Lois E. Myers

Rebecca Sharpless

Thomas Lee Charlton

Contains seven essays from Handbook of oral history, published in 2006.

Foundations and Methodology

History of Oral History

Elizabeth Hayes Turner

Stephanie Cole

"This is a collection of biographies and composite essays of Texas women, contextualized over the course of history to include subjects that reflect the enormous racial, class, and religious diversity of the state. Offering insights into the complex ways that Texas' position on the margins of the United States has shaped a particular kind of gendered experience there, the volume also demonstrates how the larger questions in United States women's history are answered or reconceived in the state. Beginning with Juliana Barr's essay, which asserts that 'women marked the lines of dominion among Spanish and Indian nations in Texas' and explodes the myth of Spanish domination in colonial Texas, the essays examine the ways that women were able to use their borderland status to stretch the boundaries of their own lives. Eric Walther demonstrates that the constant changing of governments in Texas (Spanish, Mexican, Texan, and U.S.) gave slaves the opportunities to resist their oppression because of the differences in the laws of slavery under Spanish or English or American law. Gabriela Gonzalez examines the activism of Jovita Idar on behalf of civil rights for Mexicans and Mexican Americans on both sides of the border. Renee Laegreid argues that female rodeo contestants employed a "unique regional interplay of masculine and feminine behaviors" to shape their identities as cowgirls"--

Their Histories, Their Lives

Texas Women

Twenty academics and archivists from the U.S. and UK contribute 16 chapters to this reference work designed for students, researchers, field historians, community activists and general readers with a special interest in oral history. Offering both theoretical and practical information, the text addresses research design, ethical and legal considerations, interviewing techniques, preservation and archival issues, transcribing and editing oral history tapes, memory theory, life-stage theory, communication analysis, gender-related concepts, broad narrative theory, publishing oral history in print and other forms, creative uses of oral history as artistic outcomes or artful productions, and using oral history in sound and visual documentaries.

Handbook of Oral History

Rural women comprised the largest part of the adult population of Texas until 1940 and in the American South until 1960. On the cotton farms of Central Texas, women's labor was essential. In addition to working untold hours in the fields, women shouldered most family responsibilities: keeping house, sewing clothing, cultivating and cooking food, and bearing and raising children. But despite their contributions to the southern agricultural economy, rural women's stories have remained largely untold. Using oral history interviews and written memoirs, Rebecca Sharpless weaves a moving account of women's lives on Texas cotton farms. She examines how women from varying ethnic backgrounds--German, Czech, African American, Mexican, and Anglo-American--coped with difficult circumstances. The food they cooked, the houses they kept, the ways in which they balanced field work with housework, all yield insights into the twentieth-century South. And though rural women's lives were filled with routines, many of which were undone almost as soon as they were done, each of their actions was laden with importance, says Sharpless, for the welfare of a woman's entire family depended heavily upon her efforts.

Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices

Rural women comprised the largest part of the adult population of Texas until 1940 and in the American South until 1960. On the cotton farms of Central Texas, women's labor was essential. In addition to working untold hours in the fields, women shouldered

David Stricklin

Essays on Oral History

The Past Meets the Present

A companion to History of Oral History, Thinking about Oral History presents parts III and IV of Handbook of Oral History, an essential resource for scholars and students. Guided by Charlton, Myers, and Sharpless, the prominent authors capture the current state-of-the-art in oral history and predict key directions for future growth in theory and application.

Theories and Applications

Thinking about Oral History

Thomas L. Charlton

Originally intending to produce the first comprehensive scholarly reference guide to the antecedents, practices, and theory of oral history, the editors have gone even further, creating a highly readable and useful tool for scholars, students, and the general public. Covering the vast scope of this increasingly popular field, the eminent contributors discuss almost every aspect of a field that once was the province of historians but now has become increasingly democratized and available across numerous disciplines.

As African American women left the plantation economy behind, many entered domestic service in southern cities and towns. Cooking was one of the primary jobs they performed, feeding generations of white families and, in the process, profoundly shaping southern foodways and culture. In Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960, Rebecca Sharpless argues that, in the face of discrimination, long workdays, and low wages, African American cooks worked to assert measures of control over their own lives. As employment opportunities expanded in the twentieth century, most African American women chose to leave cooking for more lucrative and less oppressive manufacturing, clerical, or professional positions. Through letters, autobiography, and oral history, Sharpless evokes African American women's voices from slavery to the open economy, examining their lives at work and at home. The enhanced electronic version of the book includes twenty letters, photographs, first-person narratives, and other documents, each embedded in the text where it will be most meaningful. Featuring nearly 100 pages of new material, the enhanced e-book offers readers an intimate view into the lives of domestic workers, while also illuminating the journey a historian takes in uncovering these stories.

Domestic Workers in the South,1865-1960

Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens, Enhanced Ebook

Given in memory of Jameson Garrett Brown by the Rotary Club of Aggieland with matching support from the Sara and John H. Lindsey '44 Fund.

Rebecca Sharpless

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