Women’s History Network Annual Conference 2020
Save the Date: 3-4 September 2020
Homes, Food and Farms
Venue – Denman College, New Rd, Marcham, Abingdon OX13 6NW.
…Claiming Her Time: The Entrenchment of Time and Gender on the Periodical Market, 1880-1920 by Annabel Friedrichs
In our latest blog, Annabel Friedrichs examines representations of womanhood in American avantgarde magazines published between 1880 and 1920.
With the turning of each page, the early magazine medium provides the modern scholar of women’s history with a rich visual-textual testimony of women’s changing (self-)perceptions in turn-of-the-century America. In my research on early female magazine illustrators’ visualizations of girl-, mother-, and womanhood in American mass and avantgarde magazines published between 1880 and 1920, I ask how these imaginations of femininity in the modern periodical press are not only proliferated and managed by the magazine. Also, in a comparative approach, I …
The letters of Dr. Edith Pechey by Dr. Namrata R. Ganneri
In our latest fascinating blog, Dr. Namrata R. Ganneri examines the archive of one of the ‘Edinburgh Seven’, Edith Pechey.
On 6 July 2019, the ‘Edinburgh Seven’- Sophia Jex-Blake, Isabel Thorne, Edith Pechey, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Mary Anderson Marshall and Emily Bovell – were awarded posthumous honorary MBChB degrees. [1]A group of current students at the Edinburgh Medical School collected the degrees on behalf of these pioneering women who had enrolled for a degree in medicine at the University of Edinburgh 150 years ago.[2] In the United Kingdom, the fight for women to qualify as doctors was …
Alison Lapper Pregnant by Dr. Janis Lomas
The 3.5 metres high sculpture, Alison Lapper Pregnant, was made by Marc Quinn for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square where it sat from 2005 until 2007. Statues of male heroes of the past surrounded it, which Quinn saw as portraying ‘a different kind of heroism’ as Alison having overcome her personal disabilities and a difficult childhood, to obtain a first class degree in Fine Arts and become an artist, using her feet to paint. Waldemar Januszczak writing in The Sunday 
Times suggested the Lapper statue strikes a ‘huge blow’ for issues of disability should: ‘be ranked as one …
Conference Review: The Network of American Periodical Studies Presents Serial [Gendered] Subjects: Periodicals, Identities, Communities, Northumbria University, September 20th, 2019 by Alexandra Abletshauser
Newcastle upon Tyne presented its best side when it welcomed the delegates of the recent Network of American Periodical Studies (NAPS) symposium, at Northumbria University, with sunshine and warm temperatures on Friday, September 20, 2019. This year’s symposium was hosted by the Humanities Research Institute and the Gendered Subjects Research Group at the Northumbria University. It was supported by the University of Sussex Centre for American Studies, the Women’s History Network (WHN) and the British Association for American Studies (BAAS).
The delegates consisted of scholars at various stages of their academic careers, hailing from Canada, Germany, Ireland and Britain. The …
Celebrating 100 years since Nancy Astor became the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons: Lisa Berry-Waite
This November marks 100 years since Nancy Astor won a Plymouth Sutton by-election, becoming the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons. She inherited her seat from her husband Waldorf Astor, after he was elevated to the House of Lords following the death of his father, the first Viscount Astor. Astor’s historic election represented a new era for British politics; parliament was no longer a male-only space and for the first time a woman was able to directly influence legislation. The timely unveiling of Astor’s statue on Plymouth Hoe on 28 November, as part of …
