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THE GENRES OF HISTORY AND THEIR RELEVANCE: THE CASE OF WOMEN HISTORY
IROM, OBAR AYAMI Ph.D.
Abstract:
The reconstruction of human activities in the period before writing making up for damaged and lost achieves, collation and interpretation of extant materials, the period of writing and other related problems have been addressed by disciplines from different angles. For the discipline of history these genres result from an epistemological decision which is ontologically made manifest through the created genres. These created genres are intended to inject a new meaning and truth into the past, and add new genres to pre-existing ones like social history, political history, economic history and intellectual history. Recent developments have resulted in the emergence of new genres including ethnic history, race history, gender history and women history to mention a few. The paper attempts to analyse the emergence of this genre and its relevance to the discipline and the society at large, in view of the neglect of women in historical discourse being a function of the ideas about historical significance which has been defined primarily by power, influence and visible activity in the world of political and economic affairs. The paper concludes that history as written and perceived so has been the history of the minority. With the majority finding a place in history, the discipline has moved to be comprehensively history: his-story and her-story.