Twentieth Century
Asta Nielsen, International Film Sensation
Here’s the deal about “women’s history”: once you’re sensitive to the subject you stumble across references to notable women all the time.* Take the case of Asta Nielsen: I first met her in this sentence: “Asta Nielsen, newly arrived in Berlin from Denmark, described her horror when a skeletal horse collapsed in the street.”** For…
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How the Titanic Launched* One Woman’s Journalism Career
In April 1912 , a 30-year old seamstress/businesswoman from Louisiana, Missouri named May Birkhead was sailing to Europe on the Carpathia. Her holiday was postponed when the ship halted to pick up survivors from the Titanic. Birkhead put her seamstress skills to good use, creating clothing for the shipwreck victims from towels and other…
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Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Tiffany Sippial
Dr. Tiffany Sippial’s research focuses on the experience of women in Latin America, as part of a broader commitment to the study of the operation of power in Latin American society. Her first book, Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic, 1840-1920 (University of North Carolina Press), received the 2013-2014 Alfred B. Thomas…
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