Session Abstract

This session considers how scholars are constructing a new field of research, exploring the history of women and social movements transnationally and internationally.  It addresses research questions shaping the field, the sources historians are using, and the benefits that might flow from greater access to primary sources online. 
Four leading scholars focusing on different times and regions will comment on aspects of these issues, discussing how their work connects to the larger field and how it might be enriched online.   Kathryn Kish Sklar, co-editor of an online digital archive currently under construction, Women and Social Movements, International, will introduce the panel participants, set the stage with a brief discussion of the project, and participate in the discussion that will follow individual presentations.
The roundtable discussion will address three sets of questions.  Panelists will draw upon their work and address the most salient questions from among those posed below. 

1.      Research questions.  How does women’s international activism differ from other forms of women’s public activism?  What questions, theoretical and empirical, are shaping current research on women’s international activism?  
2.       Sources. What kinds of sources do scholars find most valuable for research on women’s international social movements?--international conference proceedings? conference reports? personal letters and diaries?  What others types of sources are indispensable?
3.      Online accessibility.  How is the online availability of source materials contributing to research development and cooperation among scholars of women’s international social movements? How might more sources be made available online?  How might online documents change future research and scholarship about women and social movements internationally?

This session grows out of a collaborative project, Women and Social Movements, International, co-directed by Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin with the assistance of an international editorial advisory board of forty-five historians.  The project will create a digital archive of approximately 150,000 pages generated by women’s participation in international organizations and conferences between 1840 and 2010.   Scholars in this panel are assisting with the selection of documents for this digital archive and are writing essays about the areas of their research expertise for the database.  Their contributions to this panel draw upon those essays and their work with the project.
            Session participants offer wide geographical and thematic coverage of women’s international activism as they consider the challenges and opportunities posed in preparing the online archive.

• Barbara Reeve-Ellington of Siena College will speak about research related to American women missionaries in the Middle East between 1830 and 1930. 
  
• Megan Threlkeld of Denison University will consider research related to the Inter-American Commission of Women beginning in 1928.
  
• Tiffany Patterson of Vanderbilt University will examine research related to three women of the African diaspora during the interwar years and how their ideas were shaped by their international experiences.
  
• Francisca de Haan of Central European University will discuss the difficulties of studying the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), a leading international women’s organization in the cold-war decades