Submitted by Linda Wilson

The National Women’s History Museum pays homage to the academic field of women’s history with the release of its newest mini-documentary series, “Keepers of History: Women Who Protected One Half of Our Nation’s Story.” The 20-minute video traces the development of the women’s history field and shines a spotlight on the women historians, who against tough barriers preserved the stories, contributions and experiences of American women. The video also pays tribute to the tremendously valuable contributions that women’s history archives played in the development of the discipline.

For much of its existence, the standard field of U.S. history ignored and diminished the importance of women’s lives, work and experiences. The type of history that long was taught focused almost exclusively on white men, usually those in politics and the military; and women historians as well as women’s history were relegated to the footnotes of our national story.

It was only in the mid 1960s that women’s history began to solidify as an academic field. Yet, for as long as there has been a United States of America, there have been female historians. Mercy Otis Warren, for example, not only helped create the American Revolution with her anonymous anti-British plays; she also recorded the war’s history in three handwritten volumes.

Historian Mary Ritter Beard not only participated in the Suffrage Movement for the vote, but she also published on the topic of women’s history as early as 1915. Her seminal work, Women as a Force in History (1946), challenged the foundation of popular viewpoints that held women as inconsequential in the rise of American and global civilization. It also provided a guide to those historians who later would establish the field of American women’s history.

The documentary also features other important women’s history scholars, such as Gerda Lerner, who was paramount to the development of the field. She founded the first graduate program in women’s history in 1972 at New York’s Sarah Lawrence College.

The documentary is an informative and fascinating look at the challenges women historians faced in preserving the history of our foremothers, grandmothers, aunts, and sisters, and incorporating it into the larger story of U.S. History. To view the video go to http://www.nwhm.org/about-nwhm/press/featured-press/keepers.

National Women’s History Museum in Vogue, January 2012 Issue

From L to R: Meryl Streep, Annie Leibovitz, Joan Wages, Susan Collins, Barbara Mikulski, Tricia Nixon Cox, Barbara Bush, Carolyn Maloney, and Eleanor Holmes Norton.

We are delighted to announce that NWHM will be featured in Vogue magazine! Vogue approached Meryl Streep to appear on the cover of their January issue and she asked that the Museum be profiled with her.

The article features a photo of Meryl, NWHM President & CEO Joan Wages and numerous high-profile women who support NWHM–including Sec. Madeleine Albright, Sen. Susan Collins, Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Maya Angelou and was shot by Annie Leibovitz.

Check out an exclusive behind-the-scenes video of the shoot at http://client.1000percentnyc.com/vogue/ms/meryl_v3/ and be sure to pick up a copy of Vogue in January!

National Women’s History Museum announces lecture lineup for Spring 2012

The National Women’s History Museum invites you to attend its lecture series “The Past, Present and Future of U.S. Women’s History.” The series, which began in the spring of 2011, is co-hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and will continue into the spring of 2012. The series is aimed at promoting the need for a national museum to focus on women’s lives over the course of American history and addresses the question, “Why Women’s History?” The lectures have been immensely interesting thus far. If you missed a lecture, they are available at www.nwhm.org/blog/nwhm-announces-its-lecture-lineup-for-spring-2012/.

Make sure to mark your calendars for the spring season!

“New Negro Women and Beyond: Posing Beauty in African American Culture”

(The lecture discusses a rich history of beauty that merges gender, race, family, and class from 1890 to now)

Dr. Deborah Willis (New York University) – January 18, 2012

“The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American

Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities”

Dolores Hayden (Yale) – February 15, 2012

Topic to Be Announced

Dr. Kathleen Brown (University of Penn) – March 14, 2012

“Language Makes History: Intersections of Language, Gender and Politics”

Dr. Robin Lakoff (UC Berkeley) – April 18, 2012

“Doing Well by Doing Good: American Women’s Long Tradition of Reform”

Dr. Sonya Michel (University of Maryland) – May 16, 2012