History and Goals: The Comparative Women's History Workshop is affiliated with the Graduate Progam in Comparative Women's History at the University of Minnesota. That program was created to take advantage of the University of Minnesota's strong and diverse faculty in the area of women's history. The idea for developing a comparative program grew naturally out of the useful comparative conversations occuring among the faculty.

Ten faculty who worked in the area of women's history met to discuss the development of a graduate program in Comparative Women's History in October 1991. That group decided to inaugurate the program by organizing a conference on Matrilineality and Patrilineality in Comparative Historical Perspective which took place in May 1992 . The group also decided to form a Comparative Women's History Workshop which would provide a forum for discussion of works in progress, and dissertation and grant proposals dealing with women and gender. As the workshop evolved, it also came to be a forum for discussions of comparison and of issues important to historians who study gender and women. The Workshop continues to fulfill these dual, overlapping functions.

Purpose: The Workshop is founded on the belief that comparative history and women's and gender history represent important developments which have provided, and will continue to provide, some of the most significant new insights in the field of history. When scholars working in various cultures engage in comparison, their common conversation across subdisciplinary borders of region and chronology can illuminate the constructed nature of the paradigms and deep structures of their respective fields. When scholars are attentive to the experiences and perspectives of women, and to how gender shapes the experiences and perspectives of both men and women, the resulting analyses enrich our understanding of the past. The Workshop's underlying purpose is to participate in, and to further, these important new directions in historical scholarship.

Goals: The Workshop will serve as forum for comparative discussions among faculty and graduate students who study different regions and time periods, but share an interest in women's history and gender history. The Workshop will serve as a forum for presenting works in progress which focus on gender and women in a setting where the insights of faculty and graduate students who study different regions and time periods can be brought to bear on these works. The Workshop will be an integral part of the University of Minnesota's program in Comparative Women's History. The Workshop will serve as a forum for discussion and planning regarding the University of Minnesota's program in Comparative Women's History.

Ways the Workshop Pursues These Goals: In order to encourage comparative thinking within the History Department and within the field of history more generally, while providing a forum for the presentation of works on women and gender, the workshop will do the following:

1. The Workshop will welcome and encourage presentations and participation by faculty and graduate students from a variety of regions, time periods, disciplines, and institutions. Although the workshop will emphasize historical study, we will include colleagues in other disciplines.

2. The Workshop will have a semester-long, or year-long, theme. The theme will give direction to the discussion and to the workshop meetings over the course of the quarter or year, but it will not determine the content of the workshop. Works in progress which do not 'fit' the theme will still be welcomed.

3. The Workshop will design the first session of the quarter so as to engender a theoretical discussion of the theme.

4. The Workshop will aim to offer a comparative discussion of two related works in progress or two related articles at least once per quarter or semester.

5. The Workshop will aim to provide a comment for works in progress presented to the workshop, if the presenter so desires. That comment may be comparative, may tie into the workshop's theme, may bring out issues of particular importance to historians who study gender and women, and/or may simply raise interesting issues of historical analysis and reasoning.

6. The Workshop will aim to invite outside speakers at least once a quarter or semester.

7. The Workshop will offer two independent study credits for a quarter or semesters of engaged participation in the Workshop, including a presentation or comment.

8. The Workshop will plan workshop sessions so they constitute a topics course in Comparative Women's History in any year that such a topics course is not offered in another form. This change from past years is needed in light of the semester conversion process, and the attendant difficulty of offering separate topics courses in Comparative Women's History. Faculty involved with the Comparative Women's History program will be working out further details of how this will work, and also specifically how it will work in conjunction with item 6.