On Monday, August 26, 2024— Women’s Equality Day—the Sharing Stories from 1977 project will reach a major milestone: The publication of its Researching the NWC page, which is the core of the project.
The NWC (National Women’s Conference) was a federally funded political gathering of almost 2,000 women in Houston, November 18-21, 1977, and the Sharing Stories from 1977 initative has been committed to documenting and preserving the participant experiences and legacy of that 1977 conference.
Since the public launch of the Sharing Stories website in March 2022, students have contributed in multiple important ways to this digital humanities project. They have written biographies and interpretive essays, conducted oral histories, and researched the demographics for the almost 2,000 NWC participants.
On August 26, the project leaders will publish a new page, Researching the NWC, which features two different search functions of these demographics. One of the functions is a basic search geared to the general public, and another is an advanced search for students and researchers and anyone else who wants to dig deep into all facets of the data.
This new page will allow users to cross-tabulate facts and figures about the delegates to the National Women's Conference. Visitors to the page will be able to compare data related to political party affiliations, race and gender identity, religion, education and career, and views on the many issues deliberated at the conference, ranging from reproductive health care and sexual identity to equal rights and minority concerns. This massive undertaking contains more than 5,000 unique datapoints. It is the result of years of collaboration between technologists and humanists at UH and will transform what we know about women's political and civic engagement in the late twentieth century.
Content on the Researching the NWC page demonstrates that Americans in the 1970s were much more civically and politically minded than current scholarship suggests. The women who participated in the NWC believed in the expansion of American democracy. Dr. Nancy Beck Young, Sharing Stories Project Co-Director and Moores Professor in the UH Department of History, stated that she is "most excited for how this work will revolutionize the study of recent American politics, changing what we know about women and politics at the end of the twentieth century and offering inspiration for college students today."
Students working on the project have shared what meaningful training experiences—intellectually and professionally—the Sharing Stories project has provided them.
Miranda Rusinksy, MA student in the UH Public History program, said that working with the Sharing Stories team, she “learned how to do digital and archival research, conduct oral histories, write biographies, and clean data on Excel. The knowledge I gained was not only from the historical narrative of the 1977 conference.
I learned about interdisciplinary collaboration, the technological future of the humanities, the public engagement of history, and research beyond the classroom for grades.”
Mary Seume, MA student in the UH Anthropology Department said, “I think I’ve enjoyed learning about the women and delegates who attended the NWC the most. I feel inspired by their expansive involvement with local and nation-wide feminist organizations, and their passion displayed at the conference.”
She also expressed why she thought the history of the National Women’s Conference was so important: “Since the NWC was federally funded, it gave lots of attention to advocates for women’s rights and national and local organizations for women’s rights. I think this history should be told online because that is the best way to reach people. The NWC left a legacy that I personally feel like is important to share with the younger generations to give us hope in the future and show us that our efforts do make a difference.”
Dr. Peggy Lindner, Assistant Professor in the College of Engineering, Technology Division, and Director of Technology for Sharing Stories, pointed out that "the collaboration of students from the Technology Division, Computer Information Systems program, equipped them with a diverse set of skills and perspectives that are valuable in their professional and personal lives. In particular, understanding different approaches to data categorization and organization with a feminist underpinning broadened their horizons."
Researching the NWC will present a first dataset containing information about delegations from Texas, Guam, and Montana, with other Western states and Pacific territories soon to follow in the fall of 2024. This dataset reflects the work of over 2,000 student researchers at UH who have conducted qualitative and quantitative demographic research and proofed this data effectively over multiple years. These students join a wider network of over 1,000 students at colleges and universities in more than 20 states who have contributed to the project, which, Young argues, is one of the biggest accomplishments of Sharing Stories, the empowerment of students as researchers in digital humanities.
Register for the virtual launch event and panel discussion
Featuring a panel discussion with renowned data scientists and humanities scholars Drs. Catherine D’Ignazio, Roopika Risam, Kristy Kang, Veronica Paredes and Dr. Linda Garcia-Merchant as they discuss why data is important to think about in connection to feminism and equality. This dynamic, virtual conversation will be moderated by Dr. Peggy Lindner.
Register for the in-person data workshop
Students, faculty, staff, and interested community members have a bonus opportunity at the UH Main Campus to participate in an in-person watch party of the virtual launch roundtable discussion, plus get a behind-the-scenes demonstration of how the Researching the NWC page was built. Attendees will have an opportunity to be the first to engage with the new page by using and responding to its basic and advanced search features. Refreshments will be provided.
Seating is limited, so register as soon as you can!
The event is sponsored by:
- The UH Center for Public History
- Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
- Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality
- Core Facilities
- UH Libraries