Historical Geography, feminist research and the gender politics of the present

Abstract

It is thirty years since the first call to engage with gender as an analytical category was made in the sub‐discipline of Historical Geography. Significant advances in scholarship have been made in this time, particularly the re‐situation of women in the history of Geography as a subject. This paper looks to the next thirty years in Historical Geography and asks how the sub‐discipline can retain and develop its critical political edge. In the 2017 Women's Marches protestors dressed as suffragettes from the early twentieth century and proclaimed that little had changed in the fight for women's rights. Taking this ‘Victorian present’ as a starting point, this paper explores ways to connect Historical Geography to the gender politics of the present. The paper argues that the sub‐discipline has the methodological tools to use the past as a form of female power to engage with the inequalities that women still face. A sketch of a feminist historical geography of the present is provided using emancipatory and participatory research tools.

The power of visualization choices:

“…It is important for feminist geographers to participate in the development of strategies to give a physical map form to feminist discourse by utilizing GIS to advance feminist practices (Kwan, 2002b). We recognize that using tools associated with scientific cartography alone is not enough; it is still critical to acknowledge what is not in the data, and what is missing from the data and the map (Moore, 2018). We take a seemingly traditional cartographic approach but identify points in this process where ideas from the feminist data visualization framework of D'Ignazio and Klein (2016) can be inserted, as a step towards feminist cartography.…”

New protest history: Exploring the historical geographies and geographical histories of resistance through gender, practice, and materiality

“…Domosh and Morin () have pointed out that researchers rarely identify the work that they do as feminist historical geography. Despite this, recent surveys demonstrate that there is a significant amount of work that engages with gendered historical geographies (McDonagh, ; Moore, ). Gender and women's protest has not received significant attention from historical geographers of resistance.…”

“…She calls for scholars to cite women and people of color, and create disciplinary space—in the form of workshops, special issues of journals, and teaching—in order to redress this imbalance. Furthermore, Moore () has called for historical geography to be used to challenge contemporary sexual politics by shedding light on what has changed (as well as what has not) across time and space. These calls to action can be viewed alongside recent attempts to undertake activist historical geography (such as Bressey, ; Griffin, ) as a promising trend within the discipline.…”

“…In this article, I focus on three themes which enable the exploration and evaluation of new protest history: gender, practice, and materiality. Recent calls for a more politically aware historical geography of gender, women, and feminism reflect concerning trends within Western society (McDonagh, ; Moore, ). Developments such as the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. Presidency, the #MeToo movement, and socially regressive policies of governments around the world have demonstrated that hard‐won women's rights simultaneously do not go far enough and are at risk of erosion.…”

Historical geography, climbing and mountaineering: route setting for an inclusive future

“…There has recently been a surge in attention to women's histories across historical geography, pushed in no small part by the work of McDonagh () and recognised recently in this journal by Moore (). There has also been a call to look at “gender issues in mobilities” (DeLyser, , p. 94).…”