Contesting archives
Subtitle: finding women in the sources
By: edited by Nupur Chaudhuri, Sherry J. Katz, Mary Elizabeth Perry.
Contributors: Chaudhuri, Nupur.; Katz, Sherry J.; Perry, Mary Elizabeth, 1937-
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Chicago, Ill
Language: eng
Number of pages: 248
ISBN-13: 9780252035425; 9780252077364
Subjects: Women -- Historiography
Description: ""Contesting Archives makes vivid and concrete the way historians must proceed when faced with partial or contradictory sources. Historians and anyone interested in how historians work will appreciate the authors' strategies for, and cautions about, unearthing information about women from documents inside and outside the archive." Margaret Strobel, coeditor of Expanding the Borders of Women's History" "The contributors of Contesting Archives challenge the assumption that an archive is a neutral, immutable, and ahistorical repository of information. Instead, these historians view it as a place where decisions are made about whose documents-and therefore whose history-is important.^

Finding that women's voices and their texts were often obscured or lost altogether, they have developed many new methodologies for creating unique archives and uncovering more evidence by reading documents "against the grain," weaving together many layers of information to reveal complexities and working collectively to reconstruct the lives of women in the past." "Global in scope, this volume demonstrates innovative research on diverse women from the sixteenth century to the present in Spain, Mexico, Tunisia, India, Iran, Poland, Mozambique, and the United States.^

Addressing gender, race, class, nationalism, transnationalism, and migration, these essays' subjects include indigenous women of colonial Mexico, Muslim slave women, African American women of the early twentieth century, Bengali women activists of Pre-independence India, wives and daughters of Qajar rulers in Iran, women industrial workers in communist Poland and socialist Mozambique, and women club owners in modern Las Vegas. A foreword by Antoinette Burton adroitly synthesizes the disparate themes woven throughout the book." "Contributors are Janet Afary, Maryam Ameli-Rezaei, Antoinette Burton, Nupur Chaudhuri, Julia Clancy-Smith, Mansoureh Ettehadieh (Nezam Mafi), Malgorzata Fidelis, Joanne L. Goodwin, Kali Nicole Gross, Daniel S. Haworth, Sherry J. Katz, Elham Malekzadeh, Mary Elizabeth Perry, Kathleen Sheldon, Lisa Sousa, and Ula Y. Taylor."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Finding Fatima, a slave woman of early modern Spain / Mary Elizabeth Perry; title: Revealing an orphan's tale from nineteenth-century Mexico / Daniel S. Haworth; title: Locating women as migrants in nineteenth-century Tunis / Julia Clancy-Smith; title: Exploring crime and violence in early-twentieth-century black women's history / Kali Nicole Gross; title: Spinning and weaving the threads of native women's lives in colonial Mexico / Lisa Sousa; title: Excavating radical women in progressive-era California / Sherry J. Katz; title: Recovering women's voices in communist Poland / Malgorzata Fidelis; title: Archival thinking and the wives of Marcus Garvey / Ula Y. Taylor; title: Finding an archive in Krishnobhabini Dass Englande Bangamohila / Nupur Chaudhuri; title: Uncovering women and gender in Qajar archives of Iran / Mansoureh Ettehadieh, Elham Malekzadeh, Maryam Ameli-Rezai, and Janet Afary; title: Revealing new narratives of women in Las Vegas / Joanne L. Goodwin; title: Creating an archive of working women's oral histories in Beira, Mozambique / Kathleen Sheldon.