Women's and Gender Studies

Digital version, with both text and image files, of The Lily, the first newspaper for women, published from 1849 to 1856. Covers many topics important to women of the era, but especially temperance, child-bearing and education, and women’s rights.

The Lily was issued from 1849 until 1853 under the editorship of Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894).

Published in Seneca Falls, New York and priced at 50 cents a year, the newspaper began as a temperance journal for “home distribution” among members of the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society, which had formed in 1848.

Bloomer felt that as women lecturers were considered unseemly, writing was the best way for women to work for reform. The paper encountered a number of early obstacles and the Society’s enthusiasm died out, but Bloomer felt a commitment to publish and assumed full responsibility for editing and publishing the paper.

Originally, the title page had the legend “Published by a committee of ladies”, but after 1850 only Bloomer’s name appeared on the masthead.

Although women’s exclusion from membership in temperance societies and other reform activities was the main force behind the initial publication of The Lily, it was not at first a radical paper, its editorial stance conforming to the emerging stereotype of women as “defenders of the home.”

In the first issue, Bloomer wrote: "It is woman that speaks through The Lily…Intemperance is the great foe to her peace and happiness. It is that above all that has made her Home desolate and beggared her offspring… Surely, she has the right to wield her pen for its Suppression. Surely, she may without throwing aside the modest refinements which so much become her sex, use her influence to lead her fellow mortals from the destroyer’s path."

The Lily always maintained its focus on temperance. Fillers often told horror stories about the effects of alcohol. For example, the May, 1849 issue noted, “A man when drunk fell into a kettle of boiling brine at Liverpool, Onondaga Co. and was scalded to death.” But gradually the newspaper began to include articles about other subjects of interest to women, many from the pen of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, writing under the pseudonym “sunflower.” Her earliest articles dealt with temperance, child-bearing and education, but she soon turned to the issue of women’s rights, writing about laws unfair to women and demanding change.

The circulation of The Lily rose from 500 per month to 4,000 per month because of the dress reform controversy. At the end of 1853, the Bloomers moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio, where Amelia Bloomer continued to edit The Lily, which by then had a national circulation of over 6,000. Bloomer sold The Lily in 1854 to Mary Birdsall because she and her husband, Dexter were moving to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where no facilities for publishing the paper were available. She remained a contributing editor for the two years The Lily survived after she sold it. The Lily published its final issue December 15, 1856.

When complete, Women and Social Movements International will contain about "150,000 pages of conference proceedings, reports of international women's organizations, publications and web pages of women's non-governmental organizations, and letters, diaries, and memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-nineteenth century....Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made, this collection lets you see how women’s social movements shaped much of the events and attitudes that have defined modern life." -- Alexander Street Press

1840-

Indexes over 500 journals as well as many essay collections devoted in large part to topics dealing with women, sexuality, or gender.

Coverage begins in 1996.

There are over 20,000 records in the database currently, and more than five hundred records are added every four months.

The time period covered is 450 C.E. to 1500 C.E. with Russia extending to 1613, the beginning of the Romanov dynasty, because the sixteenth century is still medieval in social and political terms. The geographic area is Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East as well as areas in which Europeans travelled.

Subject coverage for gender and sexuality means that articles on masculinity and male homosexuality are included. Publications in English, French, German, and Spanish have been indexed since the project began in 1996. Materials in Italian (published from 1990 to the present) began to be included in the database in May 2001.

Books written by a single author are not indexed.

The database uses controlled vocabulary for its thesaurus.

A comprehensive record of scholarship on 738 known women writers and their texts, canonical and non-canonical. Including already familiar figures (e.g., Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart) as well as less-known and hitherto unknown English women writers--refugees such as women recusants, women in the colonies, Marrano women (Anusot), and women translators and English women writers in French, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Gaelic and Welsh.

The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition) from 1892 up to three months ago, reproduced in high-resolution color page images.  More than 400,000 pages are included, documenting the work from designers, photographers, stylists and illustrators of the late 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries.  Users can conduct searches to reveal results in all text, captions, and titles throughout the magazine, including advertisements, covers and fold-outs.  Page images are provided in both JPEG and Flash digital formats.

Every page of every issue from December 17, 1892 (Volume 1, Number 1) up to three months ago (does not include three most recent monthly issues)

The Berg Fashion Library is a unique online portal which offers fully cross-searchable access to an expanding range of Berg content collections – including the Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion online, e-books, reference works, images, and much more. Students and scholars in disciplines as diverse as anthropology, art history, history, sociology, geography, folklore, museum studies, theatre, and cultural studies as well as fashion and textiles will find the Berg Fashion Library a treasury of fascinating insights into people and cultures all over the world. The Berg Fashion Library will be updated at least three times a year. For a complete list of contents, see: http://www.bergfashionlibrary.com/page/whatsinbergfashionlibrary/whats-in-the-berg-fashion-library Note: this product is limited to three simultaneous users. Should you be unable to log in, please check back in a few minutes.

A unique collaboration of over 1000 scholars from around the world, Brill’s Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures crosses history, geographic borders and disciplines to create a ground-breaking reference work reflecting the very latest research on gender studies and the Islamic world. No other reference work offers this scale of contributions or depth and breadth of coverage.

Under the editorship of Sarah Josepha Hale, Godey's Lady's Book (1830-1898) became one of the most influential U.S. women's magazines in developing the concept of the "woman's sphere." Alongside articles concerning all aspects of the domestic sphere, the magazine included patterns for handcrafts, color plates of the latest fashions, and sheet music. Godey's also came to be known as an important literary magazine and included contributions by authors such as Stowe, Hawthorne, Poe, and Longfellow. This fully searchable and browsable online archive contains the full run of Godey's Lady's Book and includes all of its color plates.

1830-1898

Searchable database of women’s and gender studies scholarship, with bibliographic citations taken primarily from German sources and focusing on Germany (East and West) from the 1980s to present.

1906-

America: History & Life is an index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes 1,700 journals from 1964 to present and also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages.

1954-