Historical Encyclopedia of Chicago Women Project records, 1990-2001

Old Resource ID was HECWP

The Historical Encyclopedia of Chicago Women Project (1990-2001) was co-sponsored by the Chicago Area Women's History Conference (CAWHC) and the Center for Reseach on Women and Gender (CRWG) at the University of Illnois at Chicago. It is owned by the CAWHC and has received major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The Chicago Area Women's History Conference, founded in 1971, is a non-profit organization that promotes and supports the study of women's history, free to the public, by sponsoring research projects, publications, and conferences for teachers. It is one of the founding affiliates of the Coordinating Council for Women in History (CCHW). In January 1990, CAWHC began the process of launching a project to produce a reference book on Chicago women. Jean S. Hunt, the president of CAWHC, and the CAWHC board appointed Rima Lunin Schultz, a CAWHC member and historian of Chicago history, for the project director of the new Chicago women's history project. Later, Adele Hast joined Schultz as co-director.

The CAWHC circulated a public broadside, "The Call" in the winter of 1990, announcing a meeting in March at The Newberry Library. Between forty and fifty women including professional historians, biographers, free-lance writers, graduate students, librarians, archivists, and researchers, responded to "The Call" and participated in the March meeting.

Within a few months' time basic guidelines for the book were laid out: it should be the biographies of women who had died by 1990 and attentive to issues of race, class, and gender. The goal was to write a readable, accessible book with appeal to high school and college students as well as a general audience.

In 1993, the editorial board, consisting of Adele Hast, Rima Lunin Schultz, Carolyn De Swarte Gifford, Babette F. Inglehart, Mary Ann Johnson, Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Clarice Stetter, and Margaret Strobel, selected 423 names of Chicago women for the biographical dictionary. The selected women were involved in social movements, correcting the male-dominated narrative of Chicago history and participating in the fields of art, education, medicine, law,and socio-political activities.

In Spring 2002, after a long-term process of research and editing, Indiana University Press published the Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary. Editors, authors, and publishers hope that with subject cross-referencing, an extensive detailed index, and an introductory historical essay, they can assist the reader in connecting the lives of women so that the limitations of biography are overcome.

The records of the Historical Encyclopedia of Chicago Women Project consist of records generated in the compilation of Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary. The bulk of the collection consist of entry files: records generated by individual entry authors which contain research materials regarding the subject and drafts of the encyclopedia entry. The collection also contains administrative files on authors who contributed to the dictionary and those whose work did make the final publication. These personnel records are closed. Finally the collection contains pre-publication proofs.

The original order of this collection has been retained. The materials have been divided into five series:

• Series 1. Entry Files
• Series 2. Contributors [Restricted]
• Series 3. Proofs
• Series 4. Administrative Records
• Series 5. Audio Tapes

The records of the Historical Encyclopedia of Chicago Women Project were donated to the University of Illinois at Chicago, University Library, Special Collections in 2001 by Chicago Area Women's History Conference.

The files in Series II are restricted and cannot be accessed for 70 years from the date of creation

Historical Encyclopedia of Chicago Women Project records, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago

• NamesHistorical Encyclopedia of Chicago Women Project. -- Archives
• Geographic CoverageIllinois--Chicago.
• Subject
  • Midwest Women's History.
  • Women.