Digital Commons Network^™

Maria Susanna Cummins' London Letters: April 1860, Heidi Lm Jacobs

Heidi LM Jacobs

Within scholarship on Maria Susanna Cummins (1827-1866), there are two recurrent phrases: "author of the best-selling novel The Lamplighter" and "little is known about her life." Despite the early contextualization of Cummins by various scholars, most of the recent critical work on Cummins has centered on her first and best-known novel, The Lamplighter (1854). Very little critical attention has been paid to Cummins's life, her career as a publishing author, her lesser known novels, her periodical publications, and her archived letters. Written in the weeks preceding the publication in the United States and Britain of her third novel, El …

Introduction: Teaching A Gendered World, Karen Sotiropoulos

Karen Sotiropoulos

Introduces some essays about infusing gender and women's history in teaching world history.

Introduction: Teaching A Gendered World, Karen Sotiropoulos

Karen Sotiropoulos

Introduces some essays about infusing gender and women's history in teaching world history.

Anarchist Motherhood: Toward The Making Of A Revolutionary Proletariat In Illinois’ Coal Towns, Caroline Waldron Merithew

Caroline Merithew

In the winter of 1900, several months before Leon Czolgosz assassinated U.S. President William McKinley for the cause of anarchy and for the love of Emma Goldman, a group of French-speaking and Italian women residing in northern Illinois’s coal-mining communities formed a club, Il Gruppo Femminile Luisa Michel, and began to put egalitarian theory into practice.

One of the women’s first acts of rebellion was a challenge to the all-male Prosperity Club – an anarchist saloon and a key venue of radical culture and activism in the region. With the help of some sympathetic members, Luisa Michel planned an assault …

Artful Lives: The Francis Watts Lee Family And Their Times, Patricia Fanning

Patricia J. Fanning

Francis Watts Lee and his family hold a special place in the history of American photography. F. Holland Day completed a series of remarkable photographs of Lee’s daughter Peggy, and the striking portrait of the child and her mother titled Blessed Art Thou among Women is one of Gertrude Käsebier’s most iconic compositions. In Artful Lives, Patricia J. Fanning uses these and other significant images as guideposts to explore the Lee family and the art and culture of their age.

A social reform advocate, Francis Watts Lee was an artistic photographer and a talented printer, part of the circle …

The Second Woman In The Theater Of Villedieu, Nina Ekstein

Nina C Ekstein

Best known for her prose fiction, Marie-Catherine Desjardins de Villedieu was also a successful playwright. Her three tragi-comedies (Manlius, Nitétis, and Le Favori), while significantly dissimilar in many respects, share an unusual feature. All three plays foreground the figure of the second woman, second because her role is clearly less central to the play's action than that of another woman character. In each case, the relationships between this second woman and the other characters of the play defy the traditional categories of the seventeenth-century stage. Furthermore, the second woman is not an object of desire. The differences between the first …

A Woman Of Her Time: Dr. Frances Woods And The Intersection Of War, Expansionism And Equal Rights, Lisa Lindell

Lisa R. Lindell

'Started to Manila', headlined the Oregonian newspaper on 18 August 1898, 'Two Portland Nurses Take Their Leave.' Dr. Frances Woods, along with fellow Portland, Oregon resident Lena Killiam, was on her way to the Philippines to serve in the Spanish-American War. Eager to take part, but knowing she would never be allowed to go as a woman doctor, Dr. Woods grasped the option of volunteering as a nurse. 'I feel just as patriotic and earnest as a man', she declared. 'But, you know, they have a way of turning aside lady physicians and giving men the first chances to go …

Intersection Theory: A More Elucidating Paradigm Of Quantitative Analysis, Marla Kohlman

Marla Kohlman

Intersection theory, a theoretical paradigm which calls attention to the interlocking forces of race, class, and gender, among other master status characteristics, is used to predict that respondents report having been targeted for sexual harassment under circumstances that are quite different from one demographic group to another. Sexual harassment is interpreted as primarily a power relation such that workers in less powerful positions are expected to be more vulnerable to targeting. This study may be distinguished from most studies utilizing intersection theory as a theoretical paradigm because it is a quantitative analysis of a broad, national set of data, the …

Race, Rank And Gender: The Determinants Of Sexual Harassment For Men And Women In The Military, Marla Kohlman

Marla Kohlman

Purpose – To ascertain how the institutional environment of the armed forces has differentially impacted men and women in their experiences of sexual harassment.

Methodology – Logistic regression analyses of the 1995 Armed Forces Sexual Harassment Survey and the 2002 Status of the Armed Forces Survey – Workplace and Gender Relations.

Findings – Gender does not override all other factors in determining who is most likely to be targeted for sexual harassment in the military. Gender is shown to be most informative about the likelihood of experiencing sexual harassment for women only when combined with race and rank. For men, …

Colonels And Industrial Workers In El Salvador, 1944-1972: Seeking Societal Support Through Gendered Labor Reforms, Kati Griffith, Leslie Gates

Kati Griffith

[Excerpt] How do military regimes seek support or legitimacy from society? What strategies, besides violent repression, do military leaders use to remain in power? In other words, how do military leaders try to achieve hegemony? El Salvador’s long period of military rule (1931-1979) gives researchers ample opportunity to investigate the mechanisms whereby military regimes try to gain societal support. Erik Ching’s chapter shows that General Martinez’s regime sought support through locally based patron-client relationships. Some analysts of El Salvador’s subsequent military regimes find that these regimes pursued a political alliance with urban industrial workers in order to gain support. Nevertheless, …