Madeleine Coles
Life Editor
Students in Erika Kuhlman’s Women in the North American West class will have biographies they wrote about Idaho suffragists published on the website Women and Social Movements in the United States.
Although the course has been taught at ISU before, this was the first year Kuhlman taught it. It was also the first year a project like this had been accomplished by students in the class.
According to Kuhlman, she was asked to have her class participate in this project specifically for the website.
“A colleague of mine in New York thought this project would be a good one for this class, and I thought it sounded like a great idea,” Kuhlman said.
“The website was a project that was started about ten years ago. The idea behind [it] was that it would provide primary source documents to researchers all over the world,” she added. “We don’t have as many documents that pertain to women as we do about men because women just haven’t been considered to be historical players, so nobody really thought to compile sources before.”
Kuhlman also noted that while the students’ papers will be published on the website, they used the website as a source for many of their papers.
“The idea was to have students look for primary sources on little-known Idaho suffragists. They used the website, and now their papers are being published on it,” she said.
Because many of the women researched were somewhat obscure, Kuhlman admitted that researching them was difficult at times. But the website wasn’t the only source students had.
One student researched a woman who was one of the founding members of the League of Women Voters in Idaho Falls. The group still exists today, and Kuhlman was able to track down a member who provided them with information about the suffragist.
The member also invited Kuhlman to the Women’s History Month conference in March. Kuhlman said she plans to attend with the student who was researching the suffragist, which is one of the many ways she said this project has benefitted both the students and ISU itself.
“I think people like the League of Women Voters, The American Association of Women, those organizations are all going to be part of this Women’s History Month conference, so that’s a clear way that ISU can invite members of the community here,” Kuhlman said.
She added that she believes the students specifically have gained a number of skills and valuable experiences from participating in the project.
“I think the biggest thing is that the students gained is the experience of researching little-known subjects in history,” Kuhlman said. “When I was a masters student, I got a hold of a bunch of letters no one had ever used before, and it was really fun to make that into my master’s thesis. So I guess I have first-hand knowledge of the kind of excitement that you get when you’re the first person who’s able to use something, and make something from it. Part of my desire to do the project was because I knew they would be able to find research about these ladies that had never been used before.”
But according to Kuhlman, the project was just as much a learning experience for her as it was for her students.
“I really didn’t know much about a lot of these women, so one aspect of the project was that we learned together,” she said. “That’s when history becomes investigative. I think that was part of the excitement of the project.”
Due to the success of the project, Kuhlman said it will likely continue to grow and even branch out into other classes.
“I have a colleague who teaches the history of women in the United States, and she’s interested in having her students do some of the women we weren’t able to get to,” Kuhlman said. “So she’ll probably be doing this next year.”
The papers will be published on the website later this year.
