Women's Exhibit

Doris Weatherford

Women’s Exhibit is proud to announce that our Women’s History Month keynote speaker for the 2nd Annual Miami Beach Women’s Conference will be Doris Weatherford.   She will be speaking 2:00 – 3:00 PM on Friday, March 26, 2010 at the Miami Beach Convention Center Hall B.

Doris Weatherford is a recognized expert and acclaimed author who has been publishing books on women’s history for over twenty years.  She published her first book, Foreign and Female:  Immigrant Women in America: 1840-1930, in 1986.  Her second, American Women and World War II, came out in 1990; it has been translated into Japanese and reissued with four different jacket covers.  Then followed American Women’s History: An A-Z (Prentice Hall, 1994), and Milestones: A Chronology of American Women’s History (Facts on File, 1997).

Geraldine Ferraro wrote the Introduction for A History of the American Suffragist Movement (ABC-Clio, 1998), issued in connection with the 150^th anniversary of the first women’s rights convention.  Congressman Jim Davis honored Weatherford by including this in the Congressional Record.

She served as executive editor for Women’s Almanac (Oryx, 2000 and 2002) and then completed a four-volume A History of Women in the United States: A State-by-State Reference (Scholastic/Grolier, 2004).

Since then, she has been working on a history of female philosophers, Sheer Genius, and a history of women in Florida, which will be published by the University of Florida under the aegis of the Florida Commission on the Status of Women.  It will be modeled on her history of Tampa women, which was published by the University of Tampa.

During the administration of Governor Lawton Chiles, Weatherford chaired the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame, which is on permanent exhibit in the rotunda of the state capitol in Tallahassee.  Governor Chiles also appointed her as a trustee of Hillsborough Community College.

She is listed in various editions of the World Who’s Who of Women, Who’s Who in America, and Contemporary Authors.  A member of the Authors Guild, her most important honors are from the International Association of School Librarians and the National Order of Women Legislators.

In addition to entries in works such as Scribner’s classic Dictionary of American Biography, she has received grants from the YWCA and the Florida Humanities Council.  “Remember the Women,” a photo exhibition of largely forgotten Florida women, has been displayed in public libraries throughout the state and online.

During the past decade, she has been a member of the boards of both the National Women’s History Project – the founders of Women’s History Month – and the National Women’s History Museum, which intends to build a museum dedicated to women on the National Mall in Washington, DC.  She has supervised many of the “cyber-exhibits” at the museum’s website, www.nwhm.org.

Her most recent publication is another book on women during World War II, issued by Routledge last October, and she is working now on American Women in Politics: A History, to be published by Congressional Quarterly Press in 2011.   Weatherford also has been politically active for other feminists, including roles in campaigns for her longtime Tampa friends, Betty Castor and Alex Sink.

Her husband, Roy Weatherford, holds a doctorate from Harvard and is the author of three books; a philosopher retired from the University of South Florida, he served as president of the United Faculty of Florida and has held a variety of other state and national positions.

Their daughter, Margaret Weatherford, is a graduate of Harvard and of George Washington University Law School, as well as the library school of Catholic University in Washington, DC.  She interned for the U.S. Supreme Court and now works as a law librarian for the Department of Justice.  Margaret married last fall, and Doris is eagerly awaiting a grandchild!

WE are proud to welcome Doris Weatherford to the Miami Beach Women’s Conference to speak about Women’s History!

Critical Acclaim for Doris Weatherford

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From the reviews of Milestones: A Chronology of American Women’s History

When I picked up [Milestones] and started leafing through it, I became engrossed in the early history you have compiled about women in colonial America. Your work will be a valuable reference for me and for countless others.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, June 13, 1997

Informative entries…A complement to reference collections in public libraries aiming for a thorough coverage of women’s history.

Library Journal

Entries recount the great and small, all of it important…Thanks to its narrower national focus, this does not crowd the field of chronologies of women’s histories, but improves it.

Retting on Reference (on-line; formerly Wilson Library Journal)

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From the reviews of American Women in World War II

Fascinating and immensely readable…She is especially sensitive to the experiences of black women…General readers will enjoy…and will be amazed.

Library Journal

Detailed, thoroughly researched book that brings to light a long-buried chapter in the history of women…Weatherford seeks out cracks in the wall of women’s history, filling in the gaps in knowledge and rectifying the errors of assumption.

West Coast Woman

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From the reviews of Foreign and Female: Immigrant Women in America, 1840-1920

An engrossing account…Absorbing chapters full of quotations from original letters and diaries…Meticulous research, vibrant reading…

Kirkus Reviews

Weatherford conducts an imperative examination…Weatherford’s chronicle of courage is an integral volume in the continually unfolding social history of the American experience…An excellent advanced resource…

Booklist