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Category: Women’s & Gender History

Nautical Almanac Office director Charles Henry Davis offers Maria Mitchell a position as a “computer,” at a time when computers were people and opportunities for professional work in astronomy were vanishingly few, for both men and women. Davis to Mitchell, August 10, 1849.

Maria Mitchell’s Enduring Legacy: From Astronomical Poetry to Liberty Ships

Posted by: Josh Levy

This post is coauthored by Morgan Black, librarian at the United States Naval Observatory, and Josh Levy, historian of science and technology at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. When Maria Mitchell spotted a telescopic comet from the roof of her Nantucket home in 1847, a historic feat that helped make her a national celebrity, …

Posted in: Science and Technology, Women's & Gender History

Color headshots of three panelists

Censorship, the Comic Book, and Seduction of the Innocent at 70: A Roundtable Discussion

Posted by: Josh Levy

Join staff of the Manuscript and Serial & Government Publications divisions for a roundtable discussion with three comic studies scholars who will discuss psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s anti-comics legacy and its afterlives in more recent clashes over representations of race and sexuality in comics and graphic novels.

Posted in: African American History, Events, Science and Technology, Women's & Gender History

Of Note: Eleanor Roosevelt, Alien Investigator

Posted by: Josh Levy

In summer 1947, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted nine bright objects in the sky over Washington State flying, he said, “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” Reporters shorthanded the description of these objects to “flying saucers.” Sightings proliferated, and Americans fell into breathless speculation. Three years later, an unlikely investigator was on the case: Eleanor Roosevelt.

Posted in: Politics, Science and Technology, Women's & Gender History

Monochrome portrait of Kelley, facing camera

Florence Kelley and the Feminist Opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1920s

Posted by: Josh Levy

In 1921, when the National Woman’s Party drafted a constitutional amendment declaring equal rights for men and women, one of the most formidable opponents of the amendment was a friend and ally in the suffrage movement. Florence Kelley, a leading reformer and head of the National Consumers’ League, feared the amendment would put hard-earned workplace protections in jeopardy.

Posted in: Politics, Researcher Stories, Women's & Gender History

Handwritten copy (with deletions crossed out and additions added) of the first few sentence of Jefferson

Artistic Trio: Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz Letters to Henwar Rodakiewicz—A New By the People Crowdsourcing Transcription Campaign

Posted by: Josh Levy

A new crowdsourcing transcription campaign launched in celebration of Women’s History Month by the Library of Congress By the People program is now complete. It features letters written by acclaimed painter Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, the photographer, fine arts impresario, and gallery manager Alfred Stieglitz to their mutual friend, filmmaker Henwar Rodakiewicz.

Posted in: Digital Collections, Literature Culture & the Arts, Women's & Gender History