Embracing Amateurs: Four Practices to Subvert Academic Gatekeeping

ABSTRACT

Citational practices function as a form of academic gatekeeping. To create a more inclusive scholarship, authors must consciously commit to embracing the contributions of all researchers, including amateurs. I base my case on Mildred Crowl Martin's biography of Donaldina Cameron, a New Zealand-born moral reformer in San Francisco's Chinatown. Martin undertook extensive original research during the late 1960s, and materials she compiled form the basis for an archival collection at Stanford University that researchers still consult today. However, Martin also admitted to incorporating a ‘few fictionalized scenes’ into her biography, and because she wrote for a popular audience, Martin omitted references in her texts. These two decisions left her vulnerable to charges of amateurism. Nonetheless, more than fifty monographs, book chapters, and journal articles from the 1980s to the present cited her biography. This success makes a fascinating case study for deriving research practices that fulfil our intellectual debts to all predecessors.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical research
• research ethics
• women's history
• biography
• amateurs

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Australian Feminist Studies has played a leading role in considering the intricacies of the biographical tradition as scholarship. In 1989 the Australian Feminist Biography and Autobiography conference stimulated much research and writing on the topic (Curthoys 1989). Special issues on biography appeared in 1992 and 2004, and a third special issue in 2012 devoted to the career of historian Margaret Allen contained several essential pieces on the topic (Sheridan 2012; Hughes 2012). Outside of these thematic issues, many other significant articles also appeared (Somerville 1990; Jeffreys 1994; Kosambi 2001).

2 Another intriguing example is found in biographies of Biddy Mason, an enslaved woman who successfully won her freedom in California in 1860 and eventually became a prosperous property owner. Mason first appeared in lawyer-turned-historian Dorothy Gray’s Women of the West (1976), still cited today. Grey builds on journalist Delilah L. Beasley's compilation of Mason’s history (1919). History professor Marne L. Campbell has recently built on these predecessors to write about Mason (Campbell 2012, 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michelle Moravec

Michelle Moravec is an Associate Professor of History at Rosemont College in Philadelphia. She sits on the American Historical Association’s Digital History Working Group and serves on the Journal of Women’s History editorial board. Her most recent publications include ‘Feminist Bestsellers: A Digital History of 1970s Feminism’ in the Journal of Cultural Analytics and ‘Digital Historical Practices’ for the Journal of Women’s History.