Commemorating Women’s History Month – A Choice Round-Up

To celebrate Women's History Month, we compiled Choice resources from the past year that center women's history. Selections include book reviews, podcast episodes, bibliographic essays, and more.

Posted on March 1, 2023 in Blog

Commemorating Women’s History Month

In honor of Women’s History Month, we gathered Choice resources from the past year that spotlight women’s history, including the suffrage movement, reproductive care, and female literary accomplishments. New additions will be added throughout March, so make sure to revisit this page for new book reviews, interviews, and more. In addition, visit our multimedia blog Toward Inclusive Excellence, a dedicated resource on DEIA topics concerning those within and outside of the higher education community. We hope you find these selections helpful in your exploration of women’s rights, activism, and accomplishments.

Ask an Archivist

Ask an Archivist is a monthly feature that explores the research and production behind compelling special collections through interviews with their curators, archivists, and directors. These three interviews look at collections on Black women’s suffrage, the history of women’s work, and women’s lives in Iran during the Qajar period.

The Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection

Screenshot of Black Women's Suffrage Digital Collection

Shaneé Yvette Murrain-Willis, Director of Community Engagement of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), discusses the Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection. Dating from the 1850s to the 1960s, the Pivotal Ventures-funded BWS Collection highlights the critical role of Black women in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and their history of activism more broadly. Shaneé details the collection’s timeline, significance, and the steps DPLA took to keep the collection focused on Black women and their work that has been previously sidelined or erased. Read the interview with Shaneé Yvette Murrain-Willis.

Red banner announcing exhibit, “Five Hundred Years of Women’s Work: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection.” In the center of the banner is a black and white image of Phillis Wheatley.

The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection

Choice sits down with Laura Micham, director of Duke University’s Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, to discuss the Lisa Unger Baskin (LUB) Collection. In this conversation, Laura provides background on curating the LUB Collection and discusses its significance as documentary evidence of five centuries of women’s work. Read the interview with Laura Micham.

Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran

Women from a rural village in Iran

Azadeh Tajpour, the project manager and digital archivist for Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran (WWQI), discusses the digital archive’s efforts to capture the daily realities of women’s lives in Iran during the Qajar period. As Tajpour notes, many previous histories of Qajar Iran have typically focused on men’s lives and contributions, leaving a glaring gap in the literature regarding women, despite the fact that Iranian women experienced a major cultural and intellectual flourishing during this period. WWQI seeks to fill this lacuna, encompassing the multiplicity and richness of Iranian women’s lives in the Qajar era through primary source material that spans photographs, everyday objects, legal documents, writings, artwork, and oral histories. Read the interview with Azadeh Tajpour.

Outstanding Academic Titles

Outstanding Academic Titles is Choice’s premier editorial franchise of the best titles of the year. Published each December, the list is separated into unique categories and previewed for collection development purposes or personal reading pleasure. These selections pertain to women’s rights and history.

Outstanding Academic Titles 2022: Women’s History Month Part 3 (Added 3/23/23)

Outstanding Academic Titles 2022: Women’s History Month Part 2 (Added 3/10/23)

Joan Didion book cover. Black and white image of Didion In car.
Toni Morrison and the Natural World book cover. Colorful painting/image of person gardening.
The Oxford handbook of Virginia Woolf book cover.
Girl archaeologist: sisterhood in a sexist profession book cover.
The Women who changed architecture book cover.

Outstanding Academic Titles 2022: Women’s History Month Part 1 (Added 3/2/23)

The Woman’s Tribune cover. Portrait of white woman in black and white.
The Routledge companion to Black women’s cultural histories book cover. Portrait drawing of Black woman.
Unbinding gentility: women making music in the nineteenth-century South book cover. 19th-century white woman stands in blue dress.
Comic book women: characters, creators, and culture in the Golden Age book cover. Four comic book women in center, with four comic book action women in the four corners.
Transforming girls: the work of nineteenth-century adolescence book cover. Pink background. A blue fish transforms into a 19th-century woman in blue dress in a series of six images.

Outstanding Academic Titles 2021: Women’s Rights

"Policing the womb: invisible women and the criminalization of mother" book cover. Black background with handcuffs in blue.
"Votes for women!: the American woman suffrage movement and the Nineteenth Amendment: a reference guide" book cover. Figure rides a horse in front of the US Capitol building.
"The movement for reproductive justice: empowering women of color through social activism" book cover. Group of protestors stand with signs and a megaphone. Image has pink shading.
"Older women who work: resilience, choice, and change" book cover. Four pictures of women working (chef, machinist, retail, engineer) against navy background.
"A miscarriage of justice: women’s reproductive lives and the law in early twentieth-century Brazil" book cover. Photograph of woman holding a baby with a doctor/nurse taking her pulse.

Outstanding Academic Titles 2021: Women’s History Month

Book Cover for "Starring women: celebrity, patriarchy, and American theater, 1790-1850." Drawing of 18th/19th century woman.
"Infamous bodies: early Black women’s celebrity and the afterlives of rights" book cover. Photograph of Black woman looking into hand mirror.
"The Saigon sisters: privileged women in the resistance" Photograph of two Vietnamese women walking with light purple background.
"Daybreak Woman: an Anglo-Dakota life" book cover.
"Wicked flesh: Black women, intimacy, and freedom in the Atlantic world" book cover. Abstract painting of two Black women and a baby.

Bibliographic Essays

Every issue of Choice features a bibliographic essay, also available online for free on the LibGuides platform. These comprehensive guides written by a qualified expert in the field cover the essential titles on a given topic.

American Women Playwrights (July 2022)

Dr. Martha Schmoyer LoMonaco, professor of theatre and American studies at Fairfield University, looks at the “the urgent need to research, teach, produce, and celebrate American women playwrights as a separate entity from American playwrights, which, as a group, has been the province of white males for 300 years,” highlighting essential resources on this topic. Read the essay.

Forthcoming Academic Titles

Forthcoming Titles gathers the latest and soon-to-be-released publications in select disciplines. This list centers on upcoming titles in Women’s and Gender Studies.

Forthcoming Women’s & Gender Studies, 2023 (Added 3/2/23)

book covers

Forthcoming Titles in Women’s & Gender Studies, 2022

Book covers for Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture; The Female Gaze: Essays on Gender, Society and Media; Women vs. Women: The Case for Cooperation; and Wonder Woman: Warrior, Disrupter, Feminist Icon

Webinars

Choice-ACRL Webinars feature presentations on library trends by industry experts, covering topics like collection development, library technology, and scholarly communication. This session foregrounds the value of archives of Black women intellectuals.

Strategies for Uncovering Black Women’s Voices in Primary Sources

Screenshot of webinar. Includes PowerPoint slide titled "Finding Black Women's Intellectualism in the Archive" with two images. The image on the right is a black and white photograph of the Women in the Congress of African People holding up copies of their handbook. The image on the right is an article by Candy Robinson in the Black Panther Newspaper titled "Message to Revolutionary Women".

Dr. Ashley D. Farmer, Associate Professor of History and African & African Diaspora Studies, discusses the challenges she faced in excavating the archives of Black women intellectuals while writing her books Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era and “Queen Mother” Audley Moore: Mother of Black Nationalism. She also discusses strategies for uncovering Black women intellectuals in primary source databases and archives and provides examples of how she helps students uncover Black women’s intellectual production in classroom settings and for their research projects. Watch the webinar recording.

Hot Topic

Hot Topic takes a deep dive into timely, significant, or niche topics guided by reviews over the decades. These two collections consider the history of abortion in the US and women writers across a variety of fields.

Roe v. Wade

Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Courts Ruling book cover.
The Moral Veto: Framing Contraception, Abortion, and Cultural Pluralism in the United States book cover.
Creating Choice: A Community Responds to the Need for Abortion and Birth Control, 1961-1973 book cover.
Abortion & Common Sense book cover.
The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade book cover.
Willing and Unable: Doctor's Constraints in Abortion Care book cover.
Abortion after Roe book cover.
The Abortionist: A Woman against the Law book cover.

Celebrating Women Writers

Women's Poetry and Popular Culture book cover.
This Book Is an Action book cover.
In Plain Sight: Nineteenth-Century American Women's Poetry and the Problem of Literary History book cover.
Keepers of the Morning Star: An Anthology of Native Women's Theater book cover.
Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, and Survival book cover.
Tell This Silence: Asian American Women Writers and the Politics of Speech book cover.
Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction 1926-1965 book cover.
Freedom Narratives of African American Women: A Study of 19th Century Writings book cover.

The Authority File Podcast

The Authority File provides insight on the academic library market through conversations with innovative and influential vendors, authors of insightful books, librarians who are transforming their field, and academics whose research is laying the groundwork for the future. These two episodes consider the significance of primary sources in lesbian studies and the history of Métis author and academic Michelle Porter.

The Impact of Primary Sources on Lesbian Literature and History: Anne Lister and “Slowing Down” in the Archives

Rachel Friars headshot. Bright yellow background. Woman with short hair, glasses, and maroon turtleneck.

Rachel Friars, PhD student in the Department of English Language and Literature at Queen’s University, describes the collection and life of Anne Lister, a 19th-century lesbian diarist, traveler, and landowner who wrote hundreds of journal entries throughout her life that add significant insight into queer history. Rachel also reflects on the slower pace that archives require and the comprehensive research needed before digging into primary sources. Listen to the episode.

Michelle Porter and the Métis Way: Ancestry and Arts-Based Research

Scratching River book cover. Abstract drawing of green river bank and white/blue river. Book title in white near the top over the green bank. Author title at the bottom in white.

In this episode, Michelle Porter, author of Scratching River, introduces herself, her research, and her family ancestry. Studying the role of bison for the Métis people—a First Nations group of mixed indigenous and European ancestry in modern-day Canada—she traces how her scholarship has developed in tandem with her writing. Michelle explains why bison are so vital to the Métis, and the tension of practicing arts-based research in the academy, a practice that treats artistic pursuits as viable, robust areas of discovery. Listen to the episode.

Review of the Week

Each week Choice highlights a review that addresses a topical issue, event, or holiday—or simply, a review we believe deserves more attention. These picks discuss maternity care, womanhood in comic strips, Black feminist comedy, and more.

The Business of Birth: Malpractice and Maternity Care in the United States book cover. Four red silhouettes of pregnant women against light blue/purple background.
Typical Girls book cover. Close up on woman face in comic strip style.
Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth & Twenty-First Century United States book cover. Dark purple background with the silhouette of a woman in pink/orange performing in front of a microphone.
Women, Subalterns, and Ecologies in South and Southeast Asian Women's Fiction book cover.
Spinsters, Widows and Chars: The Ageing Woman in British Film book cover.
Counter-Narratives of Muslim American Women: Creating Space for MusCrit book cover.
Public Feminism in Times of Crisis: From Sappho’s Fragments to Viral Hashtags book cover

Enjoy this post? Visit Toward Inclusive Excellence for additional Women’s History Month content, including “Women-Centered TIE Content to Commemorate Women’s History Month,” and check out our list of resources for Black History Month.

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