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Archive for the ‘Women’s History’ Category

New Picture of Edmonia Lewis!

Posted in American Art, American History, Seeing, Stuff I like, Women's History on February 2, 2013| 1 Comment »

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore has recently announced that it has acquired a previously unknown picture of Edmonia Lewis, a sculptor who was Harriet Hosmer’s contemporary in Rome. The museum’s Deputy Director of Audience Engagement Jacqueline Copeland came across the image in a box of photographs in an antique shop and recognized the artist. Copeland will discuss finding the image at a brown bag lunch on Feb. 7.

The photograph is not the most astounding Lewis discovery–her sculpture Cleopatra was found in the storage room of a mall! And Marilyn Richardson only discovered her date and place of death two years ago.

On a less happy not, in Ken Burn’s Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson there is a reference to African-American artists that is illustrated by a picture that I think is clearly meant to be Lewis.  But is a picture of Vinnie Ream, a white woman who was another sculptor who passed through Rome. And Lewis’s birthplace is still unknown.  (At least I think, unless there has been another Lewis discovery).

Thanks to Sandra Payne for alerting me to the discovery of the photo.

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SSAWW & WWWL

Posted in Reading, Stuff I like, Women's History on October 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I spent last weekend at the Society for the Study of Women Writers (SSAWW) conference, which is held every three years.  This was probably one of the best–maybe the best?–conference I have attended.  It is a literature conference, but with a focus on historical context.  Almost every panel I went to was interesting and intellectually stimulating.  And the other attendees, including very well known academics, were friendly and helpful.  Just wonderful.

Closer to home, I am a member of the  Women Writing Women Lives Seminar (WWWL), which is made up of an inspiring group of feminist biographers who meet one a month during the academic year.  Twice a year, the group also sponsors a works-in-progress lecture at the CUNY Graduate Center. This October 29, Diane Jacobs will speak about her The Lives of Abigail Adams and Her Sisters: Threefold Cord.  I’ve always wanted to know more about Adams, who often seems to get reduced to her “Remember the Ladies” comment.  (Not that the quote isn’t great.) 4-6 PM, 365 5th Avenue, Room 9204.

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Sick from Freedom

Posted in American History, Harriet Jacobs, Reading, Women's History on June 15, 2012| 1 Comment »

I have been from this blog for too long.  Hopefully, this post will be the start of more regular updates.
I was excited to read about Jim Down’s forthcoming book Sick from Freedom in the New York Times this week.  The book addresses the health crises which freed people faced after the Civil War.  As press material for the volume explains, “With emancipation, African Americans seized the chance to move, migrating as never before. But in their journey to freedom, they also encountered yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, malnutrition, and exposure.”  This book forms an important part of our ever-evolving understanding of Reconstruction.  I may show my students this article in the fall to help them understand historiography. (Another good book which complicates our understanding of this time is Ronald E. Butchart’s Schooling the Freed People: Teaching, Learning and the Struggle for Black Freedom, 1861-1876, which I reviewed for the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society last year.)

Downs’ interest in this project was inspired in part by his work on the Harriet Jacobs Papers. I joined the HJ team after he had left, so we never crossed paths, except when I used his research reports to write annotation. I do wish the Times had mentioned that the papers had been published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2008, and that the volumes include important annotation about disease in the post-emancipation South.  (Instead, the article links to the kind-of-clunky website I helped put together in 2002, which has my name in the web address.  It looked ok for the time!) But it was still good to see Harriet Jacobs mentioned.

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Harriet Hosmer Talk at Cedar Crest College

Posted in Book, Women's History on March 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I will be speaking about Harriet Hosmer at Cedar Crest College on Friday March 23 at 1 PM.  I’m very excited, especially as it was arranged by one of my Harriet Jacobs Family Papers colleagues, who in addition to being an excellent researcher also blogs about beer.  (A great combo of credentials, I think.) Introducing students at an all women college to Harriet Hosmer seems like an appropriate way to celebrate women’s history month.

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Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography on Lambda Literary

Posted in American History, Reading, Women's History on March 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Marie J. Kuda has written a nice review of Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography on Lambda Literary.  I especially appreciate the fact that Kuda puts the book in the context of the larger historical project of uncovering  “the female enclaves buried under patriarchal scholarship.” And, to be immodest, of course I like this: “Culkin has added a highly readable, well annotated study to the increasing pantheon of creative lesbians supported by networks of friends and lovers.”

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St. Valentine’s Day in Museums and Libraries

Posted in NYC, Seeing, Women's History on February 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’ve really been enjoying the Valentine’s Day posts coming my way through Facebook and Google Reader today from museums and archives.  Here are few highlights:

The Morgan Library has an illustration of St. Valentine from The Hours of Catherine of Cleves.

The New Yorker celebrates the day with a post about the exhibit The Loving Story at the International Center of Photography (through May 6).  It is made up of photographs, taken originally for Life Magazine, of Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving.  Their interracial marriage lead to the Supreme Court case Loving vs. Virginia, which struck down anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states.

The NYPL Digital Collection has dozens of great Valentine’s Day cards.

And my favorite: Wellesley has posted its collection of the love letters of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, written between January 1845 to September 1846.

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My Dragon Grandmother

Posted in Stuff I like, Women's History on January 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Today marks the beginning of the Year of the Dragon. This year, I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandmother, Florence Kiley Culkin, who was a dragon and loved Chinese New Year. She went to a Chinese New Year party every year and would distribute the party favors to her descendants born in the year being celebrated. (I was very upset when I broke the little porcelain rooster she sent me). The first piece of writing I ever published was about her.  It first appeared in the anthology Ladies, Start Your Engines: Women Writers and Cars and the Road (between pieces by Emily Post and Patti Smith!).   Middlebury Magazine later ran it in a slightly altered form.  (It used to be online, but apparently Middlebury took down some older issues–hopefully it will be back eventually). The essay is about, among other things, her red convertible, my El Camino, and the fact that, given our similar personalities, it was better to be born in 1969 than 1916.

My grandmother was perhaps a frustrated dragon, who might have liked to do something else other than live in upstate New York as a mother and housewife. But as you can see in the pictures below she was always stylish and was a lot of fun.  The pictures don’t show how smart she was, but she was that too.  She graduated from the Normal School in Oswego when she was 18, then taught during the school year and earned her B.A. during summers at Syracuse.  Here is some advice she gave me: “Smart girls don’t have to get married.  Always make your own money.  Spend your birthday money on something fun, not anything practical.” Wise words, all.

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Harriet Hosmer in Midwest Book Review

Posted in American Art, American History, Reading, Women's History on December 16, 2011| 1 Comment »

Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography is included in the November edition of  Midwest Book Review’s Biography Shelf.  There are some other books that look fascinating as well, including “Stay By Me, Roses: The Life of American Artist Alice Archer Sewall James, 1870-1955.”  Hopefully now that winter break is almost here, I will have a chance to read a few of them.

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A Brief Trip to New Bedford

Posted in American History, Harriet Jacobs, Women's History on September 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ll be on whirlwind trip to New Bedford tomorrow, to speak at “Old Dartmouth Roots: A Genealogy & Local History Symposium” at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. My panel is titled “Unlikely Connections: The Grinnells and the Howlands; the Jacobses and the Knoxes.” The conversation, or at least my part, will be about Harriet Jacobs‘ two connections to New Bedford.

One connection was through the prominent Grinnell family. For years, Jacobs’ worked for Nathaniel Parker Willis and second wife, Cornelia Grinnell Willis, who had been adopted by her uncle, the merchant and politician Joseph Grinnell. Cornelia helped arrange the purchase that led to Jacobs’ freedom. Although Jacobs always resented the fact that she had to be purchased to be free, she stayed close to family throughout her life. The Willises, after Nathaniel’s death, lived in Jacobs’ boarding house in Cambridge in 1870. Bailey, the youngest Willis child who became a prominent geologist and explorer, often visited Harriet and her daughter Louisa in Washington D.C. when they were all living in Washington, D.C., in the 1890s and two of the Willis daughters–Edith and Lidian–as well as Cornelia helped care for Jacobs during her final illness. Bailey accompanied Harriet’s body from D.C. to Cambridge after her death in March 1897; she was buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Louisa stayed in contact with the family, living with Edith in her final years.

Jacobs other connection to the area was through her half-brother Elijah Knox. He was born to a freewoman in Edenton, N.C., was indentured to the age of 21, and eventually moved to New Bedford. One of his son’s was named William Jacob Knox, his middle name likely a nod to Harriet and her brother, John S. Jacobs. William had five children, all of whom were well educated and successful. Two of the brothers–William, Jr., and Lawrence–were among only 30 African American to receive Ph.D.s in Chemistry between 1919 and 1935; William worked on the Manhattan Project and was a civil rights leader in Rochester, NY, among other accomplishments.

By the way, the New Bedford Whaling Museum has a great Flickr stream.

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Women’s History in Public

Posted in American History, NYC, Women's History on August 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Sometimes, you can encounter women’s history outside of textbooks, women’s history classes, and monographs–and it is always very exciting to me when it happens.  This week, I have read two great blog posts on sites not devoted to women’s history.  The first is Louise Bernikow’s article “The Radical Rich,” on NYCityWoman, about 3 wealthy women who fought for suffrage in NYC. There are some great lines in this piece- from the opening sentence (“By the early 20th century, New York was a city of women in revolt”) to the description of Alva Vanderbilt Belmont (“Like a lioness loosed from her cage, Belmont became an important strategist and leader for suffrage”).  There is also a fantastic slideshow.  The second post is Susan Amper’s post about Anna Katharine Green’s mystery novel The Leavenworth Case, published in 1878.  Amper notes, “Green’s first novel predates the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes by nine years, yet it seems much more modern.” I can’t wait to read it.

Another great site in women’s history this summer is the exhibition “Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore” at The Jewish Museum, on the Upper East Side.  It offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of Claribelle and Etta Cone, siblings who helped introduce avante-gaurde modern art to the US through the amazing collection they amassed and their friendship with Matisse.  It is open until Sept. 25–see it if you can!

 

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