Shin-Kickers From History
Shin-Kickers from History: The Griffin Sisters and Vaudeville
In the 1910s, Emma and Mabel Griffin were a well lnown vaudeville act. Performing as the Griffin Sisters, they combined comedy routines with music and dance numbers. (Mabel was the straight woman. Emma got the punchlines.) They had started working as chorus girls in variety shows in the 1890s. By the beginning of the twentieth…
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Cecilia Payne Finds Out What Stars are Made Of
One or twice a year, the story of English-born astrophysicist Cecilia Payne (1900-1979) appears on my Facebook feed. I am enthralle– and enraged–by the story every time. And then I promptly forget her name. A fact that is both frustrating and somewhat embarrassing since this is the kind of story that I firmly believe needs…
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Portrait of a Woman: Art, Rivalry and Revolution in the Life of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard
Bridget Quinn first introduced readers to the eighteenth century French painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard in Broad Strokes, her rollicking account of fifteen women artists “who made art and made history (in that order).”* In Portrait of a Woman: Art, Rivalry and Revolution in the Life of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Quinn returns to her subject in a work…
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