Historical Portraits of Women Home Scientists: The University Of ...

for these women to contest their gendered positioning and carve out a name for themselves in a professional field is the focus of chapter 5. In the final chapter, we bring together an exhibition of the portraits of the first generation of academic women at the University of New Zealand as a way of unveiling the significance of their work.

Gazing Inwards and Outwards:
Framing a History of Academic Women

Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot and Jessica Hoffman Davis’s use of portraits and portraiture offers a way in which to frame a history of academic women and, in essence, capture the familiar.²⁶ As academic women and feminist historians, we are mindful that past portraits of academic women ought not to be painted out by twenty-first-century reflections. Nevertheless, it is important to probe these pictures of the past to uncover the multiple layers, interpretations, and issues that continue to have relevance to the present. Portraits are therefore a means by which the expressions, imperfections, and contextual circumstances of a subject/actor can be captured at a specific moment in time and place. The power of the portrait and portraiture lies in the interconnection between the artist/creator, the image, and the audience. As a form of storytelling, or narration, it reveals levels of structure, history, values, and actions and offers a different lens of interpretation. Notably present in the process of creating such an autobiographical portrait is the researcher who selects, defines, shapes, and gives meaning to the images she or he analyses. As Lightfoot explained,

In effect, as researchers and authors we are portraitists; we give shape, form, and meaning to our theorization about and portraitures of the history of early women home scientists.