OI Books: A Transformative View of Race and Gender
Today’s post is part of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Omohundro Institute by exploring the OI books that have had an impact on a scholar’s life. I was in the middle of my dissertation research when Mick Nicholls, then a Research Fellow at Colonial Williamsburg, introduced me to Kathy Brown. Mick encouraged us to talk about our research in county court records. Kathy was in Virginia so she could immerse herself in the court records for three Tidewater counties: Lancaster, Norfolk, and York. I also used the York County Court records in my dissertation and we quickly learned that we had a lot to discuss. During these conversations I realized how much I had missed thinking and talking about women as historical actors. While women appeared as minor figures in reading assignments during grad school, only one of the classes that I took as a Ph.D. student at William & Mary included a focus on women and this focus lasted just a week. I found that these readings were a disappointment as they were book chapters and articles published in the 1950s. Read More