The Expertise of the “Lady Speaker”

My first encounter with the field of Civil War history in the 1990s was undoubtedly very different from what Mary Elizabeth Massey experienced in her day, and for one profound reason: I had female mentors. I had women like Catherine Clinton and Joan Cashin, who gave me my first two publishing opportunities, and women like Drew Gilpin Faust, Lesley Gordon, and everyone else in this forum, who set important examples with superb scholarship on wide-ranging subjects. I had many women coming up in the profession alongside me, women in my peer group who have offered camaraderie as well as understanding about the pressures involved in reconciling personal and professional demands on our time. All of these women made it possible for me to enter this traditionally male-dominated field without feeling alone. I have a sense of belonging that likely eluded Mary Elizabeth Massey.

Yet the fact that this female network of Civil War historians has been so meaningful, decades after Massey’s time, is a testament to what has not changed. Despite the 2012 election of the SCWH’s first female president, Anne Sarah Rubin, and Gordon’s 2010 appointment to be the first female editor of Civil War History, two extraordinary moments of progress, it is pretty clear that the field has not moved into any sort of post-gender utopia either. We still encounter sexism, in ways both subtle and overt, just as women do in all professional arenas, although Civil War history does come with its own particular form. The subject we deal with—war—is a profoundly gendered one; consequently, male historians often enjoy an assumed authority over it that women historians have to earn. Some female scholars find their work subject to outsized critiques, especially when they venture beyond the subject of women and gender; others of us have been reminded continually of the novelty of our position as women who claim expertise on the Civil War. Not long ago, I had a Civil War Round Table president confess that he had invited me to speak because “we don’t get many lady speakers.” The comment, a well-meaning attempt at inclusion, still made it clear that I was different and that it was not just my subject, but my self, that would be on display as I spoke before an audience accustomed to relying on the expertise of men. Like Massey, I am still a “lady speaker”—in the 2015 world of Civil War history.