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Present at the Birth of a New History

The Southern Association for Women Historians, has had two missions since its founding in 1970: to support women historians and to promote women’s history. From the beginning, it was an inclusive and non-hierarchical organization that took mentoring colleagues seriously and built structures within the institution to foster it. The SAWH welcomed men as members, along with those scholars who worked independently or outside of the academy, and supported graduate students. The SAWH’s collaborative model and conferences provided a robust forum for the exchange of ideas. At the SAWH’s founding, it was a caucus within the Southern Historical Association. In 1975, however, members decided to form a separate organization that could better foster its model of activism for women and women’s scholarship. It worked to increase women members in the SHA and to shape that organization’s rules and culture to be more accepting of women and their scholarship. In addition to this activism, the SAWH helped birth the now robust field of southern women’s history.