Negotiating Gender in Innovative Digital History Projects: �Observations from an expert on history education

Sara Evers

severs@ferrum.edu

Assistant Professor of Teacher Education, Ferrum College

Making Histories Conference

November 19, 2025

Braunschweig, DE

Agenda

• What does it mean to learn history and why does it matter to “doing gender and making history” in digital projects?
• Integrating the historical thinking of women’s and gender historians into the definitions and purposes of history education
• Enacting digital history projects for historical learning

How can digital history projects support historical inquiry through the frames of women’s and gender historians?

• Visualizations
• Social Networking
• Digital Mapping

What does it mean to learn history and why does it matter to “doing gender and making history” in digital projects? �

• What constitutes “history” is fluid and influenced by cultural shifts, including feminism, intersectionality, and Queer theory
• History education which helps students orient the human experience in time must include exploration of the construction and performance of gender
• Humanistic education for the “common good” requires a commitment to interrogating how gender functions as a mechanism of control

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Supported by instruction in historical thinking

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Who is the historian? What does it mean to think like a historian of women and gender?

Women & Queer-oriented: The experiences of women and Queer people are valued and researched. Multiple gender perspectives are used to construct historical narratives.

Gender as a category for historical analysis: Historical investigation asks questions about the relationship between gender and power. Historical narratives represent women/queer people as active agents whose experiences are important to the study of the past.

Gender as a geographic and historical construction: Historical investigation examines how gender is defined across time, culture, and place. Historical narratives do not represent gender identity as static or universal concepts.

Spatial analysis of the intersection of race and gender: Historical investigation asks questions about the gendered dynamics of cross-cultural encounters and includes analysis of the intersection of race and gender (Evers et al., 2025).

Shifts in the discourse influenced by 2^nd wave feminism, gender studies, intersectionality, Black studies, and post-colonial studies

Guidelines for evaluating XR as a historical source (Hicks et al., 2025)

Enacting digital projects for historical learning about women and gender

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• Digital experiences are representations of the past
• Treat digital experiences as historical sources
• Emphasize the role of interpretation in creating secondary accounts
• Integrate primary source work
• Pair digital representations with traces from the past
• Think like a historians of women and gender
• Facilitate student investigation of perspective, representation, and the experience of gender by historical actors

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How can digital history projects support historical inquiry through the frames of women’s and gender historians? �

Visualizations

Visualizations�Herstory Augmented Reality App �by Daughters of the Evolution

Women/Queer-oriented: The experiences of women are gender Queer people are valued and researched. Multiple gender perspectives are used to construct historical narratives.

• Start of a conversation about whose perspectives are missing

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• Not an “add women and stir” or “heroes and holidays” approach
• Pair with inquiry that asks questions about gender, power, and the construction of history

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Gender as a category for historical analysis: Historical investigation asks questions about the relationship between gender and power. Historical narratives represent women/Queer people as active agents whose experiences are important to the study of the past.

Social Networking

Social Networking �Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Teacher’s Network

• Connected by loc.gov online collections
• Builds collaborations between:
• Teachers
• Museum educators
• Historians
• Preservice teachers
• Librarians
• Digital content creators/developers
• Artists

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Women/Queer-oriented: The experiences of women are gender Queer people are valued and researched. Multiple gender perspectives are used to construct historical narratives.

• Develops conceptions of significance, question asking, source selection, and perspective

Gender as a category for historical analysis: Historical investigation asks questions about the relationship between gender and power. Historical narratives represent women/Queer people as active agents whose experiences are important to the study of the past.

Ljungren, R. (2023). Silence in the archive, women’s history & primary sources. TPS Teachers Network. https://tpsteachersnetwork.org/single-group/tps-pd-providers-institute-pdpi/silences-in-the-archive-work-in-progress

Supporting the historical read

https://tpsteachersnetwork.org/single-group/tps-pd-providers-institute-pdpi/historiography-and-supporting-the-historical-read-wip

Digital Mapping

Digital Mapping ��

• Part of “Queering the woman question” (Stryker, 2007) & intersectional, spatial analysis (Fuentes, 2016)
• Maps reflect social, cultural, and political definitions of space and are a key way of visualizing change over time in history classrooms (Parallada & Carreto, 2022)

Gender as a geographic and historical construction: Historical investigation examines how gender is defined across time, culture, and place. Historical narratives do not represent gender identity as static or universal concepts.

Map of Gender Diverse Cultures created by PBS https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/content/two-spirits_map-html/

Spatial analysis of the intersection of race and gender: Historical investigation asks questions about the gendered dynamics of cross-cultural encounters and includes analysis of the intersection of race and gender

Innovative Digital Mapping�Historypin.org by the Shift Collective

Historypin presentations:

https://tinyurl.com/3jwvduyz

“Pin” video, audio, image, or text to map using location and date

Curate pins into tours and collections. Add historic and contemporary sources.

How does protest music highlight important issues surrounding women’s equality in the United States?

Tour: https://tinyurl.com/4yyr7hw7

Memorialization, contested history, and the gendered dynamics of cross-cultural encounters

Creating a caption:

Pairing with sources:

Modern maps, historical experiences?� �Visualizing change over time when investigating gender as a historic and geographic construction

Interactive map created by Native Land Digital

Colonial Account of Two Spirit:

Catlin, George.  "Dance to the [slur] - Saukie."  Painting.  1861.  Digital Transgender Archive,  https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/2801pg41b  (accessed November 07, 2025)

Archival identification: Fort Yates, ND, USA

Indigenous territories in the region

Treaties in the region

Historypin: Claiming Land, Claiming Gender

https://tinyurl.com/mws3e3uv

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Scaffolding exhibit creation…If this place could talk��

If this place could talk…what would it tell us about how people experienced their gender over time?

• Supports spatial analysis of the intersection of race and gender

“…gender also functions as a mechanism of control when some loss of gender status is threatened, or when claims of gender are denied” (Stryker, 2007, p.61)