You wrote an entire book about an obscure 18th century midwife and another on baskets, spinning wheels, rugs, and other common household objects. I said, “I’ve always thought of my work being marginal.” And I remember he told me, “I think you’re going to have to get over that.”įM: Your work tends to focus on “ordinary” people and “ordinary” objects. I got a phone call from a reporter from The New York Times asking about the impact of my work on the historical profession. I remember I had a funny experience after the Pulitzer was announced in 1991. I’m president of the American Historical Association. Coming into my scholarship through the women’s movement and also through my life experience has made me hypersensitive to issues of marginality. And as a woman, I learned to define myself as separate from world of academia and scholarship, even as I was doing well. I was conscious that my experience was kind of invisible in that world. LTU: Part of my life experience has been about being sort of an outsider, a little awkward in some very sophisticated venues. How has that shaped your view as an historian? It forced me to think about worlds that were very different from the world that I knew.įM: You hail from a small town in the Rocky Mountain West. I was at the University of New Hampshire, and the strength in the history department there was in the early period.
I was interested in history and suddenly I realized that my ambition to write could come together with that.įM: You generally focus on early American history. really thought of history as a form of literature. When I moved to New Hampshire, I took a history course for my own edification. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about becoming an historian. It was saturated with a sense of history, and in order to understand where I was, I needed to learn more about the place. The main reason is that I came to New England in 1960.
I don’t think I even was aware of this award, but I got a very nice letter from the director asking me if I would accept.įM: You have written that you knew you wanted to be a writer since the fifth grade. I’m a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. FM got the chance to speak with her about her latest award, her career as an historian, and her love of the seemingly mundane.įifteen Minutes: Where were you when you heard you won the award? Kennedy Medal of the Massachusetts Historical Society, becoming the first woman to do so. Indeed, Pulitzer Prize-winning Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the History Department’s 300th Anniversary University Professor and the current president of the American Historical Association, recently received the John F. The phrase “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” is often used to justify weekend Facebook photos, but many do not know that these words originated in an article about Puritan funeral services by a University of New Hampshire grad student who is now an accomplished Harvard professor.
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