The Jane Addams Papers Project represented at the Chicago Women’s History Conference this past Saturday. Cathy Moran Hajo, Stacy Lynn, and advisory board member Marilyn Fischer led a workshop devoted to the importance of Jane Addams, the digital edition, and how scholars and teachers can use it. Stacy talked about how influential Addams and the women of Hull-House were, and Cathy demonstrated the digital edition, while Marilyn discussed how she uses the digital edition to trace Addams’s word use in her three part book series about Addams as an evolutionary philosopher.
Our workshop was just one session in a day filled with really interesting work. The biggest challenge was choosing between them! And Jane Addams was everywhere! From the cardboard cutout at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s booth, to morning presentations by Sherryl Engstrom on Hull House Performs: A Description and Evaluative Study of the Performing Arts at Hull House, 1920-1937 and Fiona Maxwell on “We Women Would Rule the World of Politics”: Women’s Oratory and Activism at Chicago Settlement Houses, 1890-1920. In the afternoon, we delighted to Ann Keating and advisory board member Rima Lunin Schultz’s presentation, “Beyond the Second Wave: Working Class Women Activists and City Planning: Florence Scala and Chicago’s Near West Side.”
Keynote speaker Jamila Woods was inspiring and plenary session with Pinqy Ring and her amazing students ended with an emotional bang. What an amazing time.
Cathy Moran Hajo is the Editor and Director of the Jane Addams Papers Project at Ramapo College of New Jersey. She is an experienced scholarly editor, having previously worked for over 25 years as Associate Editor at the Margaret Sanger Papers at New York University. Dr. Hajo received her Ph.D. in history from New York University in 2006, and is addition to her work on the Sanger Papers, published “Birth Control on Main Street, Organizing Clinics in the United States, 1916-1940,” in 2010.
Her teaching interests include scholarly editing and digital history, and she currently teaches for the Institute for Editing Historical Documents, the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. She teaches a digital history course at Ramapo College.
What a great day it was! My mantra of Women Rule was in full display!