Sheila Barker's Artemisia Gentileschi (2022) (part of a new series on #renaissance#women#artists) is a well presented synthesis of current #arthistory scholarship, without getting bogged down in the detail of disagreements about attribution(s). While there are more comprehensive books on Gentileschii, as a nuanced introduction to a major artist's career & achievement (leavened with biographical detail) this will be hard to beat.
Today in Labor History December 17, 1760: Deborah Sampson was born on this date in Massachusetts. Sampson disguised herself as a man in order to fight with the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. She called herself Robert Shirtliff (as in don’t lift my shirt) and stood 5’9”, taller than the average man in those days. She fought in several skirmishes with British forces before being wounded and discovered and then honorably discharged from the army. She later petitioned the government to be repaid the wages that had been denied her because she was a woman. Her friend Paul Revere advocated for her full compensation. Finally, in 1816, Congress granted her request. There are several other women known to have secretly fought in this war. Sampson’s story has been portrayed in several plays and works of fiction, including “Portrait of Deborah: A Drama in Three Acts” (1959) by Charles Emery, “I'm Deborah Sampson: A Soldier of the Revolution” (1977) by Patricia Clapp and Revolutionary (2014), by Alex Myers, one of her descendants. Whoopi Goldberg played her in an episode of “Liberty Kids.”
Hollywood Her Story
An Illustrated History of Women and the Movies
With more than 1200 women featured in the book, you will find names that everyone knows and loves—the movie legends. But you will also discover hundreds and hundreds of women whose names are unknown to you: actresses, directors, stuntwomen, screenwriters, composers, animators, editors, producers, cinematographers and on and on.
Twenty-Five Women Who Shaped the Italian Renaissance
Twenty-Five Women Who Shaped the Italian Renaissance takes readers on a journey through early modern Italy that places women at the heart of the artistic and cultural developments of this transformative era.
The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who broke the story, the inspiring account of the sixteen female scientists who forced MIT to publicly admit it had been discriminating against its female faculty for years—sparking a nationwide reckoning with the pervasive sexism in science.
Amy Levy's lat C19th photo-#feminist (?) novel, The Romance of a Shop (1888/2021) offers a story of the struggle of #women to stay independent in Victorian #London. While perhaps this has a touch of Zola in its telling, the four sisters' #photography business, an interesting plot element, sadly gets subsumed into the more general social tale of courtship in the middle-classes. Its a breezy, short read but ultimatley disappoints a little @bookstodon
Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + the New Technoculture
Not since The Female Eunuch has there been a book so radical in its scope, so persuasive in its detail, so exhilarating in its polemical energy. Beginning with Ada Lovelace and her unheralded contributions to Charles Babbage and his development of the Difference Engine, Sadie Plant traces the critical contributions women have made to the progress of computing.
In her own words, Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers an intimate look at her life and career, through an extraordinary series of conversations with the head of the National Constitution Center.
This remarkable book presents a unique portrait of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, drawing on more than twenty years of conversations with Jeffrey Rosen, starting in the 1990s and continuing through the Trump era.
In Women Who Run with the Wolves , Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, many from her own traditions, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature.
Women in the History of Science brings together primary sources that highlight women’s involvement in scientific knowledge production around the world. Drawing on texts, images and objects, each primary source is accompanied by an explanatory text, questions to prompt discussion, and a bibliography to aid further research.
Women and Inequality in a Changing World: Exploring New Paradigms for Peace
Women and Inequality in a Changing World explores the obstacles women continue to face to their equal participation in all areas of daily life—political, social, and economic—which persist despite the growth in the education of girls, large-scale social movements, and political waves.
The Woman All Spies Fear: Code Breaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life
An inspiring true story, perfect for fans of Hidden Figures, about an American woman who pioneered codebreaking in WWI and WWII but was only recently recognized for her extraordinary contributions.
Happy Monday! We'll be sharing a weekly photograph of George Lansbury from the archives.
Here is George with his daughter Daisy Postage. As well as working as her father's secretary, Daisy was an activist and was involved in the suffragette movement. She famously dressed up as Sylvia Pankhurst to help the real Sylvia Pankhurst evade capture from the police.
The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict, and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. You are the most iconoclastic/‘tomboyish’ of four young sisters, and it looks like you may chart a path as a writer, but as your sisters fall into the roles allocated them by the 19th century patriarchy, you too may be deprived of the dull spinsterhood you aspired to.
The Nine
The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany
The Nine follows the true story of the author's great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII from Germany back to Paris.
15 Fearless and Inspirational Women That Changed History
There have been countless badass women who have changed the world for the better, yet most people have never even heard of them. This collection of biographies and quick trivia facts aims to tell the stories of the courageous and tenacious women who have paved the way for the women of the future.
The Global Political Economy of Sex: Desire, Violence, and Insecurity in Mediterranean Nation States
At the intersection of the warmth of hearth and home and the dangers of the street lies the tenuous position of women engaged in reproductive labour, those involved in the sex trade and those in domestic positions.
The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide
Global history records an astonishing variety of forms of social organization. Yet almost universally, males subordinate females. How does the relationship between men and women shape the wider political order?
The overlooked revolutionary women of Eastern Europe and their contribution to socialist feminist history, from the author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism.