Women's History Month and Our Scholarly Beginnings

It's been a long time since I've been on a traditional college campus during the month of March.  I wonder if Women's History Month is still celebrated at all.  I realize that March has other appeals for traditional campuses:  basketball competitions and spring breaks and such.

When I was in grad school at the University of South Carolina from 1987-1992, the campus did a lot to celebrate March as Women's History Month.  The Women's Studies department put together a one day conference, in fact.  For me and my fellow grad students, we did our first presenting of papers at that conference.  From there, we went to both regional and national conferences.

I went back to my complete CV, where I keep a list of everything I've ever published or presented.  I need to sit down and do some updating--I am feeling like I need to take a week off of work just to get caught up on all the various types of updating I need to do.  But let me not get sucked into that spiral of regret.

The CV tells me that I presented my first academic paper at a conference in 1990.  Here's the title of the paper: An Early Portrait of Patriarchy: The Cenci.  My CV also reminds me that the Women's Studies conference was system-wide, so we had people from all over the state of South Carolina come to campus to present similar papers.

The following year, I presented Oliver Twist as an exploration of domestic violence, and in 1992, this was the title of my paper:  “We Wretches Cannot Tell Our Wrong”: Fallen Women in Gaskell, Barrett Browning, and Rossetti. I look back and see the outlines of my dissertation beginning to stitch together in my grad student brain.

Here's my dissertation title:  “My Relations Act with Me as My Enemies”: Domestic Violence as Metaphor, 1794-1850. My dissertation looked at 6 Gothic works or works with Gothic elements:  The Cenci, The Mysteries of Udolpho, Oliver Twist, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and . . . ?  How strange that I can't remember for sure.  My dissertation is packed away in a box, and I don't have an electronic copy, so I can't check.  Was it "Goblin Market"?  The Monk?  How can I not remember?  My dissertation argued that the authors were giving us important information about domestic violence and a realistic depiction of how violence operates in families, but they worked in the Gothic tradition because they couldn't speak about domestic violence openly.  We think of the Gothic as full of non-realistic elements, like ghosts and superhuman powers, but it was a way for authors to document real life too.

Well, it was twenty-five years ago, after all.  Wow.  No wonder my CV that contains all of my presentations and publications is so long.  I wish I had done more than keep a list.  I can't remember some of these conference papers from just the title, and most of them are probably long gone.

I'm also thinking of many of the pieces that I wrote for a website, Living Lutheran.  I foolishly assumed that I could retrieve them at any time from the site.  But the site has morphed several times, and they're no longer available.  Happily, I still have most of them.

I am the kind of person who keeps all sorts of stuff that will likely never be needed in the future, and that includes lots of drafts of lots of writing.  I have begun to trust electronics and the various back ups, so I no longer keep lots of drafts on paper.

On this first day of Women's History Month, it's been interesting to look back on my early days as a scholar.  I'm thinking about all the female scholars and authors and all that has been lost to history.  I'm giving thanks that we have as much as we do from our literary foremothers.