This collection of personal narratives by former officers of the Coordinating Council for Women in History weaves together past and present in women's history, and women in the historical profession. Recording the diverse paths taken to become historians, essays describe how a group of women negotiated the often competing demands of being a woman, a professional, and a political activist during the turbulent 1960s through the challenges of the 1990s.

Introduction: Standpoints on Hard Ground by Eileen Boris and Nupur Chaudhuri1. Women among the Professors of History: The Story of a Process of Transformation by Gerda Lerner2. Three Faces of Trevia: Identity, Activism and Intellect by Berenice A. Carroll3. Regionalism, Feminism and Class: Conceiving the Field of Women's History by Hilda Smith4. On the Importance of Taking Notes (and Keeping Them) by Linda K. Kerber5. The Shaping of a Feminist Historian by Sandi E. Cooper6. Making and Writing History Together by Renate Bridenthal7. Going Against the Grain: The Making of an Independent Scholar by Karen Offen8. Reassertion of Patriarchy at the End of the Twentieth Century by Joan Hoff9. Bahupath Perie: The Long Trek by Nupur Chaudhuri10. Two Catalysts in My Life: Voter Registration Drives and CCWHP by Mollie C. Davis11. A Graduate Student's Odyssey by Frances Richardson Keller12. "Drop by Drop the Bottle Fills" by Margaret Strobel13. In Circles Comes Change by Eileen Boris14. Domestic Constraints: Motherhood as Life and Subject by Lynn Y. Weiner15. Activism and the Academy by Barbara Winslow16. The Emma Thread: Communitarian Values, Global Visions by Nancy A. Hewitt17. Clio on the Margins by Mary Elizabeth Perry18. Que se yo: A Historian in Training by Nancy Mirabal [please note spelling of chapter: Que se(accent accute) yo]19. A New Generation of Women Historians by Crystal Feimster20. Bibliography: Women Historians and How They Are Made by Barbara Penny Kanner