Digital Archives about French Feminism

Just a couple of hours outside of Paris researchers looking for material about French feminism will find an excellent collection of materials at the Centre des Archives du Féminisme, housed at the University of Angers. For those who cannot make it to Angers but would like to access digital sources, the website offers a collection of online exhibits and digital documents, as well as a searchable guide to sources: http://www.archivesdufeminisme.fr/

The website is in French.

New Digital Collection: Charlotte Perkins Gilman Papers

The Schlesinger Library is the primary repository for the papers of early 20th-century American feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935). To celebrate the sesquicentennial of Gilman's birth, the Schlesinger Library has digitized Gilman's papers, with the generous help of the Cynthia Green Colin Fund.

In September 2010, the Nation named Gilman among the “Fifty Most Influential Progressives of the 20th Century,” taking note of her arguments that women would be emancipated only when they were economically independent and that housekeeping and child care should be professionalized. Known around the world during her lifetime as a public intellectual, author of the best-selling Women and Economics (1898), and a major influence on the women’s movement, today Gilman is known primarily for The Yellow Wallpaper, an autobiographical short story about a woman’s nervous breakdown.

To learn more about Gilman's life and to access her diaries, letters, writings, and drawings, consult the online finding aid

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Now Available: Vera Glaser papers

The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming has recently processed and digitized select folders from the Vera Glaser papers. Glaser was a long-time Washington D.C. reporter and an advocate for women’s rights. During President Richard Nixon’s second press conference, Glaser helped spark a remarkable chain of events when she asked Nixon, “Mr. President, since you’ve been inaugurated, you have made approximately two-hundred presidential appointments, and only three of them have gone to women. Can we expect some more equitable recognition of women’s abilities, or are we going to remain the lost sex?”

The question helped lead to the first systemic program to recruit women into federal positions, as well as the creation of the President's Task Force on Women's Rights and Responsibilities, a task force that Glaser proudly served on. The task force produced a report that consisted of twenty suggestions for improving the status of women in America. After the White House initially refused to release the report, Glaser passed on the task force findings to a fellow journalist for publication. Ultimately, nineteen of the twenty report recommendations became law, with only the Equal Rights Amendment failing to be adopted by the government.

The majority of the Vera Glaser papers consist of materials relating to her career as a journalist, including research files and published articles on American politics and women’s issues from the 1940s through the 1990s. Additionally there are a number of significant professional files, including files related to her work for Sen. Charles Potter and Sen. Kenneth Keating, the Republican National Committee, presidential committees, and various women's and journalistic organizations. The current digital collection consists of a file on the President's Task Force on Women's Rights and Responsibilities, speeches, photographs, and an oral history.

Faith Beamer Cooke Digital Collection

Washington State University has recently digitized fifty-three items from the Francis Beamer Cooke Digital Collection. Items include published and unpublished poetry, correspondence, and photographs. All the digitized items are a part of the larger Francis Beamer Cooke papers, which was acquired by Washington State University in 2008. The Washington Women's History Consortium assisted in providing funding for the digitized items.

Cooke was a twentieth century poet and a native of Oregon. Everywhere she lived, Cooke was an active member of the local community, with a special interest in developing cultural programs. By 1945, she had founded the Writer's Workshop (later Mid-Columbia Writers League and the Mid-Columbia Writers Association) and a Unitarian Fellowship. She continued throughout her life to develop her skills as a poet by participating in writer's organizations and seminars throughout the Pacific Northwest and often around the world. As the Tri-Cities grew Cooke expanded her efforts to develop regional and statewide poetry and community organizations. She was a key participant in the Benton-Franklin County Fair, the creation of the Columbia Arts Center, the Washington Poets Association, the 1976 USA Bicentennial Project, the Washington State Centennial Project, and other similar events. The Washington Poets Association established a poetry award as a memorial to Cooke, their founder, in 1999.

Coins of Passage: Faith Beamer Cooke papers, 1928-1999, (Cage 729, Box 5, Folder 259, Item 1)

Quakers and Slavery

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) led and sustained the abolitionist movement in Britain and North America, particularly after the Quaker reformation of the eighteenth century. Quaker women provided vital leadership in many of the female anti-slavery societies established in the nineteenth century. For example, Hicksite Quakers Lucretia Mott, Esther Moore, and Lydia White were among the founding members of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Historians cite the PFASS as being in the vanguard of the abolitionist movement both for its activism and for its integrated membership.

In November 2010, Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges will join with the McNeil Center of Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania to host an international conference on Quakers and Slavery. To support the conference, the Quaker repositories at Swarthmore and Haverford have digitized numerous primary source materials, which are available through Triptych, a searchable online database of special collections from Swarthmore and Haverford as well as Bryn Mawr. Project staff have also developed Quakers and Slavery an online exhibit featuring links to the primary source materials in Triptych as well as commentary by established scholars, Quaker researchers, and project staff. Divided into three helpful categories — Themes, People, and Organizations — the commentary enhances users’ understanding of the primary source materials available through the project.

Several sections focus on the history of Quaker women in the anti-slavery movement:

Radical Quaker Women and the Early Women’s Rights Movement
Learn about radical Quaker women by exploring their role abolition in Pennsylvania and the early Women’s rights movement. Topics discussed include the American Anti-Slavery Society, rural Quaker women, and the first Women’s Rights Convention held at Seneca Falls, New York, 1848.

Rescue of Jane Johnson
In 1855, the slave Jane Johnson and her two children travelled through Philadelphia with their master, John Hill Wheeler. Johnson sent a message to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society that she wished to escape, and on July 18, Passmore Williamson, William Still, and five other free blacks confronted Wheeler and escorted Johnson and her children to freedom. The event was one of the first challenges to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Passmore Williamson, William Still and the other free blacks were charged for their role in Johnson's 'abduction;' Lucretia and James Mott sheltered Johnson during the trial so that she could testify on her rescuers' behalf.

Biographical entries include a relationship map, which traces relationships among various Quaker supporters of abolitionism including:

Ruth Dugdale and Sarah B. Dugdale
Ruth Dugdale (1801-1896) rivaled her husband, Joseph, in her zeal for reform causes. She was a respected Quaker minister, and participated actively in anti-slavery, temperance, women's rights, and other movements in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Iowa.

Sarah B. Dugdale (1787-1880) was the mother of Joseph A. Dugdale and the progenitor of his liberal ideals. She was involved in the American Anti-Slavery Society nearly from its founding, continued to participate in Progressive Friends societies and other reform movements until her death in 1880.

Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880)was a prominent Philadelphia Quaker minister and a leader in reform movements, especially antislavery, education, peace, and women's rights.


The site also includes important resources such as a glossary of Quaker terminology (many with links to primary sources explaining those terms), an interactive map, and a timeline of the anti-slavery movement.

Images from Quakers and Slavery.

Book: Contesting Archives

Contesting Archives: Finding Women in the Sources is a set of essays on innovative methodologies for the study of women's history from the sixteenth-century to the present. The contributors have developed and shared ways of approaching archives and documents "against the grain." The Table of Contents gives proof of the book's broad geographic and thematic reach. Edited by Nupur Chaudhri, Sherry J. Katz, and Mary Elizabeth Perry, the book was published by the University of Illinois Press.

"Contesting Archives makes vivid and concrete the way historians must proceed when faced with partial or contradictory sources. Historians and anyone interested in how historians work will appreciate the authors' strategies for, and cautions about, unearthing information about women from documents inside and outside the archive."--Margaret Strobel, coeditor of Expanding the Borders of Women's History