“Do you really want to argue that Black-authored plays about lynching aren’t protest plays?” This question took many forms over the five or so years I worked on revisions of my first book Living with Lynching. Both peers and senior…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Living in stressful times: 1980s Britain by Dr Jill Kirby
It is Spring 1984 in Britain: 24 million Britons have just watched Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean figure-skate their way to Winter Olympics gold on the BBC, Colin Baker is the sixth Dr Who and The Price is Right recently…
Bettie Thompson and the James Street Holiness Church by Sonja Ingram
Bettie Thompson was a young African American woman who, in 1891, despite opposition, founded the James Street Holiness Church in Danville, Virginia during a time when African Americans, women, and the religious movement she embraced were all being excluded and…
Emblems of Resilience: Nurses, ‘Spanish Influenza’ (1918-1919) and the lessons for COVID-19 Online event – August 11 2020, 5pm
The image of the nurse as ‘invincible healer’ acted as calming device for whole populations during the 1918/19 flu pandemic. British nurses donned uniforms and veils, and presented themselves as both military heroines and self-sacrificing angels. Evidence from media such…
Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age by Dr Carmen M. Mangion
In 1972, Alan Whicker, presenter of the widely watched ‘Whicker’s World’, together with his television crew, entered the silent and hidden world of the cloister. As part of a series ‘Whicker within a woman’s world’, he had astoundingly secured permission…
American Women War Correspondents of World War I by Chris Dubbs
On 3 August 1914, one day into World War 1, the writer Corra Harris received a telegram from George Lorimer, editor of the Saturday Evening Post, America’s largest circulation magazine: “How would you like to spend a few days in…
Where was Florence Nightingale? Developing municipal health visiting after 1900 by Dr Pamela Dale
In this blog Dr Pamela Dale tells us about the history of health visitors and their relationship to Florence Nightingale. Today health visiting is an elite branch of nursing: only registered nurses and midwives can train as health visitors. Nurses…
Sexual Progressives: Reimagining Intimacy in Scotland, 1880-1914 by Dr Tanya Cheadle
In our latest great blog we hear from Dr Tanya Cheadle about her new monograph: Sexual Progressives: Reimagining Intimacy in Scotland, 1880-1914 In October 1890, the feminist freethinker Jane Hume Clapperton and maverick scientist Patrick Geddes walked together through the…
Imagining Caribbean Womanhood: race, nation and beauty competitions, 1929-1970 by Dr Rochelle Rowe
In our latest fascinating blog we hear from Rochelle Rowe about her book Imagining Caribbean Womanhood: race, nation and beauty competitions, 1929-1970 I recently enjoyed the ‘feel-good’ movie Misbehaviour, which tells the story of feminist protests at the 1970 Miss…