Gender Matters

Abstract

Gender Matters Lesley J. Gordon When I arrived at the University of Georgia to start graduate school in the fall of 1989, I consciously labeled myself a Civil War “military historian,” who would at all costs avoid courses in women’s history or gender. I earnestly believed that such classes (and the professors who taught them or students who took them) had little to teach me; I wanted to focus on generals, soldiers, campaigns, and grand strategies, and I assumed there was no connection to women or gender in any of these topics. I also supposed (although it took me a while to consciously recognize this fact), that prominent Civil War historians—mainly older, white men—would not take me seriously if I showed any interest in questions of gender. This charade seemed to work pretty well until I began my doctoral program. My narrow focus was unsustainable, and I began to realize that I needed to open my mind to the important and exciting approaches scholars of gender and women’s studies offered. Things really began to break as I became exposed to germinal works by Catherine Clinton, Joan Cashin, Carol Bleser, Nina Silber, Elizabeth Leonard, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, LeeAnn Whites, George Rable, Drew Gilpin Faust, and Jean Freidman, among others. Then one day, when I was already ABD, a new female professor, Miranda Pollard, at UGA took me aside and urged me to audit her course, “Gender Matters.” For the first time, I read Joan Scott, Judith Butler, bell hooks, as well as poststructural theorists, [End Page 441] and began to reassess many of my basic assumptions about history. I think it is safe to say that gender theory enabled me to grow as a scholar more than any other type of history—yet I steadfastly remained (and continue to call myself) a Civil War military historian. These scholars also forced me to think about my own identity as a Jewish, white woman in a field still predominantly perceived as masculine and white (and Protestant Christian). Although there are increasingly more women and more voices of diversity in our field, I think that image, and the public’s expectation of it, has endured: Civil War historians should be white (middle-aged) males. This simply has not changed. Over the past five years, as editor of Civil War History, I’ve been pleased to see the variety and breadth of scholarship in the hundreds of article submissions we have received and read. Although recently there has been alarm expressed over the perceived dearth of traditional military history, traditional political (especially antebellum) history seems to be thriving. However, at Civil War History, we have received very few submissions by women and even fewer on topics related to gender (by men or women). This concerns me on many levels. As the first and for now only female editor of this journal in its sixty-plus years of existence, I regret that during my tenure, I could not do more to attract and encourage female authors. As we reflect on the significance and place of Mary Elizabeth Massey in the historiography, it is clear that we need more; more scholarship that builds on her pioneering efforts; more scholarship that continues to explore the effects, implications, and consequences this conflict had on all women; and more scholarship that grapples with the broader societal concepts of gender. Copyright © 2015 The Kent State University Press