One of my most vivid memories from childhood, is of my mother reading the Nordic folktale ‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon’ to me. The tale, first collected in Norway in the mid-nineteenth century tells of a…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
The Pre-History of Nursing: An Alternative View – Alannah Tomkins
My first exposure to the history of nursing was the Ladybird book Florence Nightingale, in the ‘Adventure from History’ series. Like many primary-school children before and since, I was beguiled by Nightingale’s dedication to her cause. The only depiction of…
WHN Reading List for LGBTQ+ History Month 2025
For thirty years, the Women’s History Network (WHN) have been publishing journal articles and blogs on myriad subjects about women. We have constructed this reading list for LGBTQ+ History Month, and beyond, to make visibility of our publications easier. Clicking…
WHN Annual Conference 2025, Call for Papers
First Call for Papers Women’s History Network 33rd Annual Conference Online via Zoom Thursday 4 & Friday 5 September 2025 Hidden in Plain Sight: Women in Archives, Libraries, Museums and Personal Collections. One of the many exciting aspects of researching…
Women and Madness in the Early Romantic Novel: Injured Minds, Ruined Lives – Deborah Weiss
“We are an Injured Body”: Finding Inspiration in a Class on Jane Austen My new book, Women and Madness in the Early Romantic Novel: Injured Minds, Ruined Lives (Manchester University Press), originated in an undergraduate class I taught in spring…
Navigating “Female” Identity: The Role of 19th-Century Missionary Wives – Katherine Hsu
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, American Protestant churches prohibited women from preaching or becoming ordained ministers. However, the religious revivalism of the Awakenings – a series of Protestant religious movements in the United States – created new,…
Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician – Alice Rothchild
My memoir, Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician, is both a chronicle of my life in the 1950s in a first-generation Jewish family, coming of age in the 1960s, and my embrace of feminism as I encountered…
Health, Death and Trauma in Middling Sort Women’s Letters during the Eighteenth Century – Isabella Smith
Sources taken from Karen Harvey’s Social Bodes project which contains transcribed letters between c.1680-1820 categorised by state, emotion and body part.[1] Why do we study old letters? What is it about them? Or as historian Susan Whyman asks, ‘filled with…
Hidden history and vital identity with a First World War servicewoman’s suitcase of memory – Robert MacKinnon and Denby Humphries
Scanning Auntie Emmie’s attic with torchlight, a time-worn leather suitcase caught Susan’s eye. Emmie would regularly retrieve the suitcase from the attic, but its contents were never shared. Opening it up carefully, Susan was presented with material traces of a…