This Worldwide Web site is intended to serve as a resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, the website seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding at the same time that it makes the insights of women's history accessible to teachers and students at universities, colleges, and high schools.

         The website provides learning modules in the form of document projects, each of which is organized around a specific question about a single social movement. Each module contains fifteen to twenty documents that address the question. In developing these projects the authors have drawn upon microform collections of the papers of such women’s reform organizations as the Women’s Trade Union League, the National Association of Colored Women, the National Consumers' League, Henry Street and Hull House settlements, the National Woman's Party, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

       The document projects originated as student research projects in undergraduate and graduate seminars at SUNY Binghamton. Their work was supervised by Professor Sklar and other faculty. Professors Dublin and Sklar have revised and edited the projects for consistency and to make them more authoritative in scholarly terms. Toward this end some projects have been substantially reconceived and rewritten. We are continually adding additional primary documents to the projects as well as adding new document projects.

       Since July 2001, we have been collaborating with faculty at universities and colleges around the United States who are teaching courses based on the website. Faculty and students in those courses are completing document projects for possible publication on the website. To date we have published document projects by faculty and students at the University of Northern Colorado, Grinnell College, the University of Arizona, Oberlin College, St. Louis University, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, New York University, and Rutgers University.

       In the fall of 2003 we launched a partnership with Alexander Street Press and in March 2004 we began publishing as a quarterly online journal. We are now accepting submissions of document project proposals from scholars in U.S. women's history. Such proposals are especially appropriate from scholars who have recently published books or article monographs on topics related to women and social movements in the United States. See our submission guidelines on this website.

       By focusing on women in social movements we hope to provide students with materials that connect with the larger social and political narratives of American history. The documents and ancillary materials raise questions about major themes in women's history and in U.S. history. In this way we offer teachers at the secondary and college levels materials that will enable their students to connect women’s history with themes they are encountering in their American history courses. Eventually we see the website as a cooperative venture among scholars, college and university teachers, archivists, and secondary school teachers. The Teacher's Corner, first installed on the site in January 2001 and continually expanding, is a step in this cooperative direction.

        We welcome comments on the materials and encourage their use in classroom settings. If you have comments about the site or are interested in participating in the testing and development of materials, please use the link below to send e-mail to the project directors. We welcome feedback and comments.

EDITORIAL POLICY

       We have transcribed original sources exactly as they appeared and have not corrected errors in spelling except in the case of typographical errors in printed sources or insignificant errors in manuscript sources. Errors have not been noted with "[sic]" except in cases where recognition of the error illuminates the document. In some cases we have modernized punctuation. We have only added words occasionally to clarify the meaning of an obscure passage and have always used brackets [ ] on such occasions. We use ellipses to indicate places where we have excerpted portions from a longer document. Where we have deleted a paragraph or more, we have inserted asterisks to mark this editing. We have added signatures in brackets if the original document was an internal copy of a letter and as such did not have a signature.

       Many document projects are still freely available on this editorial website. Since the launch of an expanded database version of this website, jointly published by the Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender at SUNY Binghamton and Alexander Street Press, we have ceased publishing additions and corrections to the projects available here. To obtain access to the most up-to-date versions of document projects, see the Alexander Street Women and Social Movements subscription site. (For access to this expanded website, please click here to arrange a free 30-day trial subscription.)

Kathryn Kish Sklar, Distinguished Professor of History

Thomas Dublin, Professor of History

Center for the Historical Study of Women and Gender
History Department
State University of New York at Binghamton
Binghamton, New York 13902-6000

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