The Incredible Versatility of Adrienne Rich
Rich challenged the language of the past in poetry and prose while not quite embracing a fully inclusive future.
Feminist Film Theory: An Introductory Reading List
Evolving from the analysis of representations of women in film, feminist film theory asks questions about identity, sexuality, and the politics of spectatorship.
“Now We Can Begin”: Annotated
To mark the 1920 ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, activist Crystal Eastman described the path to full freedom for American women.
Medicalizing Domestic Violence
What happens when experts position domestic violence inside a biomedical model of care?
Boys in Dresses: The Tradition
It’s difficult to read the gender of children in many old photos. That’s because coding American children via clothing didn’t begin until the 1920s.
Kitchenless Dreams
Escaping the drudgery of housekeeping via collective action became a feminist focus of utopian practitioners and theorists in the later nineteenth century.
The Vermont Knitters
A major labor law dispute simmered for decades. At its center? Women being paid to do piecework on knitting machines in their homes.
Was She Really Rosie?
The unlikely, true story of the Westinghouse “We Can Do It” work-incentive poster that became an international emblem of women’s empowerment.
Olivia: An Oft-Overlooked Lesbian Novel
It took some fifteen years to bring Dorothy Strachey Bussy’s remarkable roman à clef to print, thanks to André Gide’s lukewarm reception.
Women in the Age of Polar Exploration
Opportunities were restricted during the so-called Heroic Age, but women still dreamed of exploration...and sometimes managed to reach the polar regions.