Two New Montana Women's History Resources

1. A little shameless self-promotion here: I'm delighted to announce the publication of Beyond Schoolmarms and Madams: Montana Women's Stories! The book, which I edited, features a range of Montana women in a host of roles: homesteaders, clubwomen, community organizers, athletes, caretakers, suffragists, politicians, warriors, workers, artists, mothers, and grandmothers. Beyond Schoolmarms includes almost all of the essays we published over the course of 2014 on the Women's History Matters website, a website created to commemorate the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in Montana. (Read more about the project here.) All of the essays remain on the website, where you'll also find a number of lesson plans and other resources about Montana women's history. 

Beyond Schoolmarms isn't the only publication that grew out of Women's History Matters. In cooperation with the OPI Indian Education Office, we created a 26-page booklet, Resilience: Stories of Montana Indian Women for download (no print copies are available at this time). It includes 21 essays about Montana's Indian women--from nineteenth century indigenous women warriors to Elouise Cobell. (All of these essays were also originally published on the Women's History Matters website). The back of the booklet includes suggested lesson plans. These lessons can be used with Beyond Schoolmarms and Madams as well--or with the material on the website.

If you haven't already spent time on the website, I hope you will. And of course I hope you'll check out Resilience and Beyond Schoolmarms and Madams as well. If you do, I bet you'll learn something new. I certainly did while working on the project. Happy reading!

P.S. One of our women’s history lesson plans will be featured in the Crossing Disciplines workshops, coming next week to Billings, Miles City, and Sidney. There is still time to register! More information here.