This post was originally hosted on Storify, until that service shut down.
The sixth conference of the Women and Gender Historians of the Midwest organisation met in Iowa City on June 11-12, 2015.
Day 1 of Women & Gender Historians of the Midwest conf. Excited to present my work & learn abt others' work, such as: http://t.co/vxFCTJ99ZS
— Dr. Abby M. Dubisar she/they (@ADubisar) June 11, 2015
Attending the #WGHOM conference today—am a medieval interloper among the modernists, but excited to be among so many women's historians.
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
#WGHOM conf on women & philanthropy meets today/Fri in #IowaCity—speakers incl members Allison Wells, @yvonneseale: http://t.co/q5D0J5PmaI
— GHS UIowa (@GHSUIowa) June 11, 2015
The first panel which I attended, led by Kristin Anderson-Bricker (Loras College), was “Female Academics as Institutional Reformers: Professional Women Engaged in Social Reform Today, A Round Table Dialogue.”
Anderson-Bricker: conference theme encouraged her to look back at own teaching, realised has always taught through lens of reform #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Anderson-Bricker: Academic research skills central to reform work; enabling students to discuss diffs of opinion, esp. re: sexuality #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Kelsey Kauffman: Teaches college-level courses at Indiana Women's Prison; speaks of enthusiasm female prisoners have for history #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Janet Weaver of @IWArchives: access to archives empowers, esp. as digitised finding aids create more awareness of holdings for non-ac #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Kristin Mapel-Bloomberg: Reform has risks—academic freedom allows for work in this area not otherwise possible. #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Nancy Beck Young: Edu reform at large urban uni—bringing back disc. sections to large history survey courses lowered failure rates #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Anderson-Bricker: How to measure success at reform on campus? #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Mapel Bloomberg: Community buy-in more important than admin buy-in; emph. that this is way to make comm. better on day-to-day level #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
.@SueStanfield: Teaching challenge is how to make students see that reform in the past is relevant to modern social/political issues #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Lisa Guinn: Creating links between contemp. orgs & history—brings students to local fair trade store to explore women's econ history #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
The next session, led by Tyler Priest (University of Iowa), was a roundtable talk entitled “Discussion on Crisis at the State Historical Society of Iowa.”
Now starting at #WGHOM, session on preservation of State Historical Society of Iowa with Prof. @TylerPriest64 of @SaveIowaHistory
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Priest: SHSI faces budget axe; since 2009, staffing decreased by 1/3. From July, Iowa City branch will have just 2 employees #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Priest: Limited service hours make difficult/impossible to use collection in undergrad teaching; no budget to microfilm local papers #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Priest: No money for acquisitions, binding; no active cataloguing programme. Volunteers can only take you so far. #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Priest: SHSI was housed for many years in #UIowa's Schaeffer Hall; pioneering in public history under direction of Benjamin Shambaugh #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Priest: SHSI now controlled by Iowa Dept of Cultural Affairs; Branstad admin made all employees at-will. Loss of institutional memory #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Priest: Senior staff of Iowa Dept of Cultural Affairs, State Archives, have no formal training in/understanding of history/archives #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Priest: Plans to digitise and then deaccession much archival material—who will make these decisions? #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Priest: SHSI budget is $3.5m a year—0.1% of state budget—but no political will. Politicians don't think Iowa history matters. #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Priest: Not just an #IowaCity issue—this is an issue for all Iowans who want to preserve their state's heritage. #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Jo Ellyn Clarey: Is there a way to leverage genealogical societies across US as support? What threatens one state threatens all #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
.@EDinschel points to future difficulties of curation at SHSI with volunteer-only staff—lack of skills, knowledge #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Janet Weaver of @IWArchives: digitisation is complex & needs infrastructure; can't be followed by discard #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
Priest: #Iowa is 47th in nation in expenditure on archives #WGHOM
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 11, 2015
The morning’s panels then concluded with lunch and a keynote presentation from Prof. Nancy Beck Young (University of Houston), who spoke on the philanthropy of First Lady Lou Henry Hoover.
Day 2 began early on Friday morning. The first session centered on work arising out of the holdings of the Iowa Women’s Archives here at the University of Iowa.
1st session of #WGHOM is underway, with Kären Mason @IWArchives intro'ing session: strong-minded women making history pic.twitter.com/xiUG6JIpuY
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 12, 2015
Janet Weaver of @IWArchives speaks on federal labour unions, which had women's & mixed gender locals #WGHOM pic.twitter.com/MXh1StwudS
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 12, 2015
Sharon Lake speaks on how campaign for voting reapportionment in Iowa was political training ground for women #WGHOM pic.twitter.com/EDWMghkJrq
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 12, 2015
Last paper in this session: @Anna_flaming on Shirley Sandage, feminism, anti poverty activism & domesticity #WGHOM pic.twitter.com/xMlIQmIVhU
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 12, 2015
The next set of panels included presentations by myself and by my colleague at the University of Iowa, Allison Wells, who spoke on “The American Guardian Association: Race Gender Democracy and U.S. Imperialism in the Philippines.”
My co-panelist Margaret Preston speaks on Irish Presentation Sisters in South Dakota #nuntastic #WGHOM pic.twitter.com/rkluXqZGYy
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 12, 2015
The last panel which I attended featured presentations over video conference by Lori Record, Kim Baldwin, Leslie Hauk, and Michelle Jones. These four women are inmates of the Indiana Women’s Prison, who study the history of that institution and of female incarceration in the nineteenth century United States.
Women of Indiana Women's Prison Skype in to present their work on history of female incarceration at #WGHOM pic.twitter.com/uxiITp7Uou
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 12, 2015
Work of the historians of Indiana Women's Prison presenting at #WGHOM explodes myth of benevolent female prisons: http://t.co/BfSMlQ2kUx
— Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale) June 12, 2015