Berkshire Conference on Women’s History, Toronto, Canada, May 22-25, 2014, Website

Call for panelists from Karen Dunak: The panel will focus on the experiences and imaginings of widows as they embarked upon their lives after marriage – and how their decisions and actions were infused with meaning, whether due to public efforts to negotiate their late husbands’ on-going legacies or because of their unwillingness to sustain their widow roles and behave as society expected they should (and often as a mixture of both). Having neither rejected marriage nor left a union of their own volition, in their roles as widows, these women lived on the edge of expected social roles and ultimately shaped public views of women – even as they may have never endeavored to do so.

One paper will explore the evolving widowhood of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. As First Lady, JBK privileged her family and nation above her own desires, but when she renegotiated her priorities in the aftermath of JFK’s assassination, she met with condemnation and curiosity. JBK believed she’d fulfilled her role and served her time to the nation while many citizens expected her position as the nation’s widow would last indefinitely. Unwilling to accept views of herself as a kind of public property, JBK attempted to subvert such views while presenting a model of independence and autonomy that presented a marked departure from traditional expectations of American women.

The other paper will look at a variety of famous Civil War widows – both Union and Confederate – to investigate how their postwar lives became implicated in postwar memory. Americans looked to these women and read meaning on their actions. At the same time, however, these women served as shapers of memory of the war as they used their personal connection to the war and its leaders as a means to claim particular agency in shaping the war narrative.

We’re happy to consider expanding our panel across both time period and geographic location.

If interested, please contact me off-list (kdunak@muskingum.edu)

Karen Dunak
Assistant Professor, Department of History
Co-Advisor, American Studies
Muskingum University
116 Cambridge Hall
163 Stormont Street
New Concord, OH 43762
740-826-8272

Source: H-WOMEN@H-NET.MSU.EDU