| While you were out: women's history changes at ASU | Why not Men's History? | Student helps plan Women's History Month events |
While you were out
-- women's history changes at ASU
When Mary Rothschild started as a history professor at ASU 25 years ago, the "while
you were out" message slips allowed only a message to be taken for Mr ...
These seemingly insignificantly, innocuous slips used in offices around the university, the nation and the world show the changes that have been taking place and are celebrated in Women's History Month.
While a conference on women and disabilities, and an African-American women's performance art piece already have taken place, the Women's Studies Department and other departments at the university still have events available for students, faculty, staff and the community to attend. Rothschild's mentor, Anne Firor Scott, professor of history emerita at Duke University, will discuss "One History or Two? Black and White Women in America," in a free lecture at 7:30 p.m. Wed., March 22, in Architecture 60. "She came to see me in the hospital when I had my second child," Rothschild said, "and she periodically sent me postcards telling me I had to get my dissertation done when none of the professors at Washington ( her previous academic post) were interested in seeing her finish the work.
Scott, who worked for the United States League of Women Voters in Washington, D.C. in the 1940s, specializes in women's associations, clubs and organizations, and is a white Southerner who chose to take a look at the tangled issues of gender, race and class in American history. "She is one of the founders of the field of women's history and studied the evolution of Southern upper-class white women from frail, protected creatures to women who have an active part in the politics of the South and a part in promoting progressive reform," Rothschild said.
 Jeremy Pearlman of Web Devil Mary Rothschild goes into memorablia as she talks about Women's History at ASU. |
Scott and Rothschild met in 1971 when Scott chaired the Committee on the Status
of Women in the Profession for the Organization of American Historians. Scott
visited ASU in the 60s when "the campus was very conservative and untouched
by the 60s, and now she would like to return," said Rothschild, who said
the visit is funded by a grant from the Arizona Humanities Council.
When Rothschild came to ASU in 1975, she was immediately greeted by a group of women faculty who wanted to start a women's studies department. Because Rothschild had started women's studies departments at two previous universities, largely without pay for the work, she declined to chair the department at ASU at the beginning because no salary was offered. "I put in incredible amounts of volunteer time running the programs, but now I said no. If it's not paid, it means they don't value it," she said. Thelma Shinn Richard, an English professor, was the first to chair the deparment, and Rothschild since has been director from 1980-82, 84-85 and 1993-2000. The department is now interviewing for a new director, which is now a paid position. She still hears the question, though not so often now, concerning how enough information could be found to fill two courses on women's history.
