Posts by Pamela
Asta Nielsen, International Film Sensation
Here’s the deal about “women’s history”: once you’re sensitive to the subject you stumble across references to notable women all the time.* Take the case of Asta Nielsen: I first met her in this sentence: “Asta Nielsen, newly arrived in Berlin from Denmark, described her horror when a skeletal horse collapsed in the street.”** For…
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How the Titanic Launched* One Woman’s Journalism Career
In April 1912 , a 30-year old seamstress/businesswoman from Louisiana, Missouri named May Birkhead was sailing to Europe on the Carpathia. Her holiday was postponed when the ship halted to pick up survivors from the Titanic. Birkhead put her seamstress skills to good use, creating clothing for the shipwreck victims from towels and other…
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Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Natalie Dykstra
Natalie Dykstra is the author of Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, a 2013 Massachusetts Book Award finalist. She received a 2005 NEH Fellowship for her research on Clover Adams and a 2018 NEH Public Scholar Award for her upcoming biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner. She is Professor of English at Hope College and…
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