Nellie M. Chase, Civil War Nurse: A Guest Post by Carolyn P. Schriber

If you’ve been hanging out here on the Margins for very long, you’ve read stories about nurses in the American Civil War. I am fascinated by their stories: the reasons they volunteered, the lives they left behind, the way they dealt with the common challenges that all nurses faced, what they did after the war.…

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Butterflies, Bugs, and Maria Sibylla Merian

Once you start looking, it seems like you find examples of women who did important things in the past everywhere. Women you’ve never heard of unless you happen to be in their field of expertise—and maybe not even then. Take, for instance, naturalist and illustrator Maria Sibyella Merian (1647-1717). She was trained as a painter…

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