Taking Stock of Gender History at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting 2019

More than 30 years after Joan Scott first argued for gender as a legitimate and necessary category of analysis, many of us take for granted the notion that AHA annual meetings can offer spaces for more expansive scholarship. Returning to Scott’s work serves as a reminder that gender history was never interchangeable with an “add women and stir” approach to the field. “The core of the definition,” Scott argued, “rests on an integral connection between two propositions: gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relations of power.” At AHA19, it is these elements of Scott’s foundational proposition that are on the table in sessions that interrogate the very conditions of our profession, as a full inquiry into gender requires.

Over four days in Chicago, historians will find a diverse slate of discussions that center histories of women and gender. Just a brief scan of the AHA19 conference program reveals numerous panel sessions and affiliated societies addressing gender across time and space. Historians from around the globe will present new research on topics addressing gender and all of its complexities in wide ranging sites—from the British Civil Wars to recent Puerto Rican history, the black diaspora to the streets of Progressive-era cities. The Mexican Studies Committee of the Conference on Latin American History will be meeting to take stock of gender Friday evening; in its open forum, the AHA Committee on LGBTQ Status in the Profession will examine the relationship between history and gender studies. The program suggests that the state of our subfield is vibrant, reflecting the aspirations of the AHA’s Committee on Gender Equity, whose purview includes fostering “an inclusive scholarship that challenges and transforms the practice of history, both substantially and methodologically.”