Join us for a very special session featuring our Women’s History Network Early Career Research Fellows! Our ECR Fellows will be sharing their work on a diverse and fascinating range of topics from the history of women’s masturbation to the…
Category: Blog and News
News items of interest to WHN Members
Everyday Gays, Ordinary Queers, and the National Lesbian and Gay Survey – Victoria Golding
Pride 1987, 10.10am: ‘Helped E. to throw pills down the cat with cystitis. Washed breakfast dishes. Brought Gay Vegetarian placard up from cellar. Fed goldfish.’ (Correspondent No.157)[1] This National Lesbian and Gay Survey contributor’s account of her involvement in the…
Girls in the workhouse: a question of morality, c.1880-1920 – Claire Phillips
In the late nineteenth century, anxiety was growing throughout society about the suitability of the workhouse for children. Children could enter the workhouse for many reasons: as part of destitute families, as orphans, or as a result of economic difficulties…
Medicine, morals, and masturbating women: John Marten and the changing face of female self-pleasure – Elizabeth Schlappa
From the early eighteenth century to the urban myths of today, masturbation has been credited with causing all manner of bodily miseries. Serious moral and medical alarm about self-pleasure was first popularised by an anonymous pamphlet entitled Onania, or, The…
[RESCHEDULED] 15 March 2023: Gender and Literary Engagement
ANNOUNCEMENT: In solidarity with the University and College Union (UCU) strikes taking place across the UK, this seminar session has now been RESCHEDULED. Sign-ups are still open, but please stay tuned for the announcement of our rescheduled date. This seminar…
Bodies of Evidence: Reflections on the Somatic Experience of Doing History – Sasha Rasmussen
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…
Spring 2022/23 Seminar Series
With some unforeseen delays, we are now absolutely pleased to be able to reveal our upcoming Spring Series Seminar Programme for the 2022/23 academic year! Featuring an exciting lineup of early career academics speaking on a wide variety of issues…
Lyrical Voices of Women in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century China – Yuemin He
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…
Join the Women’s History Network Steering Committee!
There are vacancies for a number of roles on the Women’s History Network Steering Committee. These are great opportunities to gain experience supporting the activities of the network. Full training and support will be given. The roles available are: Seminar…