Unsettled Pasts: Reconceiving The West Through Women's

Description

This collection stems from a recent conference at University of Calgary that included some of the most established names in the field of women's history in the US & Canada, as well as younger scholars, activists in the Aboriginal community & in farm women's organisations, volunteers in historical societies working to preserve women's voices, family & genealogical researchers, film-makers, a poet, a playwright & many others. Designed to generate writing & research about the West through women's eyes, the central goal of the conference was to spark dialogue across boundaries, whether geographic, cultural or disciplinary. The volume is divided into two parts: the first section discusses the role of women in history as community builders & cultural preservationists, & the second section is concerned with gender history in numerous disciplines such as history, education, nursing & communication studies. This collection highlights the extent to which Western & women's history remains a contested or unsettled terrain & argues that the greatest strength of historical analyses that take sex & gender into account is their ability to complicate & consequently transcend regional myths & frontier legacies that emerged out of imperial & masculine priorities & perspectives.