September 2010

News from the Archives provides readers with news concerning U.S. Women's History from archives and repositories with collections and projects of interest. If you are affiliated with an archive or repository and would like to submit an announcement that you feel would be of interest to our readers, please contact Tanya Zanish-Belcher at tzanish iastate.edu .

Iowa Women's Archives (University of Iowa)

The IWA has started a blog, which provides updates about collections, conferences, and exhibits:
http://blog.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/

Jewish Women's Archives

Gail Reimer, Executive Director of the Jewish Women's Archive (JWA), recently announced that the Library of Congress has recognized JWA by including its website, jwa.org , in its historic collection of Internet materials. The site was selected as part of the Library's new "Single Site" initiative.

From online exhibitions to searchable primary sources to oral histories, the organization has created a site that can be used by educators, researchers, and Internet users worldwide. The site's newest interactive feature , launched this month, uses Google Map technology to tap the democratic potential of the Internet to identify and map places that are important to the story of Jewish women in North America.

The blog yoyenta.com posted "The smart cookies at Jewish Women's Archive have been writing women back into the story since 1995, and this month they launched [an] awesome way to mark the accomplishments Jewish women have made along the way."

Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History Manuscripts (Smith College)

The SSC has received funding from NEH for a two-year project to arrange and describe nine collections documenting a cross section of contemporary women social activists and the beliefs and values that drove them. Collections included in the project are:

Rebecca Adamson Papers (economist, Native American rights activist, international
indigenous rights advocate)
Katsi Cook Papers (midwife, environmentalist, Native American spiritual leader and
activist)
Marcia Ann Gillespie Papers (Essence and Ms editor, civil rights and gender equity
activist.)
Ms. Magazine Records (women's periodical, feminist collective)
National Women's Health Network Records (women's health advocacy organization)
Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center Records (women's
health advocacy organization)
Jeanne Noble Papers (professor and early chronicler of the history of African-
American women)
Luz Rodriguez Papers (Puerto Rican American community activist, reproductive
rights advocate)
Guida West Papers (social justice activist, welfare activist, political sociologist,
author)

New Collection of Essays on Women's History Methodologies

Contesting Archives: Finding Women in the Sources (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). Edited by Nupur Chaudhuri, Sherry J. Katz, and Mary Elizabeth Perry; foreword by Antoinette Burton.

Global in scope, this volume demonstrates innovative methods of researching diverse women from the sixteenth century to the present in Spain, Mexico, Tunisia, India, Iran, Poland, Mozambique, and the United States. Addressing gender, race, class, nationalism, transnationalism, and migration, these essays' subjects include indigenous women of colonial Mexico, Muslim slave women, African American women of the early twentieth century, Bengali women activists of pre-independence India, wives and daughters of Qajar rulers in Iran, women industrial workers in communist Poland and socialist Mozambique, and women club owners in modern Las Vegas.

Special Collections Department (San Jose State University)

San Jose State University has completed a two-year grant project, funded by the NHPRC, to catalog and process its backlog of university records and manuscript collections. We have posted 73 new collection inventories on the Online Archives of California. Many of the collections document the diverse history of women in the region, including the women who attended the early Normal School from 1862 to early 20th century. Other collections that tie to women's experience include the Glenna Matthews Oral History Collection and the South Bay Second Wave Feminist Oral History Collection.

Special Collections Department (Iowa State University)

A subject guide to the Department's collection relating to women has recently been created and is located here:
http://www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/collections/women.html

Women's Collections Roundtable (Society of American Archivists)

The WCRT has started a blog which shares information about the activities of the Women's Collection Roundtable, Society of American Archivists, and its members.
http://wcrt-saa.blogspot.com/

National Women's Museum (Dallas, Texas)

"The Women's Museum: An Institute for the Future" announces the opening of Dreams of Flight: A Journey through Air and Space on Friday, July 23, 2010, and runs through October 31, 2010. In a special twist, the opening of the exhibit coincides with one of America's beloved pioneers of flight birthday, Amelia Earhart, born July 24, 1897.

The more than 40 women featured in Dreams of Flight: A Journey through Air and Space , presented by ExxonMobil, highlights the women, from the earliest pioneers of flight including Amelia Earhart, Bessie Coleman (Texas native), Jaqueline Cochran and Jeana Yeager (Fort Worth, Texas, native), to science and space innovators such as Barbara Askins, Patricia Cowings and Jerrie Cobb.

In conjunction with Dreams of Flight , the Museum opens two exhibits, Fly Girls and Women and Flight . Fly Girls is a traveling exhibit created by Texas Woman's University (TWU). Women and Flight , images by Carolyn Russo, is an exhibit of selected images from the Women and Flight collection, which was created by photographer Carolyn Russo. Photographs include images of Jean Ross Howard-Phelan, Shannon Lucid, Patty Wagstaff, Susan Still, Eileen Collins, and many others.

The Women's Museum, celebrating a decade of empowering women in association with the Smithsonian Institution, is the nation's only comprehensive women's history museum that chronicles the lives of American women through interactive exhibits. Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, noon to 5:00 p.m. (closed Mondays). For more information, please visit www.thewomensmuseum.org .