Shin-Kickers From History
From The Archives: Tough Broads of the Civil War
Just to prove that I’ve been thinking about nurses and other women who played a role in the American Civil War for a while now, here’s a post that first appeared in the Margins in 2011: I’ve said it before: If you hang out in Popular History Land, or even Book World these days, it’s…
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Female Samurai: Warriors and Otherwise
Female samurais are stock figures in modern anime, manga, western comic books, and fantasy novels: hard-fighting, often hard-drinking, badasses with swords and bows. The key word is fantasy. In medieval Japan, samurai was a class distinction as well as a job description. Women who were born into the samurai class were samurais whether or not…
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Shin-kickers From History: Joan of Arc
Several months ago, I asked a group of family and friends to tell me what they knew about Joan of Arc, aka St. Joan, aka the Maid of Orleans–no stopping to look up the details. I needed to know how familiar the average smart, well-read, non-specialist is with her story.* The accuracy and detail of…
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