Category: Carnival

Women’s History Carnival 2011, International Women’s Day Edition

Apologies: this was supposed to go up on 9 March, just after IWD, but work and life got in the way. Hope you enjoy it anyway!

Sources and Discussions

Women don’t always change channel when the bombs begin to fall | BBC History Magazine
Amanda Vickery looks at whether there really is a gender gap in historical programming: “bonnets for the women and battles for the blokes?”

Alchemy, Women and Data Visualisation
Sienna Latham writes on the role of data visualisation in her historical research on English women’s chymical activities during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Women’s history & Wikipedia’s gender gap
Shane Landrum commented on Wikipedia’s history coverage biases and did something about it: improving a women’s history article. He followed this up by setting up a WikiProject for Women’s History. Why not contribute something for Women’s History Month?

Exploring the History of Women – More on Documenting the Underdocumented
Melissa Mannon at ArchivesInfo lists some excellent online women’s history resources.

Women in the Arts and Professions

Fascinating Women: Nell Brinkley
From Edwardian Promenade, a post about the illustrator, Nell Brinkley, “one of the most popular and prolific of American illustrators” in the early 20th century’s “golden age of illustration”.

Madame de Sévigné
Mme Guillotine has a post about one of her literary heroines and personal influences.

Adventures in Feministory: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
LIndsay Baltus looks at Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s life and work (it’s not just the Yellow Wallpaper…).

Women First
The sex disqualification (removal) act of 1919 enabled women to enter the legal profession and the civil service and to become jurors: Philip Carter looks at six trailblazers.

An Uppity Dutch Master (part 1)
Judith Weingarten’s brilliant series of posts on Judith Leyster from last year (Part II; Part III).

Women and Science

Dangerous Curves: Maria Gaetana Agnesi
A wonderful post by Jennifer Ouellette, at Wonders and Marvels last year, about “the Walking Polyglot” who could speak French, Italian, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German and Latin by the time she was 13, wrote a seminal mathematics textbook, and became a nun.

Lise Meitner
Milena Popova wrote about Lise Meitner, a pioneering female physicist who worked on the early development of nuclear fission, and highlighted the discrimination faced by women scientists.

Women and Science, Past and Present
Philippa Hardman explores a similar theme of women’s historical struggles to participate in science equally with men, focusing on Darwin’s female correspondents.

Queens and Heroines

The Many Guises of Marie Antoinette
Emily Brand at The Artist’s Progress explored how Marie Antoinette was represented in French caricature “from the first rustlings of revolution to her execution in 1793”.

A Woman Will Be King
Judith Weingarten explained how Queen Bōrān became the King of Kings, the first female sole ruler of Persia. She also has a post on The Uppity Queen Arsinoë II, “one of the feistiest Hellenistic queens ever”.

History Heroine: Susan Travers
Katrina Gulliver writes at Notes from the Field on a heroine of World War II.

Rebels and Troublemakers

On March 4, Remember the Grand Picket for Voting Rights
Ann Bausum posts on the protests for female suffrage by the National Woman’s Party. This post is just one from a month-long blogging project, Kidlit Celebrates Women’s History Month, with a series of posts from children’s authors and bloggers about famous women and events related to women’s history.

10 Things You Should Know About Clara Lemlich
Jewesses With Attitude posts on the life of Clara, a leader of the mass strike of shirtwaist workers in New York’s garment industry in 1909.

Live-Blogging Women’s History: March 3, 1913
Ms Magazine Blog is “live blogging” a series “this day in feminist history” posts throughout March: this chronicles a massive suffrage parade and pageant in Washington DC.

Tragedy

‘The Somersetshire Lady’ a 17thc Ballad
From Women in Medieval and Early Modern History, a sad story; it may be fiction but reflects the reality of the lack of control married women had over their finances and lives.

I Am a young Wife that has cause to complain,
Yet I fear all my sorrowful Sighs are in vain;
For my Husband he is an invincible Sot,
There is nothing he minds but the Pipe, and the Pot:
When a Husband he is a sad Spendthrift, you know
Then a Wife must sad Sorrow and Grief undergoe…

‘I Shall Have to Answer Before my Maker…’ Or: Amelia Dyer and the Baby Farming Trade:
The Victorianist writes on the life and death of Amelia Dyer, whose case “brought to light the abuses in baby-farming” and caused a Victorian scandal.

The South Cerney Tragedy
From Cotswold History Blog, this is the harrowing story of Mary Hannah and her children.

Material Lives

Celebrate Women’s History Month by Picking Up a Needle and Thread
Craftzine.com blog surveys two centuries of women’s sewing.

Women in the Business of Food
Australian Women’s History forum is focusing for WHM 2011 on women who made significant contributions to the history of food, in cooking or in education, science, or technology and challenged “perceptions about women’s unpaid domestic skills”.

Frederick Douglass’s Women: In Progress: Anna Douglass’s Bandanna
Leigh Fought is intrigued by an item of Anna Douglass’s wardrobe: “The red bandanna caught my attention. White women did not tend to dress like that. They wore caps and bonnets and hats. Go south, however, to Savannah, to Charleston, to plantations, and black women wore scarves around their heads”.

Fabric Samples from an Early New York Businesswoman
The New-York Historical Society Library Collections Blog highlights the records of the business of Mary Alexander, which “provide a glimpse into the life of a colonial NYC businesswoman”.

Farthingales & Vizards – Elizabethan Women & their Dress
Dainty Ballerina has a lavishly illustrated and detailed look at what Elizabethan women wore.

Mother’s Friend
The Quack Doctor brings us “a liniment that claimed to make labour a doddle”.

In Brief

And lastly…

For a little fun: Good Queen Bess from Hark, a Vagrant.

***

Thanks for nominations: Katrina Gulliver, Judith Weingarten, Margo Tanenbaum, Chris McDowall, and all the people who posted interesting links on Twitter!

There will hopefully be another Carnival later in the month to round up activity after IWD: I’m looking for a volunteer host (more info here)!

Women’s History Carnival

March is Women’s History Month, and this year International Women’s Day (8 March) is 100 years old. To mark the occasion, the History Carnival is running a special Women’s History blogs event throughout the month.

To mark International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month the History Carnival is inaugurating a special Women’s History Carnival for March 2011, for all blogs and blogging about the history of women, gender and feminism. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen yet, but hopefully it’ll be a bit different from the usual History Carnivals:

There will be at least one Carnival post, but we’d like to do much more than that! We’ll publicise any great blogging or themed events we come across (or you tell us about) and generally do our best to encourage discussion and bang the drum for women’s history.

Ways you could take part in WHC11:

  • Write a blog post, and comment on other blogs
  • Nominate blog posts – your own and other bloggers’ – for the Carnival (see below)
  • Get discussion going on Twitter – the main tag is #whm; the tag for WHC is #whc11, and the tag for women historians on Twitter is #twitterstoriennes
  • Got any more suggestions? Get in touch!

I’ll be hosting the Carnival here at Early Modern Notes on about 9 March, just after International Women’s Day. (There should be a second Carnival post towards the end of March as well, so don’t worry if you miss this one.) In addition to recent posts, there will be a selection of the best women’s history blogging since March last year, so you’re welcome to send your favourites too!

There are several ways you can nominate posts for the WHC:

1. We have a special nominations form for the WHC. (Don’t use the normal HC form for this one.)
2. Email me using my contact form.
3. On Twitter: send a tweet @historycarnival or @sharon_howard, or simply add the hashtag #whc11 to any tweet.
4. On Delicious.com: tag a bookmark with whc11 and it will appear in the WHC Delicious feed.

Carnivalesque 66

Greetings! Here is the latest early modern Carnivalesque for your Sunday reading.

Historiography and methods

Wynken de Worde is building a syallabus for early modern book history

David Rundle examines responses (or non-responses) to claims of plagiarism in The Unacceptable Face of The English Face of Machiavelli?

Early Modern Online Bibliography has a discussion of Exploring reception history in Women Writers Online

Cultures: literary, visual, musical

Ptak has a fascinating post on ‘the overall full-body indexes, the general NYC subway map-like overlays on the entire body’: Mapping Humans, 1400-1759: Bloodletting, Moles, Bumps and the Stars.

At Bibliodyssey, you can gawp at the astonishingly beautiful Ottheinrich Bible, begun in the early 15th century and completed in the 16th.

Three Pipe Problem attempts to Unravel Giorgione’s ‘The Tempest’ (c.1505), and leans toward the theory of Waldemar Januszczak. Alberti’s Window, on the other hand, can’t find a satisfactory interpretation of the painting.

The History Woman is highly impressed by the V&A’s exhibition of Raphael’s Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (though less impressed by the V&A’s admission policy).

Atrium Musicologicum surveys 16th-century music: The Spirit of the Renaissance .

Serendipities reviews ‘Printed images and the Reformation’ in Printed Images in Early Modern Britain (ed. by Michael Hunter, Ashgate, 2010).

Bibliodyssey is enchanted by Robert Fludd’s Temple of Music.

Gilbert Mabbot finds a 17th-century print Creepy. Indeed!

Whitney Trettien muses on A Blank Poem (1723); or, the Present of Absence: ‘…in short, blankness is sarcasm; it signifies the nothingness and “No Body” of what it’s supposed to celebrate.’

Of science and nature

William Eamon examines The Renaissance Curioso: ‘What did it mean to be a curious person in the Renaissance?’

Adrian Teal (guest posting at Dainty Ballerina) discusses Hops, Hogsheads and Horsepower, A Highly-Selective History of Beer. Mmm, beer…

Women in Medieval and Early Modern History has some Weird Science: Sex and Reproductive Knowledge in the Early Seventeenth Century, when pregnancy was still the subject of much uncertainty and strange beliefs.

Predicting the weather in the 17th century: A sign of great heat to follow (from Airs, Waters, Places) and If Mists arise out of Ponds (Dainty Ballerina).

Dainty Ballerina also brought us Strange news from the Deep, a mid 17th century account of a whale stranded in Essex (and this story of a 17th-century whale skeleton in London was in the news).

The Renaissance Mathematicus examines the life and work of the observational astronomer John Flamsteed (1646-1719) in Return of the stamp collector.

The Royal Society’s History of Science blog explores What scientists want: Robert Boyle’s to-do list.

Wonders and Marvels has a guest post by Jennifer Ouellette on Dangerous Curves: Maria Gaetana Agnesi, 18th-century polyglot, mathematician and nun.

The Artist’s Progress examines responses to the proposal of a Dog Tax in 1796. (It didn’t go down well.)

Jonathan Dresner examines The Lead Poisoning Thesis in Imperial Japan.

Crime and punishment

Executed Today looks at the hanging of Antonio Rinaldeschi, bad gambler for sacrilege in 1501: ‘passing an image of Holy Mother at the piazza Santa Maria de Alberighi, he gathered up some nearby dung and flung it at the sacred pic’.

Early Modern Whale surveys Thomas Barton’s ‘Brief Relation’ of the life and death of Thomas’s brother William, who was hanged for murder in 1661.

From the Hands of Quacks has begun a series of posts on The Criminalized Body: this one focuses on the 1752 Murder Act and public dissections in 18th-century Britain.

Early American Crime has the story of Thomas Mount (ex. for burglary in 1791) and the Flash Company.

Georgian London looks at Jeremy Bentham’s ideas for penal reform in The Birth of the Surveillance Society

Politics and people

Chaos Bogey has a digression on The Step Between covers Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell, sixteenth-century politics and the power of queens.

The National Library of Scotland’s Rare Books blog discusses Patrick Hamilton and the beginning of the Scottish Reformation.

Executed Today considers Anthony Babington‘s plot and execution in 1586.

Early Modern History quotes Clarendon on Sir John Coke (1563-1644), Charles I’s Secretary of State 1625-1640.

Mercurius Politicus notes an account of a curious portrait of Oliver Cromwell in It is I.

The Gentleman Administrator stalks Charles II during his exile in Jersey.

Boston 1775 goes in search of “One Dewksbury Who Lives about 4 Miles from You”, who (if anyone managed to find him) belonged to George Washington’s early intelligence network.

Vast Public Indifference traces a picture of the die-hard Whig family of The Littlest Martyr, Charles Pratt Marston, who died during the Boston siege of 1775-6.

The Artist’s Progress uncovers The Many Guises of Marie Antoinette in French caricature ‘from the first rustlings of revolution to her execution in 1793’.

And that’s it folks! Hope you enjoyed it…

Many thanks to Nandini Ramachandran, Jason of Executed Today, Nick Poyntz, William Eamon and Jonathan Dresner for sending in nominations. And apologies to the latter two, whose emails I managed to overlook in my inbox until after posting because I put them in the wrong folder.

*******

Don’t forget the History Carnival is coming soon, at Notes from the Field on 1 October – please send your nominations of the best history blogging since 1 August.

Carnivalesque is coming!

This month is Carnivalesque’s sixth birthday, not to mention its 66th edition, which seems as good an excuse as any to bring it back where it started (well, apart from a small change of address. Bear with me here). So, I’ll be hosting here on about the 25th.

Send in your nominations for the best early modern blogging of the last couple of months via the nomination form or email sharon@earlymodernweb.org.uk.

Carnival News

Carnivalesque 62 (early modern) has been posted by Lucy Inglis at Georgian London, with everything from 18th-century paint colours to tiny dogs.

The next History Carnival will be hosted by Warren Stewart on 1 June at Magnificat. To nominate the best history blogging of the last month, email warren@magnificatbaroque.com or use the nomination form.

The next Carnivalesque will be an ancient/medieval edition at The Cranky Professor, date to be confirmed but probably around 20 June; usual nomination form.

History Carnival 86

Welcome one and all to the 86th edition of the History Carnival, and many thanks for all the nominations.

March was Women’s History Month and we had a rich seam of posts about women in history. Let’s open proceedings with the Tenured Radical’s question: It’s Women’s History Month: Do You Know Where The Women’s History Blogs Are?

At Zenobia: Empress of the East, Judith Weingarten explored the life and work (and afterlife) of one of my favourite artists, Judith Leyster, in An Uppity Dutch Master: Part 1 and Part II.

Abigail Quinnley at the Quinnley Stand wrote about the mythology of Lilith, the first wife of Adam, in Original Sin?

At The Vapour Trail, Melissa Bellanta posted on Trained on rashers and ice-pudding: the Victorian skirt dance.

The Women’s History Network Blog published fine posts from various historians throughout the month, so here are just a few of the highlights:

Shall We Go to the Pictures?: Rachel Freeman on the efforts of the Mothers’ Union to “safeguard the morality of society” in the mid-20th century.

In a post for Ada Lovelace Day on 24 March, Katie Barclay looked at Mary Fairfax Somerville, a 19th-century mathematician.

The International Year of the Nurse: Sue Hawkins reminds us that nursing history isn’t all about Florence Nightingale.

Wars, Revolutions and Soldiers

Jack Le Moine at History Moments Serbian Revolt Begins, spotlights the beginning of the Serbian revolt against Ottoman rule in February 1804.

Kevin Levin has been Looking for Silas Chandler, at Civil War Memory and challenging some of the dubious attempts to rewrite the stories of black people who fought for the Confederate states in the American Civil War.

Soldier’s Mail: Letters Home from a New England Doughboy is a fascinating blog posting the letters home to his family of the First World War US Sgt. Sam Avery. On 15 March 1919, he was at Laigne-en-Belin, France.

Tim Abbott unravelled the mystery of the Revolutionary War Service Record of Jacob Maurice De Hart at Walking the Berkshires.

Medicine, Anatomy and Quackery

Øystein Horgmo at The Sterile Eye explores the amazingly detailed anatomical drawings of Jan van Rymsdyk – Drawer of Wombs, illustrator of William Hunter’s “The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus” (1774).

In early modern Europe, the modern science of anatomy was largely founded on the dissected corpses of criminals. Executed Today uncovered a similar story in Japan.

At Civil War Medicine and Writing, Jim Schmidt uncovers Quack Medicine Advertising Disguised as Military History.

Caroline Rance at The Quack Doctor has another story of a quack’s misleading claims, with fatal consequences: The Tragic Story of Ching’s Worm Lozenges.

Religion, Culture and Food

Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs guest-blogged at American Creation on his research on early modern ideas of hierarchical authority.

How could I possibly have resisted a post from the Wellcome Library Blog to celebrate National Pie Week? The crust of it!

Got Medieval skewers some risible research in What’s All This about Super-Sized Last Suppers?

Alun Salt reports on archaeologists’ investigation in Australia of a case of 20th-century aboriginal culture and resistance in Preserving a culture in wild honey.

Closing thoughts

At Past is Present, Christine Graham-Ward recounted how a mundane check on the identity of a copyright holder led to a story of scandal, unrequited love and tragedy in Oregon.

And of course, no Carnival should be without a little crime and mayhem, so we have the real story of Dick Turpin from Dainty Ballerina.

And that’s it for this time! The next History Carnival will be at The Vapour Trail on 1 May. See you there!