robertson, Mytheli Sreenivas, Ulrike Strasser, Heidi Tinsman, >> ix