The Future of Women's History

In line with our ongoing interest in the past, present, and future of women's history, we grabbed at the chance to publish the transcript of an exciting panel discussion on U.S. women's and gender history in the new century. Nancy Cott took advantage of a larger gathering at Yale University in October 2001 to invite Gerda Lerner, Kathryn Kish Sklar, Ellen DuBois, and Nancy Hewitt to reflect on the state of the field. One of our managing editors, Stephanie Gilmore, suggested that we extend our consideration by seeking responses from more junior scholars, so we solicited names from our Board of Editors and also extended an invitation to Stephanie. So, following the transcript, you will find a range of thoughtful comments from graduate students and newly minted scholars who bring to the discussion concerns about such things as standpoint, transnationalism, nation-building, the politics of academia, the Web, the "master" narrative, and age as a category of analysis. Thus, in its entirety, this series embodies the generational development of women's history and points to promising directions for the future.