Virtual Workshop for Educators, Silences in the Archive: Women’s History and (lack of) Primary Resources

Many learners expect archives and collections to be comprehensive. If a document isn’t listed or a story isn’t included, it must not exist! Yet archives and collections themselves contain silences. In the past, people made decisions that certain primary sources were not worthy of preservation or study and therefore deliberately excluded them from collections—those decisions created these silences. When it comes to the history of women—particularly women of color, immigrant women, and working-class women—these silences are even more deafening. How can you understand or learn the history of women in the United States when there is a lack of primary sources on which to base that inquiry? 

In this virtual workshop, educators will learn strategies for reading primary sources to help students understand those silences and make inquiries and analysis based on them. Using Library of Congress primary sources and Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) strategies, this 1-hour virtual workshop will use example primary sources to model classroom activities. This workshop will be co-facilitated by NWHM museum educators and Dr. Katherine Perrotta, Assistant Professor of Middle Grades and Secondary Education at Mercer University Tift College of Education. 

This session is free but advanced registration is required. Those who attend will receive a certificate of completion. 

Please note: The National Women’s History Museum strives to provide programs that are accessible to all visitors. For questions, or to request accommodations such as an ASL interpreter or closed captioning, please email [email protected] at least 7 days in advance of the program. 

This workshop is sponsored in part by the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Eastern Region Program, coordinated by Waynesburg University.