Thursday, August 12, 2010

VanBurkleo, Pascoe, and Women's History

Legal historian Sandra VanBurkleo has a moving tribute to Peggy Pascoe at the Women's Review of Books Blog. "Both the academy and the human community have lost one of its gentle giants," she writes.
Peggy will be remembered, not simply for what she wrote, but also for what she was, what she gave daily to students, friends, and compatriots, and what she leaves for us to finish. She might say-her modesty was never an affectation-that the last are by far the most important. She left as many questions as she managed to answer; it's now up to younger scholars and activists to follow her lead, to pick up the reins. Western allusions are deliberate: Peggy was an historian of the west, where it's sometimes said that the sky's the limit.
And then she turns to a great story about when Peggy commented on her paper at the American Society for Legal History meeting. It turns into a story about doing women's history, and about refusing to compromise. You can find it here.