Revisiting "The Gentle Tamers Revisited": The Problems and Possibilities of Western Women's History: An Introduction

Abstract

In 1980, the Pacific Historical Review published Joan Jensen and Darlis Miller's The Tamers Revisited: New Approaches to the History of Women in the American West.I Winner of both the Billington and Koontz awards, it was indeed a landmark essay. To the broad audience of western historians, Jensen and Miller legitimated the subfield of western women's history by demonstrating, through careful organization and impressive annotation, that there was no lack of either materials or issues. To another, much smaller audience of historians of western women, the essay set an agenda and-most surprisingly-urged a multicultural approach long before the idea became popular. For a number of years following its publication, Gentle Tamers Revisited was the guidebook that helped many of us find our way into the new territory of western women's history. Given the article's importance, it was not surprising that we chose to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Jensen-Miller article with a panel at the 1990 Western History Association meeting. That panel, entitled Revisiting 'The Tamers Revisited': Ten Years of Western Women's History, was the