How Trading Card Collectors Have Fought Stereotypes
By making what may have been unseen visible, trading cards have often provided an opening into larger conversations on race, gender, and representation.
Fake Stone and the Georgian Ladies Who Made It
Coade stone was all the rage in late eighteenth-century architecture, and a mother-and-daughter team was behind it all.
15 Black Women Who Should Be (More) Famous
Honoring the scientists, poets, activists, doctors, and librarians--those we know and those we don't.
The Exploding Women of Early 20th Century “Trick Films”
In “trick films,” women were shown literally exploding over kitchen accidents—the early 1900s way of mining humor out of human tragedies.
The History of Mourning in Public
After a massive factory fire in 1911, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to stage a "symbolic funeral."
Who Were the Ladies of Llangollen?
Top hat connoisseurs, friends of princesses and poets, tchotchke models, dog lovers, cottage keepers...lesbians?
Hollywood Cast Laurette Luez as a One-Size-Fits-All “Exotic”
Like many actresses of her day, Laurette Luez was expected to be a beautiful siren in skimpy clothing who could be from almost anywhere—just not here.
Why Modern Women Got All Colonial in the 1920s
Flappers stole the headlines for their hemlines and wild ways. But were some of them stitching samplers in the meantime?
How “Female Fiends” Challenged Victorian Ideals
At a time when questions about women's rights in marriage roiled society, women readers took to the pages of cheap books about husband-murdering wives.
Why Black Women Joined the Communist Party
During the Great Depression, Communists took to the streets to fight racism, poverty, and injustice. Among them were Black women.