Votes for Women, Wikis for Women
In the fall of 2017, I began teaching HST 342 Votes for Women in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. [Of course, this anniversary celebrates only certain groups of women gaining the right vote.] It was also an effort to add new voices to the historical record. The previous fall, my 4th grade daughter came home with the wind knocked out of her sails. “Where are were the women and non-white folks in the state’s history?” Like thousands of other fourth graders she was to participate in a state history project. As we searched for possible subjects we noticed that wikipedia entires for Hoosier men and women of color, and for suffrage and other reforms efforts were underdeveloped and non-existent in some cases. This is of course not a new finding. Wikipedia’s gender imbalance is well-documented. [I presented at Butler University’s 2017 Celebration of Teaching and Learning on this course as a partial redress to this imbalance. Click here to see the poster.]
We need a diversity of voices and perspectives as the authors and subject of history. The final project for HST 342 Votes for Women is the creation of new entries for wikipedia and the amplification, editing, etc. of pre-existing pages. We have also stubbed a number of pages on women’s history and intersecting topics. Undertaking this project is part of my ongoing work as a public intellectual and part of what the journal Signs labels “public feminism.” Summer 2018 I am participating in a Wikipedia Fellows program through the National Women’s Studies Association. Read about the project here.
The “Votes for Women” course isactively soliciting new topics, events, organizations, and persons to add to our list as well as other relevant leads. Please send suggestions to vdeno@butler.edu or leave them in the comments.
A few of the pages that have been added as a result of this course:
Women’s Franchise League of Indiana
Indiana Women’s Suffrage Association
Scenes from our wikithon. Students from the last class came back to help this year’s class edit and add new wikipedia pages on women’s suffrage and more.
Themocracy