On “What Is Scholarship Today?”

To the editor,

I enjoyed “What Is Scholarship Today?” (January 2025), about the variety of work done by historians. I especially liked the essay about historical markers, which sounded like a fun job, and I empathized with those who write textbooks, as I am the author of one myself.

I have worked on another historical enterprise for much of my career as an independent historian: writing for and editing encyclopedias and other reference works. My first published book, co-authored with Elizabeth H. Oakes when we were still graduate students, was A Guide to Social Science Resources in Women’s Studies (1978). I have contributed articles to and served on editorial boards for several encyclopedias since then, including my soon-to-end tenure of a decade on the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History editorial board. And I have written a reference work, Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa (2005; 2nd ed., 2016). I have thought a lot about why I enjoy what is for many historians a difficult and demanding task, and I wrote a brief article about it some years ago.

My most recent publication is a memoir, The Mackerel Years: A Memoir of War, Hunger, and Women’s History in 1980s Mozambique (2024). I invite more historians to write about their lives. Compared to anthropologists, we are much less apt to turn our historical gaze to ourselves, and it is yet another way to take history to new audiences.

We are all making contributions to historical understanding, and it is heartening to see the wide range of projects that increase knowledge on all kinds of historical topics.