Helen Sunderland

Last Tuesday the workshop was delighted to welcome Professor Susan Pedersen, Gouverneur Morris Professor of History at Columbia University, to speak about her career as a women’s and gender historian.

Pedersen opened by noting that to tell the story of one’s career as a historian inevitably involves talking about oneself. She reflected on how her unconventional background has been a resource for both her historical training and work and described how personal circumstances influenced each of her book projects in different ways. It was this interweaving of the personal, political and professional that made the talk so compelling. I was left with a real sense of the potential that bringing ourselves as historians into more conscious dialogue with our research subjects has to enrich the histories we write.

Continue reading “Writing History as if Women Mattered Professor Susan Pedersen’s Reflections on a Career” →