From History as a Science to Women’s and Gender History

3 Fevereiro 2020, 18:00 • Ana Maria Seabra de Almeida Rodrigues

Postulates and methods of the “scientific” history as set by Leopold von Ranke: history’s objective existence; historian’s objectivity; primacy of the written, voluntary and official document; mechanistic relationship between the historian and the source. As a result, History became the history of nations, of institutions and of “great men”, and it was conceived as a master of life. Professional historians were men: Universities closed their doors to women; Academies, Archives, Libraries did the same. The first women historians were viewed with suspicion: some lived marginal experiences (Jane Ellen Harrison, Eileen Power, Lucy Maynard Salmon, Mary Beard); others supported their husbands’ work (Athenaïs Mialeret-Michelet, Simone Vidal Bloch, Suzanne Dognon Febvre); they all started doing traditional studies, and only later dared to be innovative.

 

Presentation by Seren Üstündağ and discussion of the article of Bonnie G. Smith, “Gender, Objectivity and the Rise of Scientific History”, in W. Natter, Th. R. Schatzki, J. P. Jones III (eds.), Objectivity and its Other, New York/London, The Gilford Press, 1995, pp. 51-66.

 

References:

 

DOWNS, Laura Lee, Writing Gender History, London, Hodder Arnold, 2004.

 

EVANS, Richard, In Defence of History, revised edition, London, Granta Books, 2000.

 

GREEN, Anna and Kathleen Troup (eds.), The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1999.

 

NOVICK, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

 

SMITH, Bonnie, The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice, Cambridge (MA), Harvard University Press, 1998.