On May 17th, 1864, Jennie Green and her friend, Nellie Wyatt, arrived with the 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry at City Point, Virginia. The two girls had recently escaped slavery in Sussex County, seizing the opportunity the war had presented to carve…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Their Doris/my Doris: Personal Connections While Exploring WW2 seafarers’ masculinity by Dr Jo Stanley
I especially like doing history when serendipity bring personal connections with the women whose pasts I’m looking at. Re-knowing these ‘names’ as emotional embodied subjects helps me better understand both them and me, but also women I know – in…
Online seminar series: Womandla! Feminism and Social Movements in the Global South
We are pleased to share the first installments of the schedule the schedule for the Womandla! Online Seminar Series, beginning with Panel 1 on Friday 9 April 2021. Keep up to date with the developing schedule here. Please note that…
Old Round Court and Gold Lace: Ann Renney’s Shop on the Strand by Dr Sarah Birt
What was the occupational structure of the Strand? How many businesses were run by women and what was the nature of their trade? Having studied women in business in seventeenth and eighteenth-century London before, my new project focuses on the…
Sharing Stories of Women in War: Bettie’s Story by Judith Hewitt, Manager of The Devil’s Porridge Museum
“To be honest, it is one of the most inspirational things I’ve ever done” said 17 year old Josie of her experience meeting and interviewing 94 year old Bettie Baird. Bettie and Josie both come from Carlisle and the former…
The Hidden Heritage of a Naval Town: Women’s community activism in Portsmouth since 1960 by Dr Laurel Foster
The main aim of this project was to document the activism of women in the Portsmouth area by interviewing women from a range of backgrounds and with different interests in community issues. The project, initiated and co-lead by Dr Sue…
Feminisms: A Global History by Dr Lucy Delap
When I was asked to contribute to Penguin’s Pelican series, I was determined to write an accessible account of feminist history that would place it in global perspective. This ambitious framing was certainly taxing, and I must confess, at times…
Recovering female small business owners in early twentieth-century Bath by Diana Russell
Many histories of Bath have focused on its rise to become Britain’s premier spa in the late eighteenth century before it slipped into staid respectability after its heyday.[i] The prevalent narrative suggests that ‘nothing much happened’ in the first quarter…
When 100 Years Is Not Enough! Dr. Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins
February is Black History Month in the United States. A time when we attempt to correct the omission of the contributions of people of color from historic narratives, 2021 marks the 95th anniversary of what began as Negro History Week…