Connecting Women's Histories: the local and the global

ABSTRACT

The articles in this Special Issue are drawn from some of the contributions to a conference held at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, from 29 August to 1 September 2013 titled ‘Women's Histories: the local and the global’. The articles reflect on diverse aspects of the entangled histories of women across the world, mainly, but not exclusively, during the twentieth century. They explore the range of ways in which women's history, international history, transnational history and imperial and global histories are interwoven.     

Histories of now: listening to women in British film

ABSTRACT

The research project ‘Calling the Shots: Women and contemporary film culture in the UK, 2000–2015’ investigates contemporary women's film history through two primary routes: the statistical analyses of the numbers of women in six key above-the-line professions (director, writer, producer, executive producer, cinematographer and editor), and interviews with 50 women in those same roles (by August 2018 we had interviewed 58). This paper focuses specifically on the permutations of the interview process for constructing women's film history in the contemporary period. Taking into consideration the theoretical, methodological and political issues at stake in recording oral histories of working women filmmakers, we contemplate the consequences of collecting and writing history that is still in medias res.     

Identities and Histories: women's writing and politics in Bengal SARMISTHA DUTTA GUPTA

This article examines the performative narratives present in three historical exhibitions produced by the Imperial War Museum (IWM) on the topic of women's wartime work. The focus is in particular on the visual representation of women through the display of uniforms, as well as how methods of presenting this material culture have, at various points in the near century-long history of the institution, taken on different roles within exhibition spaces. The display techniques used in early exhibitions will be compared to more recent permanent and temporary spaces at two branches of the IWM located in London and Manchester, in order to determine whether the performative nature of early exhibitions has extended to recent developments.     

New Queer Histories: Laura Doan's Disturbing Practices and the Constance Maynard Archive

This review of Laura Doan's most recent work, Disturbing Practices: history, sexuality, and women's experience of modern war (2013) considers how this text might inform future readings of the Constance Maynard Archive. The work outlines a new methodological approach—‘queer critical history'—to the history of sexuality. Carefully attuned to the overlapping taxonomical, linguistic, legal, medical and cultural agendas that contribute to the formation of sexual identities, this methodology allows the historian to reflect upon what remains unknowable about the sexual lives of the past, and to think more usefully about archival inconsistencies and silences.     

Variability in Hormone Concentrations and Self-Reported Menstrual Histories in Young Adolescents: Menarche as an Integral Part of a Developmental Process

Menarche has been considered a marker for examining interindividual differences in biobehavioral development and for separating pubertal development into 2 stages. The purpose of this study was (1) to compare hormone concentrations in pre- and postmenarcheal girls to determine whether they fit a continuous or dichotomous model of pubertal development surrounding menarche; and (2) to address methodological issues of variability in self-reports of menstrual histories and reliability in reporting age at menarche. Girls (N = 52) ages 9 to 14 years were enrolled in a longitudinal study. Blood was drawn for hormone concentrations. Menstrual-cycle information was collected by questionnaire and oral report. Discrepancies in reporting of age at menarche ranged from 0 to 18 months and variability was noted in length of cycle. There was great overlap in hormones between pre- and postmenarcheal categories. Future studies might consider menarche as the culmination of underlying developmental processes rather than as a discrete event. Limitations of each measure of puberty should be considered by investigators conducting biobehavioral studies of adolescents.