Professor Taranto's Students Participate in Sharing Stories Database

In the fall semester of 2023, Professor Stacie Taranto’s HIST 316-01 course, “A History of Women in American Politics,” took part in a large, NEH-funded digital history project — the Sharing Stories from 1977 database — that will result in all 15 students in the class becoming published authors on the site. Sharing Stories is a growing digital history project run out of the University of Houston that is advised by prominent scholars in U.S. women’s history and relates directly to the course’s theme of women in American politics. The site captures the history of the National Women’s Conference. In November 1977, America held a taxpayer-funded National Women’s Conference (NWC) in Houston, Texas – the country’s first (and so far, only) taxpayer-funded national conference on women. The idea for the national conference sprang from a United Nations’ initiative in 1975. The idea was for each UN member nation, including the United States, to host a national conference to assess the state of women’s rights in that country — and to put together an agenda (with policy recommendations) for lawmakers that would make women equal to men in that country (socially, politically, legally, etc.) Before America’s national conference, there were a series of meetings held in each American territory and state – including New Jersey – to select 2,200 delegates (including 39 delegates and 1 alternate from NJ) to attend the national conference in Houston, and to begin coming up with policy ideas for American lawmakers (on every level) that would make women more equal to men.

Before the 50th anniversary of the National Women’s Conference in 2027, Sharing Stories is hoping to write biographies of all 2,200 delegates who attended the conference in 1977. Here are some sample biographies from other states. Before last semester, no biographies had been written about the 39 NJ delegates and 1 alternate. Professor Taranto’s 15 students each took a delegate to research, working alongside students from other colleges/universities in New Jersey (Monmouth University, Rowan University, Union County Community College, and The College of New Jersey). Thanks to their efforts, biographies have now been written of the 39 NJ delegates and 1 alternate delegate who attended the NWC in 1977.

The students in HIST 316 were given direction each week on what public sites to research their delegates on, and every week, the class wrote up summaries of what they learned (for Professor Taranto ‘s feedback) as well as talked about the process at the beginning of class, so they could learn from each other — as historians do at conferences. They were also in touch (if they wanted) with the other students in NJ working on delegates from NJ (as some of their delegates had been friends, so a Ramapo student might in the process of researching their delegate, stumble upon information about a delegate someone from TCNJ was researching). The students engaged in deep historical research, working with librarians at Ramapo College and the Mahwah Public Library, as well as their professor, to access sites such as Newspapers.com (professor’s subscription), Access World New (Potter Library), Proquest Newspapers (Potter Library), Heritage Quest (Mahwah Library), and much more. Through this process, some students got in touch with their delegates (or their family members) to learn about their political journeys in the 1970s. One student’s delegate even ended up joining the class via WebEx for the final class meeting to talk about her life, which drove home several political themes, especially about the growth of modern feminism, that the course covered. Students reported that this project really brought history to life for them — the goal of every history course!

In the end, each HIST 316 student wrote 500-word biographies of their delegates (going through multiple drafts with feedback from their professor and classmates) that are currently being fact-checked and edited at Sharing Stories for publication on the site in late summer /early fall 2024. One student in the class, Miranda Trautmann, will participate in a national forum (over Zoom) on March 25, 2024, with students from across the country who also researched delegates for Sharing Stories in their history classes, including students from the following institutions: Brown University (RI), Colby College (ME), DePauw University (IN), Idaho State University, Illinois State University, Merrimack College (MA), Rowan University (NJ), Sacred Heart Preparatory High School (CA), Saint Mary’s College (IN), Union College of Union County, NJ, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of Houston (TX).

As a result of this fantastic experience, students in HIST 316 will not only become published authors, but they engaged in deep research of a historical subject, made connections with other history students across the nation and state, and learned about historical writing and editing.

Professor Taranto recently joined the national editorial board of Sharing Stories, where she will supervise 2 graduate students working on PhD’s in American history, as they edit and and fact-check delegate biographies produced by undergraduates (like her own in HIST 316) from across the country — prepping the biographies for publication on the site. Professor Taranto will draw on her experience as an associate editor at another major digital history project — Made by History at Time Magazine — to supervise this editorial process.

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