The Women’s History Network blog
Even as the discipline of history has come to terms with the subjectivities and positionality of its practitioners, the body of the historian remains fraught territory. Carolyn Steedman offers a rare glimpse of the embodied practice of history in her…
The late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Chinese society and its changing socio-cultural attitudes towards women’s literacy and female public presence in print media created a hybrid dynamic site of bargaining for learned women, where new cultural opportunities met old challenges of…
For examples of Valdez’s art, see a recent online retrospective. A “Chicano” is ‘a Mexican-American with a non-Anglo image of himself’,[1] and Chicano culture is multilingual, multiracial, religious, and often involves urban street culture. Artist Patssi Valdez (1951-present) turned to…
After a long career in financial services I wanted a change of direction and applied to study history in Portsmouth. One of my university modules covered the successes usually ascribed to Second Wave Feminism, namely gender equality legislation and a…
2015 marked the centenary of the International Association of Women Police (IAWP), a professional network who celebrated at their conference in Cardiff, Wales that year. It was also the centenary of Edith Smith being sworn in as a constable in…
‘Perfect health is a blessing to all, but it means even more to women than men.’[1] Eminent Victorian doctor Thomas Smith Clouston’s statement implied that women’s health limited them in a way that did not apply to men — a…
As a pacifist who is deeply concerned about environmental devastation, I have been captivated by the stories of the women who dedicated their time and energy to protest the positioning of ninety-six nuclear cruise missiles at the Royal Air Force…
American actress Tallulah Bankhead experienced a resurgence in popular culture after the release of Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood (2020) and Lee Daniels’ The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday (2021). Both Paget Brewster’s portrayal of Tallulah in Hollywood and Natasha Lyonne’s portrayal in…
Medea is one of the most well-known characters in Greek literature and perhaps the most changeable. Made famous in antiquity by Euripides, Apollonius of Rhodes, Seneca, Ovid, and others; betrayed by the man she loved and made infamous for her…