" Western Women and Imperialism] provides fascinating insights into interactions and attitudes between western and non-western women, mainly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is an important contribution to the field of women s studies and (primarily British) imperial history, in that many of the essays explore problems of cross-cultural interaction that have been heretofore ignored." Nancy Fix Anderson

"A challenging anthology in which a multiplicity of authors sheds new light on the waves of missionaries, 'memsahibs, ' nurses and feminists." Ms.

..". a long-overdue...

This collection of personal narratives by former officers of the Coordinating Council for Women in History weaves together past and present in women's history, and women in the historical profession. Recording the diverse paths taken to become historians, essays describe how a group of women negotiated the often competing demands of being a woman, a professional, and a political activist during the turbulent 1960s through the challenges of the 1990s.

The contributors of "Contesting Archives" challenge the assumption that an archive is a neutral, immutable, and a historical repository of information. Instead, these historians view it as a place where decisions are made about whose documents--and therefore whose history--is important. Finding that women's voices and their texts were often obscured or lost altogether, they have developed many new methodologies for creating unique archives and uncovering more evidence by reading documents "against the grain," weaving together many layers of information to reveal complexities and working...