"We stand deprived of twelve centuries of history that men take for granted, claim as their glory, count as their success, and consider must be our models, too.
And why? Because no one kept the archives of women–of the other half, the disdained half, the scorned and disparaged half of the human race.
Where were the archivists then who would judge such a history valuable, notable, necessary at least to the intellectual integrity of the male writing and research of the rest of the human enterprise?
To this day, as women Benedictines we know nothing of our histories, our great leaders, our dreams, our devastations, or our centuries-old learnings about what it means to be either spiritual or alive as independent spiritual women. We know only that they were there–and gone–and made invisible."- Sister Joan Chittister on "The Role of Archives in a Changing World."
Read her entire speech at PSU here.
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