Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Elaine Weiss
Elaine Weiss is a journalist, public speaker and author of three works of narrative women’s history: The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote and Fruits of Victory: The Women’s Land Army of America in the Great War, and, most recently, Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement. She was an historical advisor for the broadway musical SUFFS.
Take it away, Elaine!
Photo credit Nina Subin
Spell Freedom and your previous books all introduce readers to groups of women working for a common cause. Do you have a favorite among the women you write about?
Ah, I guess that’s like asking a parent if she has a favorite child! But it’s true that as you live –for years –with the people you’re researching, you come to know them intimately–or at least as well as the records they left allow. So of course you forge a relationship with them, and bond with some more closely than others. That might be because you enjoy their company (at least on the page), or find their character especially appealing–or compelling– or their work more fascinating.
As you phrase it so well in your question, I do write about groups of women working for a common cause: the Land Army women designing a creative solution to food shortages during wartime; the suffragists forming sophisticated political organizations and mounting major electoral and lobbying campaigns to win the right to vote; and the citizenship school teachers who taught thousands of poor and unlettered Black citizens in the south to demand their rights. These are all 20th c women who are not well known, but manage to create their own organizations, take on national leadership positions, deftly navigate through hostile male terrain, defiantly prove what women can do. Each is strong and fascinating in her own way, in her own time–but I’ll admit that in each book I do have a favorite: either because I admire her, or because I despise her but find her such fun to write about. In Fruits of Victory it was master book binder turned Land Army general Edith Diehl. In Woman’s Hour it was suffrage leader and diplomat Carrie Chapman Catt; but also her nemesis, anti-suffragist Josephine Pearson, who is just so deliciously over-the-top. And in Spell Freedom it is my main subject, educator Septima Clark. They are all very complex women, which makes them great material.
What is the most surprising thing you learned doing research for your work?
I love the research phase of a book project, the discovery time, when you delve into the archives, scoop up material, and begin to recognize a character emerging, a story taking shape. In my books I deal with everything from government and organizational records to old newspaper articles, academic dissertations to physical objects to personal correspondence. I was surprised to discover that my heart beats faster when I encounter the personal letters–they are the most valuable, the most revealing sources. Especially the handwritten letters. Even though they can be hard to read: you have to get used to the person’s penmanship, their archaic spelling or phrasing–it takes more time to decipher than typed correspondence. But there are so many visual clues to the writers’ state of mind: the capitalization of certain words, the underlining, the exclamation points, even the scratch-outs and margin additions, or when they dash off something in pencil—all enable me to better understand the person writing these missives, at the moment they are writing.. It’s one of those “thrills in the archives” exploratory treasures.
Alas, the correspondence of many women has not been preserved–or has been intentionally destroyed. But in each of my books I’ve been able to find hand-written documents to deepen the story, including the extraordinary letters of Septima Clark to Federal Judge Julius Waties Waring and his wife Elizabeth in the 1950s and early ’60s, which allowed me to enter her world and follow her role in the movement. It’s sad to realize that historians and writers of the future won’t have handwritten documents to work with, as most of our communication is now digital on a keyboard. And–students are not being taught cursive writing at all the days, so reading penmanship will be like deciphering hieroglyphics for them.
What work of women’s history have you read lately that you loved? (Or for that matter, what work of women’s history have you loved in any format? )
I loved the off-Broadway and then Broadway productions of SUFFS by Shaina Taub, which captured the human and political complexity of the woman’s suffrage movement so well. Full disclosure–I was one of the historical consultants to the production, but I became involved precisely because Shaina was so serious about the history, not just the drama, of the story. She did primary document research at the Schlesinger Library, read widely and deeply, and managed to humanize the characters, while distilling the thematic essence of the struggle. I recently watched The Six Triple Eight film about the women of the post office battalion in Europe during WWII, and greatly enjoyed seeing the service of these brave Black women finally brought to light (the film is based on historian Kevin Hymel’s 2019 article in a WWII history magazine). It’s the kind of “forgotten” story that I gravitate towards. And I’m looking forward to reading historian Martha Jones’ new memoir and historical exploration of race, The Trouble of Color.
A question from Elaine: Would you like to read more books about women’s history written by men? Why yes, or why not.
Just last week, a man asked me a question that I’ve been asked at least once every March: Why don’t we have a men’s history month? And my answer, as always, was that men’s history month comes twelve times a year.
If the goal is for women’s history to be recognized as mainstream history—and as far as I’m concerned that is the goal— then we need to have men writing women’s history. More importantly, we need to have men reading women’s history.
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Want to know more about Elaine and her work?
Check out her website: https://elaineweiss.com/
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Come back on Monday for the end of Women’s History Month and a whole lots of questions and one answer with Emily Van Duyne
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Kathryn Gehred
Kathryn Gehred has a master’s degree in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College and was part of a team of editors who completed The Papers of Martha Washington, a transcribed collection of all of Martha Washington’s known correspondence published by UVA Press in 2022. She began releasing Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant in 2020 as a personal side project because she thought a podcast would be a great way to share some of her favorite 18th-century women’s letters with the world.
Take it away, Kathryn!
What inspired you to start Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant?
I used to be a tour guide at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and while working there I came across dozens of letters from Thomas Jefferson’s daughters and granddaughters that I thought were hysterical. Letters where sisters talk about getting ready for dances and their dresses falling apart, really mean gossip, family news, that kind of thing. However, when I tried to quote from the letters on tour they almost never landed, because there wasn’t enough time to introduce all the people involved and set the scene. Later, when I began to work as a documentary editor at the Martha Washington Papers project, I discovered even more fascinating letters, and I acquired the research skills to really dig into the context. I thought that a podcast would give me a way to share my joy and interest in these letters with other people who would think they are as interesting as I do. So that was how I came up with the format of the podcast. I decided to focus on one letter, set up the context, read it from beginning to end, and then dig into what makes it interesting.
How would you describe the purpose of the podcast?
I think of the podcast as a different approach to doing public history. I’m not trying to teach my listeners about a specific event or make a vast historical argument, I am sharing the way that one individual person experienced one specific moment. And since we are all one individual person experiencing the current historical moment together I’ve found that it really brings the past to life. My favorite letters are the ones where you feel like you get to know the writer a little bit by the end of it, even if the letter doesn’t reference any major political moment.
What do you find most challenging or most exciting about researching historical women?
I think one of the most challenging things about researching historical women is how, to a certain group of people who consider themselves “history buffs,” because my work focuses on women it doesn’t count as “real history.” Women’s history has made great progress, but there are still a lot of folks out there who think history=dead white guys, and anything outside of that is irrelevant. I know that you should ignore everything that you see on Twitter (I’ll never call it X), but I saw a guy complain that he didn’t see enough women history podcasters out there. I was like… what universe are you living in? I only listen to women’s history podcasts and there are too many for me to keep up with! But because this guy only listened to a certain type of history podcast he just assumed that there weren’t any women interested in history. But GOOD historians are including women and women’s perspectives more and more, and that makes me optimistic for the future.
A question from Kathryn: Do you have any favorite women’s history podcasts that you enjoy, and what about them do you like?
It’s hard to choose. Like Kathryn, I listen to many women’s history podcasts, as well as history podcasts in general. That said, the two I come back to most often are the What’s Her Name podcast and The Exploress. In both cases, I am drawn by the diversity of topics, the humor, and the distinctive voices (in the literary rather than the physical sense) of the hosts.
I also strongly recommend Unsung History, which is not explicitly a woman’s history podcast but often includes episodes on forgotten and under-reported women, as well as many other stories about marginalized populations in American history.
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Interested in learning more about Kathryn and her work?
Listen to the podcast: https://www.r2studios.org/show/your-most-obedient-humble-servant/
Follow her on Bluesky
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Come back tomorrow for three questions and an answer with Elaine Weiss, author of Spell Freedom.
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Olivia Campbell
Olivia Campbell is the New York Times bestselling author of Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine and Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History. She is also a thesis advisor at Johns Hopkins University’s science writing master’s program and a regular contributor to National Geographic. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, History.com, Scientific American, The Guardian, and New York Magazine, among others. Her newsletter, Beyond Curie, brings the stories of women in science history to life.
Take it away, Olivia!
In Women in White Coats and, more recently, Sisters in Science, you write about historical women of STEM whose stories have been left out or, with the possible exception of Elizabeth Blackwell, underreported. When did you first become interested in historical women in STEM? What sparked that interest?
My interest—my entry point in any topic—has always been women. Where are the women? The more science texts I read, the more I wondered: who were the women who made these findings possible and why aren’t they present in the narrative? I’m pretty sure I could write a story a day about women scientists whose male colleagues/supervisors took credit for their work or whose discoveries went unnoticed until a man made the same finding. I feel like it’s my calling to bring women’s overlooked and stolen contributions to science.
How does your work as a science writer inform your work in women’s history?
I consider myself a journalist first and foremost; I have degrees in journalism and science writing. Of course, my science writing helps me interpret the work of historical women scientists for a wider audience. But I think the biggest transferable skill has been my ear for quotes. I pride myself on being able to pick out the best quotes from my interviews with experts in my science journalism. In history writing, I don’t get many opportunities to interview living subjects, but I am quite good at reading through stacks of letters, diaries, notes, books, essays, and other texts and finding the quotes and anecdotes that not only best serve the narrative, but also represent who these women were as people, their character and motives.
Why do you think it’s important to tell these stories today?
As our current government leaders work to downplay, diminish, and erase women’s scientific contributions—and even fire many women scientists and defund scientific research into women’s issues—these stories are more important than ever. Chronicling these tales for a modern audience in accessible ways. Women have always been brilliant scientists, genius inventors, and extraordinary thinkers; it’s my job to ensure everyone remembers that.
My question for you is: How do you work to make history relevant to modern readers?
First, I don’t think relevant is the right word. I want to make the reader care.
At some level, that means choosing the right story. The fact that I find a story fascinating is not enough. As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I am interested in lots of things. But keeping a reader’s attention over the course of a blog post or a magazine article is different than making them care over the course of a book. Deciding whether I think I can do that is built right into the complicated process of choosing a topic for a book.
First, I need to find a story or idea that not only has enough heft to carry a book but that I can picture living with over the course of several years. (Not only the time it takes to write the book, but beyond. I still have people asking me to talk about Heroines of Mercy Street, which came out in 2016.*) A few months ago, I sent a highly relevant and potentially successful book idea back into the universe because it wasn’t for me.** The topic needs to have the capacity to excite me, enrage me, surprise me. If I am bored writing the book, you will be bored reading it. Trust me on this.
Next, I need to determine whether there are enough sources available to make it possible to write the story. (What that means varies from book to book.)
Finally, at some point in the search process I have to ask myself “Why this story? Why now?” If I can’t answer that question*** to my own satisfaction, not to mention that of my agent and then my editor, that book isn’t going to going to get written.****
Ultimately, though, making a reader care depends on my skill as a story teller. Giving readers just enough historical background so they understand the why and what without weighing them down. Finding the detail that brings a moment or a character alive. Using quotations with a light hand.
We’ve all read books on subjects that we weren’t deeply interested in because the author has made us care as much as they do. That’s the goal.
*At the moment, the ebook is on sale on Amazon for $2.99. Whether that will still be true when you read this, who knows.
**I hope it finds a home. It’s an important story.
***I know, it looks like two questions. It really isn’t. There is an implication “and” between them.
****As written, this looks like a linear process. In fact all of those questions are going on simultaneously in a tangled mess of exploration. It is more like chopping my way through a jungle than traveling down a highway.
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Want to know more about Olivia Campbell and her work?
Check out her website.
Subscribe to her newsletter: Beyond Curie.
Follow her on Bluesky and Instagram
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Come back tomorrow for three questions and an answer with Kathryn Gehred, host of the podcast Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant.