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Review
| Writing Women's History Since the Renaissance, by Mary Spongberg. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 272 pages. $65.00, cloth. $21.95, paper.
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| Mary Spongberg's recent work, Writing Women's History Since the Renaissance is impressive not only in terms of its historical scope, but in its contribution to the field of women's history. Spongberg's goal is not simply to restore women as historical actors and as historians, or to revive forgotten histories. Rather, her aim is to explore the way in which women historians (even those "officially" excluded from the field by virtue of their sex) have had a hand in determining new directions for the discipline and practice of history. Indeed, Spongberg argues that women can be understood "as innovative shapers of the medium, subtly manipulating the expectations of gender and genre." Spongberg ably demonstrates the way in which the reinsertion of women both as historical subjects and as historians prompted alterations to accepted methodology, rhetoric, rules of proper evidence, and genre. |
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Additionally, Spongberg is interested in demonstrating the "relationship between writing women's history and the development of feminism." For Spongberg, the writing of history is inherently subversive. This is particularly true for women, she argues, who have historically become radicalized by the practice: "the study of history alerted women to their unequal status and to assert the moral authority of history in order to achieve women's rights." Spongberg searches for those moments when women writers forced their way into the discipline and, as a consequence, profoundly altered the field and the lives of women. |
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This dual focus makes the book ideal for a number of college courses. Because Spongberg demonstrates the way in which presentist interest, events, and concerns shape the practice and the disciplinary rules of history, her work might most fruitfully be taught in a historiography course. The book coheres around Spongberg's ability to contextualize historical and cultural events and to relate them directly and concretely to changes in the field of history. Spongberg's final three chapters are particularly strong in this regard, smartly structured to offer both a rich contextual essay and a comprehensive discussion of the historiography of the period. Spongberg poses some provocative questions about the discipline of history and the inevitability of the practice. Inviting inquiry into the kinds of questions historians have asked—and have been permitted to ask—due to professional, cultural, and social constraints, Spongberg illuminates the evolving field of history in new and insightful ways. |
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Women's history and women's studies courses might benefit from the addition of this text in similar ways. Tracing the writings of women historians over a vast span of time, readers are invited to join a long-running debate about what constitutes "women's history." Spongberg examines the multiple genres in which women historians have engaged, and interrogates each. Spongberg's interest in genre allows her to make her argument that in whatever form women writers undertook historical study, they were engaged in a subversive act and often wrote (if even subtly) subversive histories. While Spongberg argues that women's historical writing has always been political, she contends that as women have gained increasing access to the field as legitimate practitioners, the writing of women's history is inextricably bound with feminist politics. Spongberg is profoundly interested in the debates that have grown out of the practice of women's history and offers a particularly adept discussion of those conversations taking place in the last half of the twentieth century. Her own interest in these debates will almost certainly spark lively discussion in the classroom. Is the purpose of women's history, for example, to restore women to the historical record? Should women's history focus on the individual, or on women as a group or class? Which women are represented in the genre "Women's History?" Is all women's history "feminist history?" Spongberg skillfully works through the debates taking place among feminists and contextualizes what these debates have meant for the practice of history. |
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While this is truly wonderful reading for students of history, some students may find Spongberg's reliance on an assumed body of prior knowledge a challenge. For related reasons, the enormous sweep of history undertaken in this work might discourage its use in the classroom. However, the long lines of historical continuity that Spongberg draws in this work allow her to successfully mount her larger argument even if some details are lost to students. Moreover, her chapters are so well structured and well contextualized individually that they might easily stand on their own as supplementary reading. On balance, Spongberg's work is both thought-provoking and accessible. Spongberg offers an original perspective on the field of history sure to compel students and to enliven classroom discussion. |
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| University of California, Irvine |
Jennifer Thigpen |
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