I just want to say that I enjoyed this panel immensely, and I wanted to ask /u/sunagainstgold about how Achler's story reflects aspects of Christian culture at the time: to what extent, do you think, were Achler's attempts to attain sainthood performative versus aspirational? In other words, did every monastic subculture have their own Achler, were aspiring (or living) saints a regular aspect of public/private monastic life, or was this kind of thing relatively rare?

This was a very interesting panel, and one of the ones I was very excited to see. Thank you for the fascinating discussion. I particularly agree with the quote about how leaving out womens history leaves out the history of half the planet, and have always been impressed with how AskHistorians brings to light these other, often overlooked stories.

For any of the panelists, what do you think are the best methods to continue spread and sharing these stories? What is the best way to teach this history so that it becomes just as normal as the usual flood of WWII/Rome/etc questions and discussion the sub gets?

I'd be interested in hearing more about how historians are able to piece together all this history from the bits and pieces of other sources. If women are often left out of the main accounts, it must be very difficult to get any kind of a record or look at the lives of women. Especially the average women on the street. The musical Hamilton spends a fair bit of time talking about "Who will tell your story?" and it seems like those who are trying to tell it for many of these women have a pretty big challenge ahead of them.

This was a great panel. I'll try to pose a question for any of you- considering the title of the panel, this is about women with some extraordinary experiences that leave more of a historical footprint. How do you extrapolate from these stories to say things about women who weren't saints and spies and have less (if any) record?

Then for u/sunagainstgold specifically- can you talk more about how you approach hagiographies in general since this genre mixes sincere religious beliefs and deceptive storytelling?

This is for Dr. Leveen (/u/O-the-Humanities).

I noticed that throughout the video and in this thread, your co-panelists referred to their subjects as "Bulette" and "Achler." Yet you consistently call yours "Mary."

Usually, formal use of surnames is a sign of respect, whereas use of first names is associated with children.

Given our culture's tendency to belittle women, especially Black women, I was wondering if you could say a little about your choice to use "Mary" to your public audience?

One that perhaps relates to all speakers' talks given that it relates to the central theme - how women's lives get misrepresented in ways that doesn't do justice to the reality. I was wondering how you saw your work intersecting with ideas about patriarchy. In particular, does the same, consistent issues reoccurring across such a wide varieties of times and places indicate something about the universality of the concept?

I have a question for the panel as a whole. But before I ask, I just wanted to thank you all for some really insightful papers and congratulate you all for bringing together disparate topics in a way that worked and was very enjoyable!

On to my question. Each of you situated your examination of women's history really well despite talking about vastly different historiographies. I was wondering if you could speak a bit more about exploring women's voices in the archive. Do you find historians of the past in your field have simply overlooked women's voices in the sources, or is the problem more methodological? What can future historians do to highlight women's stories more fully?

Thanks again and cheers!

Thanks for another great panel, that I'm still working through. As a question for /u/Itsallfolklore, the trope of a sex worker with a heart of gold seems quite old but also particularly attached to the setting of the Old West. Do you think there's a particular reason for this? What made it such a strong connection?

For /u/joshanthony123: I've read on these forums before about how precarious the early Spanish empire in Central America was - that the Spaniards were in no position to dominate the peoples that lived there, but rather survived through alliances and negotiation. How did they manage to have such a strong cultural affect on the lives of people like Chimalmantzin? Trying to rewrite basic familial and social structures seems like the kind of thing that leads to a great deal of resistance.

Thank you all for your presentations!

u/sunagainstgold, how do you think this early version of "Godly womanhood" has influenced women's religious experiences up until today? Are modern women still affected by the thought of "holy" self harm?

I've been mulling a lot over /u/itsallfolklore's parting remarks about the way our stories become "unmoored" from the historical events they cover, which I understood as taking on lives of their own as they travel through and interact with the medium of culture. I got the sense that he really enjoyed thinking and writing about that process--that there's a sort of beauty in it. But, I (and it seems the others?) are more attached to the truth behind the myth, and I feel a sense of hopelessness about the task of teasing it out. You all presented papers that were largely successful at this, but I feel like, in each case, we were pretty lucky to get the paper trail we got. I have to imagine that behind every paper, there are months of chasing dead ends.

So, to Dr. James, I felt your attitude was sort of uniquely celebratory among the panelists, and I'm wondering if you could talk more about where you find beauty in the way historical stories evolve.

And as a general question to all, is this work as hopeless in the typical case as it sounds? And how do you find your joy in it?

No joke, when it got to the part about "our cat with two legs" my cat reached over and turned off the video. No doubt, the devil made him do it!

What about Women of color? Which had totally different social circumstances

What about Black,Latina, Asian, and indigenous sex “workers”? I put workers in quotes because a lot of them weren’t working out of there own free will.

Thanks to all! 

Two for /u/joshanthony123: glad to see someone else here working on Chimalpahin :) There were at least a few case of Nahua women in powerful positions in colonial times, e.g. as cacicas. Probably best known are two of Moctezuma's daughters (with Spanish husbands) who received large encomiendas that remained in their families. In this light, how exceptional was Chimalmatzin's post-conquest fate? 

Also, Susan Schroeder has described Chimalpahin's views as especially favorable towards women, both from noble and commoner backgrounds. Could you go a bit into how his depiction of Chimalmatzin may have shaped your own reading of her?

Good afternoon and welcome to the “Sinners, Saints, and Spies: Historical Women and Cultural Propaganda” conference panel Q&A! This panel examines how the best of intentions have often lead to people appropriated, erasing the life stories of individual women and turning them from people into archetypes.

Moderated by Jenn Binis (/u/EdHistory101), this panel highlights the lives and experiences of women from medieval Europe to colonial Mexico and nineteenth-century America.

It features: Dr. Cait Stevenson (/u/sunagainstgold), presenting her paper, “Elisabeth Achler’s Dirty Laundry, or, the Medieval Saint and Her Suffering Sisters”. In late medieval Europe, women who wanted to be saints had to imitate Christ’s suffering in specific and horrific ways. Eating nothing but thin wafers of sacred bread. Stigmata wounds that never stopped bleeding, screaming fits, never bathing. Accurate prophecies, levitation, and constant adulation. We overlook the impossibility of these acts to focus on their cultural significance. But St. Catherine of Siena starved herself to death in 1380. Blessed Elisabeth Achler von Reute (1386–1420) tried to starve, but could not stop herself from binge-eating at night on food she stole from the convent kitchen. Real women attempted to achieve these goals, and real women failed. This raises the question: what was it like to live with a bleeding, screaming, stinking, saint? Her friends’ (successful) attempts to explain away Achler’s failure let us see beyond the curated Instagram of sainthood. They reveal the sisters who washed the stigmatic blood out of her bedsheets every day, who risked their own safety in public to protect her virginity, who complained about it frequently, and who loved her anyway. Achler’s sisters turned her insufferability into their own suffering to imitate Christ. They stole her sainthood for their souls—but only Achler got the glory.

Joshua Anthony (/u/joshanthony123), presenting his paper, “Through Chimalmantzin’s Eyes: A Family History of the Conquest of Mexico”. The Spanish colonization of Mexico in the sixteenth century was a defining moment in world history, but too often we forget that it was a process experienced by real people, with personal consequences. For the Nahuas, the majority ethnic group of the Aztec Empire, colonization disrupted the basic family structure that organized their lives. Indigenous noblemen before the conquest took multiple spouses, and their children grew up in households surrounded by half-siblings mothered by their father’s other wives. But soon after the conquest, evangelizing friars endeavored to replace the Nahua’s family structure with a European model based on Christian monogamy. This paper examines the colonization of Mexico from the viewpoint of Chimalmantzin, a Nahua noblewoman who became the first woman in her village married in a Christian ceremony. Chimalmantzin appears in a set of annals written by a Nahua historian in the seventeenth century. By reorienting the historical narrative contained in these annals around Chimalmantzin’s life, it illustrates how a noblewoman’s identity and power before and after the conquest depended on her family relations. Ultimately, it argues that Chimalmantzin used Christian marriage to improve her and her children’s prospects as they faced a chaotic, uncertain future under Spanish rule.

Ronald James, (/u/itsallfolklore), presenting his paper, “Sex, Murder, and the Myth of the Wild West: How a Soiled Dove Earned a Heart of Gold”. Women involved in sexual commerce in the American West typically experienced harsh, short lives, and with death, they too often faded from historical memory. Popularly referred to as "soiled doves," these women were often granted patronizing forgiveness, excused as intrinsically good but too frail to avoid the pitfalls of prostitution. A few became noted for having a "heart of gold," a cliché that allowed remembrance of generosity and kindness. Julia Bulette was an average sex worker in Virginia City during the 1860s. She was murdered with sensationalized gory details, but she would probably have been forgotten if it were not for the later conviction of someone who was hanged in the first public execution in the mining town. This allowed for a reconsideration of the victim, setting her on course to rise above the ranks of the average "doves" and earning her a golden heart in regional folklore. The long process of Bulette taking on legendary attributes is well documented: it is consequently possible to understand how historical memory adjusted to a changing world and how a woman, who once walked the streets, transformed to fit the evolving view of the mythic Wild West.

Lois Leveen (/u/O-the-Humanities), presenting her paper, “When Black History Becomes Multicultural Clickbait, Manure Happens: Uncovering Civil War Spy ‘Mary Bowser’”. Print and online accounts of slave-turned-Civil War spy "Mary Bowser" have increased dramatically in recent years, reflecting growing public interest in black history and women's history. Yet nearly everything circulating about her is inaccurate, even the name "Mary Bowser." These inaccuracies reflect an impulse to celebrate diversity that presumes black history doesn't deserve diligent research and assiduous evaluation of sources. Born enslaved in Virginia, Mary Richards Denman was educated in New Jersey and expatriated to Liberia. Returning to America, she participated in Richmond's interracial pro-Union underground during the war. She also taught newly emancipated African Americans and became a postbellum activist for racial justice. Prevailing accounts of "Bowser," which confirm the individualistic trope of an exceptional hero and reinforce a feel-good version of history that ends with emancipation, obscure how Mary Richards Denman allied with other activists to challenge manifold manifestations of racism. In a particularly demeaning twist on white saviorism, one fallacious claim has the white spymaster burying "Bowser" in a cartload of manure to smuggle her past suspicious Confederates. Examining the circulation of this falsehood exposes how supposed tributes to African American achievement can promote racist degradation, distorting how Americans of all races perceive black agents of resistance. Ask us anything!

Find more of today's conference content here. Learn more about the AskHistorians 2020 Digital Conference here.