My husband and I went to see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich at the Tenement Museum in New York. He bought me her new book which I, of course, had autographed.

There was some very intriguing points made:

• Idealization of women in the past. Having to live up to those who came before us.
• Public records, such as a census, determining and informing what history is.
• History is not created by action alone.

• Feminist activism made women’s history as a field of scholarship possible.

Professor Ulrich also shared the panel with Deborah Siegel of Girl with Pen and Pamela Thompson who wrote Every Past Thing (Great video link here too.) It was a great talk that I really appreciated, having been out of academia for awhile. Also, I am reading Siegel’s book Sisterhood Interrupted. Such a resource! I wish I had this when I was writing my MA thesis about women’s history as an academic field and its relationship to women’s studies!