Vol. 50, No. 3 July 2021 Newsof the lHistoryetter of Science Society Table of Contents Reflections on Gender in our Reflections on Gender in our Society Society 1 Autobiography of an Article 5 Editor’s note: Following up on the recent report from the co-editors of Isis, Alix Hui and Matt Lavine, about the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on submissions from women, the HSS Newsletter invited them to Roundtable with Erika Milam, talk about the meaning and implications of the data collected for the journal and the society more broadly. Future HSS 2020 Levinson Prize Winner 8 President, Karen Rader, and the co-chairs of the HSS Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (CoDI), Don Opitz and Myrna Perez Sheldon, joined them with their insights on this important issue. Why Translate?: A Conversation 12 What was the impetus for conducting this weigh in, and until we’d received some feedback from Member News 18 survey? Could you give us some of the back Isis's June 2020 Open Conversations special section In Memoriam: Frances Kohler 23 story? on the subject. Isis editors: We had known coming into the editorship Isis had collected and shared data on the gender of HSS News 25 in 2019 that we had an obligation to make sure that authors submitting to the journal with the Women’s Notes from Our Bibliographer 29 the Society’s publications, especially Isis, reflected the Caucus for many years before we took over as editors. diversity of its membership. At the start, that endeavor We put this effort on hold when we took over, in part News from the Profession 31 took the form of working with CoDI, the Women’s because it had relied on assignment of gender after Caucus, and the Executive Committee on planning the fact. Within a few weeks of the start of pandemic- From Our Readers 35 how to do intake surveys that would let us collect related shutdowns at universities, however, there were data on gender, race, career status, and nationality in already rumors circulating about the sudden and the best possible way. For us, that meant finding the disproportionate increase in childcare and classroom best possible middle ground between techniques that teaching responsibilities falling on women. This yield easily computable data and those that would problem wasn’t limited to the humanities, but it wasn’t allow people submitting manuscripts to accurately long before we noticed our own submissions had self-define without having to fit their identities into begun to skew towards men. Alix reached out to a pre-established categories. Given how complicated a number of our peer journals and convened a discussion process finding that path promised to be, we decided about whether this was idiosyncratic to us—it wasn’t— not to collect that data until the ITGR had a chance to and what steps we should all take going forward. Part Continued on Page 2 History of Science Society Newsletter Reflections on Gender in our Society, cont. History of Science Society Executive Office History of Science Society of our response was to see what we could learn, Was your survey looking at the gender of 440 Geddes Hall quantitatively, from the submissions we received the authorship of submissions, or also at University of Notre Dame the way in which gender itself was a topic Notre Dame, IN 46556 in the months following the shutdown. Phone: 574-631-1194 of papers in Isis, or both separately. E-mail: [email protected] CoDI: The earlier (2020) Isis report, to which Web site: http://www.hssonline.org/ Isis editors: These are two separate issues for us, the latest report was a follow-up, exposed a Subscription Inquiries although it’s female scholars who do the greater University of Chicago Press gender differential in article submission during Phone: 877-705-1878 the initial months of the pandemic. It was share of work on female historical actors, so E-mail: [email protected] they’re not unrelated. In fact, that goes directly Or write: University of Chicago Press, discussed among the plenary “Futures” panels Subscription Fulfillment Manager, PO Box 37005, of the HSS Virtual Forum last October. Various to why having a representative author pool is Chicago, IL 60637-7363 Isis Moving? panelists and attendees affirmed anecdotally essential to keeping relevant to our field. The work that historians do isn’t determined by their Please notify both the HSS Executive Office and their sense that the pandemic indeed the University of Chicago Press. personal experiences, but it is shaped by it. For disproportionately affected women scholars Editorial Policies, Advertising and Submissions as well as scholars of the “Global South,” us, staying current with our field’s notoriously The History of Science Society Newsletter is difficult-to-define boundaries means doing what published in January, April, July, and October, independent scholars, and early-career scholars. and sent to all individual members of the Society. These latter groups already tend to experience we can to nurture and promote scholarship that The Newsletter Editor is Neeraja Sankaran. The considers the widest possible range of actors, format and editorial policies are determined less access to resources and therefore have felt by the Editor in consultation with the Society more acutely the impact of archive and library places, institutions, and forms of scientific Editors. All advertising copy must be submitted knowledge. In “normal” times—that is, the first in electronic form. Advertisements are accepted closures. on a space-available basis only, and the Society nine months of our editorship before March reserves the right not to print a submission. The rates are as follows: Full page (10 x 7”), $625; It is also worth noting that shortly after the 2020—that meant doing things like encouraging Two-thirds page (6.625 x 7”), $450; Horizontal release of the follow-up report, Nature ran an submissions from as wide a variety of scholars as Half page (10 x 3.5”), $375; Horizontal or Vertical Third page (6.625 x 3.5” or 3.25 x 7”), $275; editorial that discussed the gender patterns we could, and making clear to as many people as Sixth page (3.25 x 3.5”), $150. The deadline for across scientific fields more broadly, and that we could the ecumenical approach we brought to insertion orders is six weeks prior to the month of publication and should be sent to info@hssonline. the trends observed therein seem consistent with the question of what an Isis article is. But that’s org. Please send photographs in a jpeg format, in the highest resolution possible (minimum 4MB) what we observed with Isis. also why we understood the gender skew after to maintain quality during sizing and printing. shutdowns began as such a threat, even though, The deadline for news, announcements, and job/ fellowship/prize listings is firm: four weeks prior on the whole, 2020 was a banner year for total to the month of publication. Long items (feature manuscripts submitted. stories) should be submitted eight weeks prior to the month of publication. Please send all material to the attention of the Executive Office: [email protected]. Continued on Page 3 © 2021 by the History of Science Society 2 History of Science Society Newsletter • July 2021 History of Science Society Newsletter Reflections on Gender in our Society, cont. Could you talk a little about what data responsibilities for caring for their families. There pandemic on things such as child-care or you collected and what the numbers doesn’t seem to be any room for doubt that the personal health? mean? middle months of 2020 were simply lost to many Isis editors: As we mentioned earlier, increased women in our field in ways that they weren’t to Isis editors: family-care responsibilities was the most Because HSS had not yet settled men. on a demographic-collection policy, the need frequently cited reason for declining to write to confirm the general trend forced us to make Going forward, what are plans for data reviews or contribute to special sections, and one we heard most often from women. And the uncomfortable decision to arbitrarily assign collection? gender to authors after the fact and without their this is surely an underrepresentation; it’s hard to input. This decision was not one we took lightly, CoDI: We have been advising both Isis and imagine that everyone for whom this was true or without regret. We recognize that this kind the Committee on Meetings and Programs on mentioned it to us in precisely those terms. of act is a form of trans erasure, to say nothing better practices in demographic data collection. Karen: My first leadership role in HSS was as of the possibility of outright error. What we Based on this advice the latter implemented co-chair of the Women’s Caucus, back when I found confirmed our suspicions in stark terms: a demographic survey that allows for self- was just starting my first tenure-track job at Sarah our new submissions had gone from exact male/ description of identity characteristics as part Lawrence College, and I had small children. The female parity in the first three months of 2020 of the proposal submission process. CoDI fact that many decades later, despite concerted to a 3:1 ratio of men to women in the second has also developed a set of recommendations efforts and attention, we are still talking about three months. We also saw that the responses for data collection and analysis by the Society how to make things like childcare at annual from women to requests for article or book (which was presented to the Council in June) meetings truly work for members is discouraging, reviews after the shutdowns took place was and which we hope will offer further guidance to say the least.