scholarship

On the Process of Writing: Tips and Suggestions

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Wow! It has been a while. I am sorry for the delay in posting. As I have written about before, things are crazy right now. My husband is traveling constantly, so I have been solo-parenting a lot. When I am not taking care of the kiddos, I have been focusing my energy on my book manuscript. (I do not have much of a life outside of parenting and writing. Seriously.) My goal is to have a reasonable grip on the manuscript before I send my proposal materials to the editor who I have been communicating with since last fall.  Because the book has been taking up the majority of my time outside of parenting, I decided to do a post about writing tips and suggestions.

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Teaching Resource: Historiography 101

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I: FRAMEWORKS

A. Introduction 

Historiography–The critical examination of the various philosophies, theories, and methods that influence historical scholarship.

Historical Agency–This concept refers to whom or what a historian believes to be the primary agent of historical change.

Historicism—The aim to understand the worldview of the culture that produced the primary source materials. Embedded in this concept is that idea that the past is a different world that needs to be studied in its own terms.  

Famous Schools of History…

  • Empiricist
  • Idealist
  • Progressive
  • Marxist
  • Consensus
  • Nationalist
  • Annales
  • New Left
  • New Social History
  • Post-Structuralism
  • Post-Modernism

B. Philosophy of History Trends

Popular History–Based on entertainment value; emphasize drama and excitement

Academic History–Critical analysis and investigation

Nationalistic–Seeking to build a sense of national unity and patriotism among citizens by teaching them about a common past

Moral–History as a means to instill values and moral beliefs

Identity–Historical research as a way to understand beliefs, lives, and ourselves by comparing our lives to those from different places.

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Revising Dissertation into Book–Project Overview

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Amending Nature: The Equal Rights Amendment and Gendered Citizenship in America, 1920-1963

This study illuminates the ideological contours of the conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from 1920 to 1963. Through a careful analysis of correspondence, public and private utterances, congressional testimonies, and several court cases this study unearths the dueling civic ideologies rooted in the struggle: emancipationism and protectionism. Emancipationists supported the ERA as the necessary conclusion to the Nineteenth Amendment. In short, emancipationists believed that the ERA fulfilled America’s political aspirations, as the amendment would ensure that men and women citizens enjoyed the same basic legal standard. In contrast, protectionists opposed the ERA as a threat to sex-based legal distinctions. From the protectionist perspective, American society rightly affirmed the separate roles of men and women citizens by differentiation in law. In the end, emancipationists and protectionists held different interpretations of the relationship between gender and citizenship. Emancipationists insisted that American political ideals upheld the right of men and women to participate as citizens on the same terms while protectionists maintained that true sexual equity demanded that the law be free to treat citizens differently on account of sex.[i] 

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Dissertation Abstract-AMENDING NATURE: THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT AND GENDERED CITIZENSHIP IN AMERICA, 1920-1963

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This dissertation uncovers the competing civic ideologies embedded in the conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) from 1920 to 1963.It identifies these ideologies as emancipationism and protectionism. Emancipationists supported the ERA as the logical and, indeed, necessary outcome of the Nineteenth Amendment. Protectionists, in contrast, opposed the ERA as a threat to sex-based legal distinctions. Through an examination of over-forty different manuscript collections as well as an array of government documents, especially the often-overlooked congressional hearings on the amendment, this study shows that men and women politicians, intellectuals, labor activists, reformers, and government officials all participated in the original ERA conflict. Moreover, the participants not only argued over women’s status; they also contested the nature of American citizenship.

Above all, this study contends that the original ERA conflict created America’s gendered citizenship. In short, the Nineteenth Amendment profoundly changed women’s relationship to the state; however, disparities in men and women’s positions persist even to this day, because protectionists modernized the justification for sex-based differential treatment. To this end, protectionists successfully advanced the contention that their position provided men and women citizens with the appropriate level of equality, which also preserved women’s traditional right to special protection. Ultimately, protectionists effectively refashioned full citizenship status to include separate standards for men and women citizens, but their triumph also created dual meanings for American citizenship that negated the doctrine of universal rights and responsibilities.

-Rebecca DeWolf, Ph.D.