Paper Short Abstract:

This paper shares how overlooked resources, specifically from the domestic realm, inform my work considering historic women’s experiences and what knowledge can be gleaned to support women today. Additionally, this paper considers how communicating the evidence from the historical record can provide an antidote to the dangerous movements built up by romanticising women’s history.

Paper Abstract:

Are women’s historic stories “unrecoverable” (as some have said) or is it that researchers have to change how and where we look? Of course erasure, among other issues, contributes to women’s lack of visibility in the historical record; however, evidence of women’s lives does persist and from this, we can glean information about their social circumstances as well as their day to day existences.

These “unrecoverable” stories are essential to my work (meaning-making and personal sanctuary in times of precarity). Using information from the archeological and historical records in an approach best described as experimental folklore, I weave together methodological and conceptual threads from multiple disciplines to approximate people’s experiences. This unique approach is necessary due, in part, to the incomplete nature of women’s representation. One aspect of my work draws on material culture finds, especially those related to times of precarity. I engage with aspects of them in an attempt to understand the perspective of the maker as well as what information can be learned to support women today.

This paper discusses how these often disregarded resources, specifically from the domestic realm, can help us understand historic women’s lived experiences. I articulate how those findings can offer some solutions to modern day concerns, especially in times of health precarity. Finally, I address the way that the romanticization of women’s history has led to dangerous movements in the present, and how understanding and communicating facts from the historical record can be an antidote to this.