Woman as Subject, Oral History as Method

Abstract

The Results. When we wrote the initial grant proposal, we intended to follow a strict academic model for writing and distributing the results of our research. Unfortunately, this has not happened with the speed or to the degree we had anticipated. There are several reasons for this. First, and most important, in 1975, most traditional academics were not interested in what we had to say and we quickly lost interest in telling them. To the University, our project was neither fish nor fowl nor bird of air, for we transgressed all accepted categories by combining elements of journalism, history, sociology, drama, and psychology but mastering none. We were, of course, doing women's history, but in 1975 this term was more anathema than it is now. If being eclectic and cross-disciplinary were not bad enough, we violated another sacred, scholarly tenet: we were not objective. In fact, we loved our respondents even while they exasperated us and quickly realized that the most important audience for our work was the women from whom it derived. This seems, even eight years later, to be our project's single most important accomplishment, and I suggest it as sine qua non of women's history: that which rises must return. Unfortunately, the project has never really moved much beyond this stage both because so few of the interviews have been transcribed and because we have not done the schol rly research the collection now demands. A few articles bas d on RWHP interviews have been published; an educational project for rural women has been funded; a few lectures have been presented, and a class taught, but we still have had little impact on the academic disciplines we had once so hoped to change-western history, rural sociology, and women's studies. It is enough, however, to have done our work well and to have encouraged other projects. We are very proud that the the Rural Women's History Project has had several spin-offs: the Wyoming and Washington women's heritage projects, the Northwest women's history project, and the Arizona women's oral istory project. In addition, several of our original project staff have gone on to work in women's history in other areas. And, still, even seven years after the project was completed, we are sometimes asked to do performances.