Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Kimberly Hamlin
Kimberly A. Hamlin is an award-winning historian, author, and professor specializing in the history of women, gender, and sex in the United States. She grew up outside of Syracuse, New York, not far from the historical homes of many of the women she writes about today. After graduating from Georgetown University, she worked for women running for office and on Capitol Hill. In 2000, Hamlin left Washington to pursue a PhD in American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. Hamlin has also written on the origins of the Miss America Pageant, the history of the Girl Scouts, bearded ladies, women running for President, Darwin in America, and the Equal Rights Amendment. In addition, she has worked on several public history projects focused on women and contributed to various PBS documentaries, including “Troop 1500.” She is currently helping to organize national and local efforts to commemorate the 2020 centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, and she serves as historical consultant to the Bearded Lady Project. Hamlin lives with her family in Cincinnati, Ohio where she co-hosts the Mercantile Library’s “Women You Should Know” Book Series and teaches at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio
Hamlin’s most recent book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (March 2020, W.W. Norton) tells the fascinating story of the “fallen woman” who reinvented herself and became “the most potent factor” in Congressional passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the highest-ranking woman in federal government. Free Thinker centers both sex and race in the history of women’s rights and in the long struggle for the vote. This project received both the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Public Scholar Award and the Carrie Chapman Catt Award for Research on Women and Politics.Hamlin contributes to the Washington Post’s “Made by History” column and other media, and she regularly speaks to audiences across the country about women’s and gender history. She is a member of the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer Bureau and the Ohio Humanities Council Speaker’s Bureau. Her research on women, gender, science, and politics has been featured in various media outlets including NPR and CBC radio, Vice, and qz.com.
Take it away, Kimberly!
Writing about a historical figure like Helen Hamilton Gardener requires living with her over a period of years. What was it like to have her as a constant companion?
HHG, as I have come to call her, has been a wonderful companion for these past six years. She is brilliant, prescient, funny, and confounding, giving me much to puzzle through over the years. For example, she had the courage and intellectual bravery to dismantle all the prevailing ideologies of her day, except for racism. Why could she violate nearly every taboo in talking openly about sexual assault but not see her way through racism and white privilege? That is a central question in Free Thinker.
What I love most about HHG – and what so many of her peers loved most about her — is that she is such good company. She has a great sense of humor, she writes so movingly about her hurts and hopes, and, unlike other 19th-century women I have researched, HHG seems very modern. If she were to be reincarnated in 2020, I think she would fit right in, as if she were trying to get here all along. From the 1870s on, she pioneered an autonomous life for herself (making her own money, making her own rules in terms of sex, devoting herself to her female friends, charting her own career). She did this when there were few, if any, positive female role models for doing such things. Unlike other women who dared have sex outside of marriage or attempt to live by their own code, such as Mary Wollstonecraft or Margaret Fuller, HHG did not die a horrible death or become a cautionary tale for other women. Instead, she continuously reinvented, charmed her way inside the Wilson White House, and died as the highest-ranking woman in federal government. She weathered storms and tragedies few of us can imagine today; she persisted and she triumphed.
Another aspect of HHG that has made her such a good companion is that she is full of surprises! When I began this project, I took her word on key elements of her life – such as the fact that Charles Smart was her husband for 25 years, as it states in all the “who’s who” biographical entries about her. Turns out Charles Smart was not her husband at all, not for one day, much as she might have felt like he was. I didn’t find that out until a few years into my research when I was working with a local librarian with an expertise in Ohio history and genealogy. This revelation allowed me to read her fiction in new ways because I came to believe that, in living such a big lie in her actual life, HHG turned to fiction to tell the truth.
During this project, I also fell back in love with letters. What an art it was to write and receive letters, to express your inner most hopes, hurts, and frustrations on the page. HHG has many beautiful, humorous, and gut-wrenching letters. My only regret on this score is that when she died, she commanded that her letters be destroyed – so only a fraction of them remain. I can only imagine what secrets and surprises might have been revealed in the rest. And who knows, maybe someday soon more of her letters will come to light—I certainly hope that is the case.
In addition to writing about women, sex, and gender in history, you teach a variety of classes about those subjects. What aspects of women’s history surprise your students most? What outrages them?
My favorite classes to teach are “U.S. Women’s History” and “Sex and Gender in American Culture.” I teach them on a rotating basis at Miami University (OH) and see them as companion courses. Nearly every aspect of women’s history surprises my students. This past fall, several students wrote on their course evaluations that they most enjoyed learning about “bad ass women.” So, I think that sums up what I aim to do in the classroom: teach about bad ass women. I have been joking that I am going to update my business cards to read “Professor of Bad Ass Women.”
Regardless of whether I am teaching women’s history or the history of gender/sex, my students are surprised and outraged about two main things each semester. First, students express outrage at how little they have learned about women’s history in all their previous classes, especially in high school. Even today, high school history textbooks still sidebar women. As much as I love women’s history month, in part I think women’s history month is inadvertently to blame for this, as I wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed. The popularity of women’s history month somehow allows well-meaning educators and state school boards to feel as if our national stories have been revised to include women, when in fact they have not, as this 2017 report from the National Women’s History Museum documented in detail.
This past semester, my women’s history class engaged in thought experiments and assignments to press the question: what would the country look and feel like if women’s experiences were centered? Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s essay “City of Women” and the related New York City subway map in which each stop was named for a woman, students reimagined our campus and their hometowns with buildings, streets, monuments, and parks named for historical women. Several students were so inspired by this research and by how awesome it would be if more public spaces were in fact named for women, that they are now actively working to implement their naming projects.
The second theme that has emerged over the years in my classes on the history of women/gender/sex is the persistence of rape and sexual assault as shaping forces in history (in our case U.S. because that is what I teach, but obviously the same could be said globally). Every semester, students are shocked and outraged to learn how long it took for rape/sexual assault/sexual harassment to be recognized as crimes, by the extent to which these crimes shaped not only women’s lives but also key aspects of U.S. history, and by the extent to which rape/sexual assault/sexual harassment continue to shape their own lives, especially on college campuses. The personal is the political is the historical.
Each semester, students also share their own painful stories of rape and assault. This is deeply troubling to me and something that I think we – as parents, educators, historians, administrators – need to do much, much more to tackle. As a small step, in fall 2020, I am teaching a new course called “#MeToo: A Cultural History” that I hope will help us not only understand the long, intersectional, and nuanced history of women’s resistance to sexual assault but also how we might do a better job eliminating sexual assault in the present.
What’s your next book about and when will we see it?
My next book will be a retelling of the temperance movement centering sex, sexual assault, and sexually transmitted disease. I will highlight women from Carry Nation to Frances Willard to Mabel Walker Willebrandt. Willebrandt began her legal career in LA as a public defender for prostitutes and then succeeded HHG as the highest-ranking woman in federal government when she became the Assistant Attorney General in charge of enforcing the Volstead Act, even though she herself did not fully support prohibition.
In researching Free Thinker, I became convinced that the prevalence of syphilis was a highly motivating factor in the women’s rights and temperance movements. I also learned a lot about the 1880s and 1890s campaigns – mostly led by temperance activists, but also by HHG—to raise the age of sexual consent for girls. In 1890, it was twelve or younger in 38 states. In Delaware, it was seven. I have come to believe that what turned temperance activists into suffragists, in large part, were their unsuccessful efforts to lobby state legislators to raise the age of consent so that it would have become illegal for grown men to have sex with girls and say it was “consensual.” That it was so hard to legislate such an obvious fix to a horrifying wrong politicized thousands of women. Learning about age-of-consent campaigns and the daily fear women had about contracting venereal disease from their husbands forced me to view temperance in a new light – as something more akin to the #MeToo movement of the 19th century. Those are the stories I want to tell in my next book. Free Thinker was just released on March 17, 2020, so maybe circle back in a few months to ask me the “when” question again.
Question for Pam: Your two most recent books have put you on the battlefields, in one way or another, what is next for you?
I’m currently revising a proposal for the next book for what I hope is the last time, so I’m not ready to reveal the topic. But if everything goes according to plan, I’ll be battlefield adjacent in the next book.
Want to know more about Kimberly Hamlin and her work?
Check out her website: http://www.kimberlyhamlin.com/author/
Follow her Goodreads author page: Kimberly A. Hamlin
Check out her Amazon author page: Kimberly A Hamlin
Follow her on Twitter: @ProfessorHamlin
Here’s the link to Free Thinker: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324004974
And, as a lagniappe, here’s an article by Helen Hamilton Gardiner, introduced by Kimberly Hamlin: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/silly-novels-lordly-novelists
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This is the last post for this year’s Women History Month series. (Unless I get inspired and have something to add tomorrow.) Thanks to everyone who participated, and to all of you who have followed along. I’m already plotting who to ask next year.
Listening to Women’s History
Back in 2015, I wrote my first blog post about history podcasts. I had recently become a podcast fan. I had found podcasts I loved about the craft and business of writing, with an occasional side trip into popular culture.* By comparison, the world of history podcasts was a barren wasteland.
That’s changed. And one reason it has changed is the people, mostly women, who podcast about women’s history. I introduced you The Exploress podcast yesterday. Today I’d like to introduce you to a few more of my favorite by and/or about women. All of these are in regular rotation on my laptop during the dinner cooking hour and other times when I am doing things that require my hands and eyes but only a small part of my brain:
The What’s Her Name Podcast: Hosted and produced by academic sisters Dr. Katie Nelson and Olivia Meikle, Committed to reclaiming forgotten history, What’s Her Name tells the stories of fascinating women you’ve never heard of (but should have). Through compelling interviews with guest historians, writers, and scholars,*** Olivia and Katie bring to life the “lost” women of history. (The hosts were part of last year’s women’s History series. You can read their interview here.)
The Dead Ladies Show: If I ever make it to Berlin, going to a live performance of the Dead Ladies Show is on my list. (This would take careful planning because they happen about every two months on an irregular schedule.) Covering all walks of life – from ancient mathematicians to silent-movie stars to record-breaking athletes – the Dead Ladies Show is all about women who achieved great things against all odds. (In other words, some of my favorite people) Luckily for me, the producers use footage from the live shows to create podcasts.
Unsung Sluts: Stacie Rasmussen and Tabitha Davis take a humorous and irreverent approach to feminism as they talk about lesser-known women in history. (If you object to raw language, you may find this one rough going.)
Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls : This is the PG podcast to balance out Unsung Sluts: tough issues but no rough language. The show is based on Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, the best selling book series designed to help girls (little and all grown-up) to dream big.
Dolly Parton’s America : Not strictly a history podcast, or even a women’s history podcast, Dolly Parton’s America a deeply personal, historical, and musical rethinking of one of America’s great icons in nine episodes. Come to think of it, this is a women’s history podcast dang it. Just one with a very specific lens.
A lagniappe: The Year That Was looks at history one year at a time, from as many angles as possible. The podcast is currently focused on 1919, and it is consistently fascinating. This is not a women’s history podcast, but Elizabeth Lunday gets better with each episode. It would be a shame to miss it.
What are you listening to?
*Many of which are now gone, alas. Five years is an eternity in podcast years. Ultimately, podcasts, like blogs, are a labor of love. They are hard work and expensive to produce. At some point people run out of energy, money or ideas. If there is a podcast you love, find a way to support it. Even if it’s just leaving a review, sharing their tweets, or sending them a fan e-mail.**
**This is not a hint. Though I do love hearing from y’all.
***WARNING: Blatant Self-Promotion Ahead: I was a guest on their show, talking about Zenobia, the Syrian queen who conquered a big bite out of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century CE. Here’s the link if you’re interested: The Warrior.
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with The Exploress
I want to make one thing clear right up front: I LOVE the Exploress podcast. I subscribe to many podcasts, but there are only a few that I support via Patreon and that I listen to as soon as an episode goes live. The Exploress is one of them.
Each season, Kate Jermain chooses a time period and then digs in “to explore not just the specific lives of fabulous women, but their world, and the myriad ways women lived in them” —a process she describes as “creative time traveling.” If you like your history smart, funny, focused, and a little bit snarky, you might want to check out The Exploress podcast.
The Exploress herself, Kate Jermain, is a writer, editor and teacher. When she’s not time traveling through her podcast, she edits and contributes to big pretty books for publishers like National Geographic.
Take it away, Kate!
If you could pick one woman from history to put in every high school history textbook, who would it be?
For American textbooks, I’d pick Elizabeth Keckley. This woman spent her formative years toiling under the yoke of slavery, suffering all of its horrors. But still, no matter how many times she was told she wasn’t worth much, she built her skills as a dressmaker and use them to buy her way to freedom. She found a way to transcend the life she’d been born into, creating a new life for herself in Washington, D.C., where she became dressmaker to the most influential female political/social stars of the day. With warmth, charm, and excellent business sense, she made dresses (and became friends) with women like Varina Davis, later first lady of the Confederacy. She became the First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln’s best friend.
She lost her only child in the Civil War, and yet she found the strength to nurse Abe and Mary Lincoln’s child when he fell deathly ill. She spent a lot of time surrounded by wealthy white people, but she also used her position to raise money for the “contrabands” (escaped slaves) that were regularly pouring into her adopted city. Later, after Mary Lincoln essentially dragged her into a public scandal, she tried to vindicate herself and her friend by writing a memoir: something very few African American women were doing. Her story is beautifully written and incredibly unique, but it also has a lot to tell us about the African American experience at this time in history. It must have taken such bravery to write about her life so honestly. Its reception has a lot to tell us, too: white readers at the time were horrified that the ‘hired help’ would dare to air the ex First Lady’s laundry in public. Mary Todd Lincoln never spoke to her again, and this brave, amazing womAn died in poverty.
It’s got everything: drama, intense high and lows, struggle and triumph. But more than that, it’s an incredible window into a pivotal time in America’s history: those final years of slavery, the horrors of the Civil War and the uncertain period after it, and one woman’s attempts to understand and survive. Her story is both haunting and inspiring, and all young American women (and men) should learn about it.
What do you find most challenging or most exciting about researching historical women?
I LOVE telling the stories of everyday women doing extraordinary things: building bombs, sneaking their way into armies, discovering stars. It’s particularly exciting when I stumble on something I’d never heard about before in the realm of women’s history: for example, how 19th century Spiritualism gave women a chance to become influential public figures, and how they often used their positions as mediums to further the cause of suffrage. The thing I often find most challenging is trying to get at “the truth” of any woman’s story, particularly those from the ancient world. With women like Agrippina and Cleopatra, almost everything we know about them comes to us through other people; we don’t have ANYTHING that they wrote for themselves. I find it frustrating to only have the very edge of a story, unable to know for sure how much of that story has been shaped by the ancient men who told it. Though there’s fun to be had in that, too. These gaps allow me to get creative with the podcast, making up things these figures might have said. I’ve particularly enjoyed writing ancient Roman men’s dating profiles and giving ancient women witty retorts and killer one liners.
How do you define women’s history?
There are men out there who think my podcast and those like it aren’t for them. But women’s history is EVERYONE’S history. It’s just that instead of being told through the eyes and lives of men, as so much of history has been, it tries to give it to us through the women who lived it. Do I talk about periods and women’s fashion and childbirth and sex work on my podcast? Yes, and very much on purpose, because they are a part of our history—men and women—and to understand history, you can’t ignore them. I’m just trying to balance the field.
AND a question for you…
If you had to sum up one thing you learned from each of your books, Women Warriors and Heroines of Mercy Street – one central idea you took away about that time, or those women, or just women in history – what would they be?
In some ways, the two books are in conversation with each other. They are two different ways of looking at women in times of warfare.
Some of the first women warriors I learned about as a child were the women who disguised themselves as men to fight in the American Civil War. In writing Heroines of Mercy Street, I reached the conclusion that the women who volunteered as nurses in the war were far more important than the several hundred women who fought, no matter how bravely. That was true not simply for the work they did during the war, but for the impact they had on society after the war. I now believe that their work as reformers after the war is the most important part of their story.
Many used their newfound experience at organizing, and at elbowing their way through bureaucracies to help change the world. Cornelia Hancock, for instance, the young Quaker woman who found her way to Gettysburg, started a school for the children of former slaves in South Carolina. Other former nurses were active in building hospitals for women and children, reforming prisons and asylums, and providing vocational training for girls. They set up relief funds for war widows and orphans, and organized programs to settle unemployed veterans on farmland in the West. Some became active in the labor, women’s rights, and temperance movement. A few used their experience as a springboard to national leadership roles, founding groups such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and the American Red Cross. If you look at an American reform movement in the 20 or 30 or even 40 years after 1865, local or national, large or small, the odds are you’ll find a former Civil War nurse or two in the middle of things–or in charge.
My work in Women Warriors solidified my sense that women who disguised themselves to enlist as men across the centuries are a fascinating side issue. The numbers involved are statistically insignificant in any given war. Which is not to say that looking at their stories isn’t important. The reasons that women enlisted disguised as men tells us a great deal about the economic and social constraints on women’s lives. But the main thing I came away with with a sense of amazement of how many examples of women warriors there are and how hard it is for us to acknowledge their presence.
Want to know more about Kate Jermain and The Exploress?
Visit her website, and listen to a few episodes while you’re there: https://www.theexploresspodcast.com/
Visit her other website: https://www.katejarmstrong.com/
Follow her on Twitter: @theexploresspod
Follow her on Instagram: theexploresspodcast
Visit her Etsy store for lady-centric merchandise: https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/theexploress
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Come back tomorrow, when I’ll share a list of some of my favorite women’s history podcasts.