Why has it taken nearly 70 years for images of a diverse America—featuring people of color, immigrants, women as independent social beings—to appear on prime time television? Challenging the longstanding belief that what appeared on television screens in the 1950s and after resulted from some social consensus, The Broadcast 41 addresses these and other questions by telling two intersecting stories.
Women’s History Resource List
For Women’s History Month, ACLS is sharing scholarly resources that celebrate and highlight lesser-known, forgotten, and diverse histories and historical roles of women.
We acknowledge the growing use and preference for the term “womxn,” especially in higher education and intersectional feminism, as an inclusive term to include transgender and non-binary women. Our intention at ACLS is not to be exclusionary and to highlight and reflect on scholarly work that centers the experiences of a diverse spectrum of women.
As with our past Inclusive Excellence scholarly resource lists, we invited our global community of fellows to share links and PDFs of existing readings, research, published works, or other resources that they authored or recommend to share with our community. This page, along with our recent resources on Black History Month, Disability Studies, LGBTQ+ Scholarship, and more, is part of our ongoing commitment to equity, inclusion, and anti-racism, and our mission to amplify scholarly works in the humanities and social sciences.
We welcome ACLS fellows and members to share any additional contributions, questions, or comments with us at [email protected].
Scholarly Resources by ACLS Fellows
ARTICLES
- “Afro-ancestralidade and the construction of urban memory in Conceição Evaristo’s ‘Becos da memória'” – BRASIL/BRAZIL: A Journal of Brazilian Literature, 2020
Written by Leonora Souza Paula F’21, Assistant Professor of English, Michigan State University - “The Age of Queens in Medieval Lanka” – Team Queens, May 13, 2021
Written by Bruno Marshall Shirley F’21, Doctoral Candidate in Asian studies, Cornell University - “Birthing Black Mothers” – Women’s Studies Quarterly, Volume 47, Number 3/4, Together: Fall/Winter 2019
Written by Jennifer Christine Nash F’19, Jean Fox O’Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, Duke University - “Black Latinx Encuentros: Embodied Knowledge and Reciprocal Forms of Knowledge Sharing [Embodying Reciprocity Series]” – footnotesblog.com, July 1, 2020
Written by Amarilys Estrella F’20, Postdoctoral Fellow, History and Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, Johns Hopkins University, and Meryleen Mena F’19, Policy & Budget Analyst, Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York - “Caribbean Women, Creole Fashioning, and the Fabric of Black Atlantic Writing” – The Eighteenth Century, Volume 56, Number 1, Spring 2015
Written by Danielle Skeehan F’12, Associate Professor of English and Comparative American Studies, Oberlin College and Conservatory - “‘Coming Out of My Shell’: Motherleaders Contesting Fear, Vulnerability, and Despair through Family-focused Community Organizing” – Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, Volume 4, March 2018
Written by Jennifer E. Cossyleon F’19, Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow at Community Change - “The Cost of Female Citizenship: How Price Controls Gendered Democracy in Revolutionary France” – French Historical Studies, Volume 41:4, October 2018
Written by Katie Jarvis F’19, F’12, Carl E. Koch Associate Professor of History, University of Notre Dame - “Destination Globalization? Women, Gender and Comparative Colonial Histories in the New Millenium” – Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2003
Written by Jean M. Allman F’14, G’90, G’88, J.H. Hexter Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis
When we say “encuentros,” we reference a few significant, but by no means exclusive, meetings that were critical in giving life to Black Latinx feminist scholarships and praxis. Amarilys Estrella F’20 and Meryleen Mena F’19
- “Expressing Motherhood: Wet Nursing and Human Milk Banking in Brazil” – Journal of Human Lactation, Volume 35, Issue 2, 2019
Written by Victoria Langland F’18, Director, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Brazil Initiative, Associate Professor of History , Associate Professor of Portuguese, University of Michigan - “The Geographic and Social Mobility of Slaves: The Rise of Shajar al-Durr, a Slave-Concubine in 13th-century Egypt” – The Medieval Globe, Volume 2.1, 2016
Written by D. Fairchild Ruggles F’13, Debra L. Mitchell Chair in Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - “Have You Wished Your Mother a Happy International Women’s Day Yet?” – New York Times, March 8, 2019
Written by Kristen R. Ghodsee G’09, F’05, Chair and Professor, Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania - “International Advocacy for Racial Equity an Intrinsic Part of Professor’s Research and Teaching” – Michigan State University, December 19, 2023
Featuring Leonora Souza Paula F’21, Assistant Professor of English, Michigan State University - “In Conversation: African women poets as translators of the wor(l)d: Conceição Lima, Tariro Ndoro, and Fatoumata Adelle Barry in conversation with Gabriel Bámgbóṣé” – The Translator, September 13, 2023
Written by Gabriel Bámgbóṣé F’21, Assistant Professor of African and Comparative Literature, University of California, San Diego; Fatoumata Adelle Barry; Tariro Ndoro; and Conceição Lima - “Intimate Itinerancy: Sex, Work, and Chinese Women in Colonial Malaya’s Brothel Economy, 1870s-1930s” – Journal of Women’s History, Volume 33, Number 4, Winter 2021
Written by Sandy F. Chang F’19, Assistant Professor in Modern Asian History, University of Florida - “Introduction: Special Issue: Reproduction, Contraception, and Obstetrics in Modern Mexico” – Journal of Women’s History, Volume 34, Number 2, Summer 2022
Written by Martha L. Espinosa F’22, Doctoral Candidate in History, Duke University and Laura Shelton, Associate Professor of History, Franklin & Marshall College - “‘In the Name of Humanity’: Redefining Socioeconomic Assistance in the Revolutionary Marketplace” – French History, Volume 33, Issue 4, December 2019
Written by Katie Jarvis F’19, F’12, Carl E. Koch Associate Professor of History, University of Notre Dame - “Labor Education and Leadership Development for Union Women: Assessing the Past, Building for the Future” – Labor Studies Journal, Volume 41, Issue 1, March 2016
Written by Emily E. LB. Twarog F’19, Assistant Professor, Labor Studies and American History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - “Laboring above Ground: Indigenous Women in New Spain’s Silver Mining District, Zacatecas, Mexico, 1620 – 1770” – Hispanic American Historical Review 93:1, 2013
Written by Dana Velasco Murillo, Associate Professor of History, University of California, San Diego - “Masculinized femininity of women characters on the Kabuki stage: Female Onnagata’s ‘cross-gender’ performance in the ‘all-male’ theatre” – Journal of Material Culture, Volume 28, Issue 4, November 2023
Written by Maki Isaka F’17, F’06, Professor, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Affiliate Faculty Member, Theatre Arts & Dance, University of Minnesota - “Post-Ferguson: A ‘Herstorical’ Approach to Black Violability” – Feminist Studies, Volume 41, Number 1, 2015
Written by Treva B. Lindsey, F’20, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State University - “Radical Reproduction: Octavia E. Butler’s HistoFuturist Archiving as Speculative Theory” – Women’s Studies, Volume 47, Issue 7, 2018
Written by Shelley Streeby F’20, Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies and Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego - “Speculative Writing, Art, and World-Making in the Wake of Octavia E. Butler as Feminist Theory” – Feminist Studies, Volume 46, Number 2, 2020
Written by Shelley Streeby F’20, Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies and Department of Literature, University of California, San Diego - “Singing Feminist Ch’ixi+Art Music from las Rajaduras: Renata Flores, Isqun, and the Fractured Locus” – Feminist Formations Journal, Volume 35, Issue 3, 2023
Written by Evelyn Autry F’20, Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers University - “‘They are Coming in So Fast That if We Had Publicity About the Clinic We Would Be Swamped’: Edris Rice-Wray, the First Family Planning Clinic in Mexico (1959), and the Intervention of US-Based Private Foundations” – Journal of Women’s History, Volume 34, Number 2, Summer 2022
Written by Martha L. Espinosa F’22, Doctoral Candidate in History, Duke University - “‘We Have to Ask for Permission to Become’: Young Women’s Voices, Violence, and Mediated Space in South Africa” – Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Volume 45, Number 4, Summer 2020
Written by Gavaza M Maluleke F’20, Lecturer, Political Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa - “A weapon of responsibility: the lyric cry in Alda Espírito Santo’s and Maria Manuela Margarido’s negritude poetics” – Interventions, February 16, 2024
Written by Gabriel Bámgbóṣé F’21, Assistant Professor of African and Comparative Literature, University of California, San Diego - “A Woman’s Plea: Let’s Raise Our Voices!” – The New York Times, January 31, 2019
Written by Kimberly A. Probolus F’21, Leading Edge Fellow at Southern Poverty Law Center - “Women’s Unpaid Labor is Worth $10,900,000,000,000” – New York Times, March 5, 2020
Written by Kristen R. Ghodsee G’09, F’05, Chair and Professor, Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and Gus Wezerek
BOOKS
- Abolition Feminisms Vol. 1: Organizing, Survival, and Transformative Practice (Haymarket Books, 2022)
Co-edited by Alisa Bierria G’22, Assistant Professor of Gender Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, and Jakeya Caruthers G’22, Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies, Drexel University - Abolition Feminisms Vol. 2: Feminist Ruptures Against the Carceral State (Haymarket Books, 2022)
Co-edited by Alisa Bierria G’22, Assistant Professor of Gender Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, and Jakeya Caruthers G’22, Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies, Drexel University - All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence (University of Illinois Press, 2019)
Written by Emily Thuma G’22, Associate Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs, University of Washington, Tacoma - Anna Zieglerin and the Lion’s Blood: Alchemy and End Times in Reformation Germany (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
Written by Tara E. Nummedal F’09, Professor of History, Brown University - Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (University of Illinois Press, 2009)
Written by Lisa B. Thompson F’20, Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of African & African Diaspora Studies, Fellow of the Ransom Chair, University of Texas at Austin - Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. (University of Illinois Press, 2017)
Written by Treva B. Lindsey, F’20, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State University - Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress (University of Michigan Press, 2018)
Written by Elizabeth W. Son F’19, F’10, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, and Director, Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama Program, Northwestern University - Familial Properties: Gender, State, & Society in Early Modern Vietnam (University of Hawai’i Press, 2020)
Written by Nhung Tuyet Tran F’07, Associate Professor & Associate Chair, Undergraduate Department of History, University of Toronto - Fredi Washington: A Reader in Black Feminist Media Criticism (Reanimate Publishing Collective, 2022)
Submitted and co-written by Carol A. Stabile F’14, Professor and Acting Dean, Robert D. Clark Honors College
- For the Many: American Feminists and the Global Fight for Democratic Equality (Princeton University Press, 2021)
Written by Dorothy Sue Cobble F’15, G’89, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History and Labor Studies, Rutgers University - A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools (Basic Books, 2019)
Written by Rachel J. Devlin F’15, Professor of History, Rutgers University - Ibadan Market Women and Politics, 1900–1995 (Rowman & Lightfoot, 2015)
Written by Mutiat Titilope Oladejo F’16, F’14, Lecturer, Department of History, University of Ibada - Immaculate Sounds: The Musical Lives of Nuns in New Spain (University of Oxford Press, 2023)
Written by Cesar D. Favila F’22, Assistant Professor of Musicology, University of California, Los Angeles - Live Form: Women, Ceramics and Community (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
Written by Jenni Sorkin F’14, F’08, Associate Professor and Graduate Advisor, History of Art & Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara - Onnagata: A Labyrinth of Gendering in Kabuki Theater (University of Washington Press, 2017)
Written by Maki Isaka F’17, F’06, Professor, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Affiliate Faculty Member, Theatre Arts & Dance, University of Minnesota - The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
Chapter “Gendered Experiences of Refugee and Displaced Women in Africa” written by Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso F’16, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Babcock University - Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
Written by Alisha Rankin F’15, Associate Professor of History, Tufts University - Politics in the Marketplace, Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Written by Katie Jarvis F’19, F’12, Carl E. Koch Associate Professor of History, University of Notre Dame - The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland (Duke University Press, 2016)
Written by Robyn C. Spencer F’18, Associate Professor, History, City University of New York, Lehman College - Revolutionary Domesticity in the Italian Risorgimento: Transnational Victorian Feminism, 1850–1890 (Palgrave Macmillan 2021)
Written by Diana Moore G’23, Adjunct Associate Professor City University of New York, John Jay College - The Routledge Anthology of Women’s Theatre Theory and Dramatic Criticism (Routledge, 2023)
Edited by Catherine Burroughs and J. Ellen Gainor, with contributions from Maki Isaka F’17, F’06, Professor, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Affiliate Faculty Member, Theatre Arts & Dance, University of Minnesota - They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties (Basic Books, 2020)
Written by Dr. Lisa Levenstein F’17, Director, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, UNC Greensboro - Tree of Pearls: The Extraordinary Architectural Patronage of the 13th-Century Egyptian Slave-Queen Shajar al-Durr (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Written by D. Fairchild Ruggles F’13, Debra L. Mitchell Chair in Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Woman’s Eye, Woman’s Hand: Making Art and Architecture in Modern India (Zubaan, 2014)
Edited by D. Fairchild Ruggles F’13, Debra L. Mitchell Chair in Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - The Women Went Radical: Petition Writing and Colonial State in Southwestern Nigeria, 1900-1953 (BookBuilders Editions Africa, Nigeria, 2018)
Written by Mutiat Titilope Oladejo F’16, F’14, Lecturer, Department of History, University of Ibada
BOOK CHAPTERS
- “‘A Single Story:’ African Women as Staged in US Theatre” – Art, Creativity, and Politics in Africa and the Diaspora (Palgrave McMillan, 2018)
Written by by Lisa B. Thompson F’20, Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of African & African Diaspora Studies, Fellow of the Ransom Chair, University of Texas at Austin
PODCASTS
- A.K. 47 – Selections from the Works of Alexandra Kollontai
Created by Kristen R. Ghodsee G’09, F’05, Chair and Professor, Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania - “D. Fairchild Ruggles, Tree of Pearls: The Extraordinary Architectural Patronage of the 13th-Century Egyptian Slave-Queen Shajar Al-Durr” – New Books in Art, January 5, 2022
Interview featuring D. Fairchild Ruggles F’13, Debra L. Mitchell Chair in Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - “What Communes and Other Radical Experiments in Living Together Reveal” – The Ezra Klein Show, New York Times, June 9, 2023
Interview features Kristen R. Ghodsee G’09, F’05, Chair and Professor, Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania
RADIO
- “Gender Inequities Are Deepening During COVID-19” – WUNC 91.5FM North Carolina, September 3, 2020
Interview features Dr. Lisa Levenstein F’17, Director, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, UNC Greensboro - “A Hidden History Of 1990s Feminism” – WORT 89.9FM Madison, September 11, 2020
Interview with Dr. Lisa Levenstein F’17, Director, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, UNC Greensboro
WEBSITES
- The Archive Revisited: Black Feminist Internationalism and Eurasian Borderlands
Created by Tatsiana Shchurko F’23, Postdoctoral Scholars, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, The Ohio State University - The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist Blacklist
Created by Carol Stabile F’14, Professor and Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives, University of Oregon - The Ghost Reader Digital Companion: Recovering Women’s Contributions to Media Studies, 1930s-1950s Europe and North America
Created by Carol Stabile F’14, Roopika Risam, Tynesha M. McCullers, Lauren Tokos, Miriam Yousaf, Elena D. Hristova, Aimee-Marie Dorsten, and more - Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project
Co-created by Robyn C. Spencer F’18, Associate Professor, History, City University of New York, Lehman College - Project Vox
Co-created and submitted by Andrew Janiak F’12, Professor of Philosophy, Duke University; Meredith C. Graham, Associate in Research, Duke University; and Liz Milewicz, Head of Digital Scholarship Services, Duke University Libraries
Resources Recommended by ACLS Fellows
BOOKS
- Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics (University of Washington Press)
Submitted by Elizabeth W. Son F’19, F’10, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, and Director, Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama Program, Northwestern University - Our Voices, Our Histories: Asian American and Pacific Islander Women (New York University Press)
Submitted by Elizabeth W. Son F’19, F’10, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, and Director, Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama Program, Northwestern University
GUIDES
- Calling In & Up: A Leadership Pedagogy for Women of Color Organizers
Submitted by Jennifer E. Cossyleon F’19, Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow at Community Change
WEBSITES
- Because of Her Story
Submitted by Kimberly A. Probolus F’21, Leading Edge Fellow at Southern Poverty Law Center - Team Queens
Recommended by Bruno Marshall Shirley F’21, Doctoral Candidate in Asian studies, Cornell University