Five members of the faculty participated in the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, held at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, June 9-12, 2011. Also known as the “Big Berks,” the academic gathering (held once every three years) is the largest, most prestigious women’s history conference in the world. MSU historians who presented their research or offered comment at the conference include:
Lisa Fine, who chaired a roundtable session titled “Motherhood Revisited: Maternalism in the Next Generation”
LaShawn Harris, who presented a paper “Daughters of Joy: African American Women Prostitutes and Working Class Sexuality in New York City, 1900-1939”
Ethan Segal, who organized a panel and spoke on “Women, Warriors, and Changing Marriage Patterns in Medieval Japan”
Susan Sleeper-Smith, who presented her latest research on “Indian Women in the Ohio River Borderlands”
Helen Veit, who presented the paper “Paying for Freedom with Her Health: Women’s Aging in American Youth Culture”
and Ashley Wiersma, who organized the panel “Colonized and Colonizing Women in Africa and America: Cross-Cultural Negotiations.”
The complete program, which includes more information on the panels in which MSU historians participated, can be downloaded at http://berksconference.org/BerkshireConference2011.pdf