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        • S1E35 JSTOR and Reconstruction
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        • S1E37 Taboo = Menstruation
        • S1E38 What's her name? Health, Religion and Mary Baker Eddy PART 1
        • S1E39 What's her name? Health, Religion and Mary Baker Eddy PART 1
        • S1E40 Controversial and Reproductive Justice PART 1
      • Episodes 41-50 >
        • S1E41 Controversial and Reproductive Justice PART 2
        • S1E42 Sexual Assault and the Founding of Rome
        • S1E43 Sexist Historians and Gudrid the Viking
        • S1E44 Byzantine Intersectionality
        • S1E45 Murder and Queens
        • S1E46 Hindu Goddesses and the Third Gender
        • S1E47 Women's Founding Documents
        • S1E48 Women and Bletchley Park
        • S1E49 Unknown Jewish Resistance Fighters
        • S1E50 End of Year ONE!
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        • S2E1 Let's Make HERSTORY!
        • S2E2 Empresses, Monarchs, and Politicians: How did women rise to power in the Ancient world? >
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            • S2E29: Women Explorers and Pioneers: Who was the real Lady Lindy?
            • S2E30: What is the heroine's journey of women in the west? ​With Meredith Eliassen
            • S2E31: What is the lost history of the Statue of Freedom? with Katya Miller
            • S2E32: Why did women explore the White Mountains? With Dr. Marcia Schmidt Blaine
            • S2E33: How are native women telling their own stories? with Dr. Ferina King
        • S2E3 How did female sexuality lead to the rise and fall of Chinese empresses? with Dr. Cony Marquez
        • S2E4 How did medieval women rise and why were they erased? ​With Shelley Puhak
        • S2E5 Did English Queens Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn have agency? with Chloe Gardner
        • S2E6 Is Elizabeth a turning point in World History? with Deb Hunter
        • S2E7 How did Maria Theresa transform modern Europe? With Dr. Barbara Stollber-Rilinger
        • S2E8 Were Paul and Burns the turning point in women's suffrage? With Dr. Sidney Bland
        • S2E9 Were the First Ladies just wives? ​With the First Ladies Man
        • S2E10: How did ER use her position and influence to sway public opinion and influence politics? ​With Dr. Christy Regenhardt
        • S2E11: Why was women’s fight for low level offices needed? ​With Dr. Elizabeth Katz
        • S2E12 Should We Believe Anita Hill? With the Hashtag History Podcast
      • Women Social Reformers >
        • S2E13: Women in Social Reform: Should temperance have been intersectional?
        • S2E14: Why are material culture artifacts reshaping our understanding of women's history? With Dr. Amy Forss
        • S2E15: Did 19th institutionalizing and deinstitutionalizing healthcare make it safer? with Dr. Martha Libster
        • S2E16: Why are the interconnections between women and their social reform movements important? With Dr. DeAnna Beachley
        • S2E17: Did WWII really bring women into the workforce? ​With Dr. Dorothy Cobble
        • S2E18: How have unwell women been treated in healthcare? ​With Dr. Elinor Cleghorn
        • S2E19: How did MADD impact the culture of drunk driving?
      • Women and War >
        • S2E20: Women and War: How are Army Rangers still changing the game?
        • S2E21: Should we remember Augustus for his war on women? ​With Dr. Barry Strauss
        • S2E22: Were French women willing participants or collateral damage in imperialism? with Dr. Jack Gronau
        • S2E23: Was Joan of Arc a heretic? ​With Jacqui Nelson
        • S2E24: What changes did the upper class ladies of SC face as a result of the Civil War? with Annabelle Blevins Pifer
        • S2E25: Were Soviets more open to gender equality? ​With Jacqui Nelson
        • S2E26: Why Womanpower in the Women's Armed Services Integration Act of 1948? with Tanya Roth
        • S2E27: What role did women play in the Vietnam War? with Dr. Barbara Tischler
        • S2E28: Why were women drawn into the Anti-Vietnam Movement with Dr. Jessica Frazier
      • Women in World Religions >
        • S2E34: Women and World Religions: How did Confucianism’s enduring impact affect women in China?
        • S2E35: What precedent is there for female Islamic leaders? with Dr. Shahla Haeri
        • S2E36: Were Islamic Queens successful? with Dr. Shahla Haeri
        • S2E37: Is there space for female Islamic leaders today? with Dr. Shahla Haeri​
        • S2E38: Were Protestant women just wives and mothers? with Caroline Taylor
      • Women in Queer History >
        • S2E39: Queer Women in History: How did one woman legalize gay marriage?
        • S2E40: Was Title IX just about sports? with Sara Fitzgerald
        • S2E41: Was Hildegard de Bingen gay? with Lauren Cole
        • S2E42: What crimes were women accused of in the 17th and 18th Century? with Dr. Shannon Duffy
        • S2E43: How should we define female friendships in the 19th century? with Dr. Alison Efford
        • S2E44: Were gay bars a religious experience for gay people before Stonewall? with Dr. Marie Cartier
      • Women and Business >
        • S2E45: Women and Business: Do We still have far to go? With Ally Orr
        • S2E46: How did 16th century English women manage businesses? with Dr. Katherine Koh
        • S2E47: How did free women of color carve out space as entrepreneurs in Louisiana? with Dr. Evelyn Wilson
        • S2E48: Who were the NH women in the suffrage movement? with Elizabeth DuBrulle
        • S2E49: What gave Elizabeth Arden her business prowess? with Shelby Robert
        • S2E50: End of Year Two
        • BONUS DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN'S HEALTH
    • Season 3 >
      • S3E1: Mahsa "Jani" Amini and the Women of Iran
      • S3E2: Feminist Pedagogy
      • S3E3: Women-Centered Questions
      • S3E4: Sara Baartman
      • S3E5: Franco-Algerian War
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18. 1000-1600 Women Explorers and Leaders

While the focus of the age of exploration tends to be on what the male explores were doing and how they were getting funded by kings, there were women doing the same thing at the same time. From Viking women making trailblazing journeys to European Queens running countries and funding expeditions, women played just as big of a role as men in this era. 
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PictureFemale Figurehead on a contemporary ship, Public Domain
A prevailing superstition among sailors was that a woman on board a ship was bad luck. In fact, few crews included women because they were believed to distract the crew. Some believed that a woman’s presence would anger the sea and endanger them all. Others believed female mermaids would pull them into rocky coastlines. And mythical or otherwise, it was best to avoid women while on board. Sailors were also notoriously drunkards, and social customs encouraged women to avoid such behavior, so it was improper. 

Women were felt aboard ships, however, which were addressed in the feminine “she” and “her.” In ancient history, ships were named after goddesses, but by the modern era, ships were increasingly named after mortal women. Despite their reservations about women aboard their ships, sailors believed that naked women calmed the sea, so most figureheads depicted beautiful and topless women as a gift to the sea gods.

When one thinks of the exploration of the New World, visions of ships filled with men claiming new lands come to mind. Yet, beyond being figureheads on ships, women were the financiers and at the helm of these explorations. The Old and New Worlds are on the brink of connection. ​

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Chinese Voyagers: The Chinese under the rebounding Ming Dynasty sent male dominated explorations into the Pacific and Indian Oceans in the early 1400s. These voyages under the leadership of Zheng He put those of the Europeans to shame. By comparison, these fleets were so big that the entirety of Columbus's voyage would've fit on just one level of one of the ships the Chinese were using. But these explorations stopped just as quickly as they had begun, and China retreated into an isolated state. Their retreat led to the rise of European traders seeking to fill the void in the Indian trade. Silver obtained from mines in Spanish America enriched Western Europe and was brought to China in a one-way exchange for tea and spices. 

It would be mostly Europeans on the other end of the “known” world who became the movers and shakers of the now “global” economy. They began to explore into the Atlantic looking for a more efficient trading path to the rich spices and teas of Asia– and of course women were leaders there too. 

Gudrid the Viking: There were already millions of diverse peoples living in the Americas before the arrival of the Old World Ancient Egyptians are believed to have possibly explored and settled in the Americas over three thousand years ago. Another wave of African exploration is said to have begun several hundred years before Columbus. Further, if we are looking at his venture as the start of European discovery, we ignore the numerous Viking explorations of North America, for example, Gudrid’s exploration of Canada, more than 1,000 years ago. 

Although women in the Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE) lived in a male-dominated society, they were far from being powerless: they ran farms and households, were responsible for textile production, moved away from Scandinavia to help settle Viking territories abroad stretching from Greenland, Iceland, and the British Isles to Russia, and were perhaps even involved in trade in the sparse urban centers. Some were part of a rich upper class, such as the lady – perhaps a queen – who was buried in the ostentatious Oseberg ship burial in 834 CE. On the other end of the spectrum, slaves, among them many women, were taken from conquered territories during the Viking expansion and integrated into Viking Age society.

PictureStone mentioning Hassmyra, Wikimedia Commons
Almost all Viking Age women were involved in socioeconomic roles one way or another. In fact, the most common goods found in female graves from this period are spindle whorls, wool combs, and weaving battens, especially in the countryside. Other tasks that do not show up in the archaeological record in such a direct way but are traditionally associated with women are child-rearing and caring for the sick or the elderly, and we might also imagine women doing odd jobs around the farm or even some carpentry or leatherworking. How exactly children were brought up and whether girls were treated any differently from boys is unclear; although daughters could perhaps be given in marriage at an appropriate age.

Viking women may have had a good degree of control over running the household and were likely left in charge of matters while their husbands were away, or dead. Although subordinate to their husbands, like their contemporaries, women arguably had a good degree of responsibility and perhaps even control over the running of the household, as symbolized by the fact they were often buried with keys, and they were likely on occasion left in charge of matters while their husbands were away, or dead. Anne-Sophie Gräslund, an archaeologist, has even suggested farms were like firms, "run by husband and wife together, in which the work of both partners was of equal importance although different and complementary" (Sørensen, 260). It must be noted, though, that the people who owned such (larger) farms and their adjoining lands would have had considerable means and would likely have belonged to the upper classes within society; they are not automatically reflective of all of Viking Age society. Throughout Viking Age society, though, marriage was a pivotal institution used to create new ties of kinship, also among Scandinavians and locals in conquered or settled areas, and, in line with the influence women could wield through their husbands, it seems unmarried women had very limited prospects. Before the advent of Christianity throughout Scandinavia and Viking territories around 1000 CE, concubinage (often connected to slavery), and plural marriages occurred at least among the royals.

In general, although it is hard to comment on the exact status of Viking Age housewives, we must remember their domestic role was a very central one and would not generally have gone unappreciated. The inscription found on a stone as Hassmyra (Vs 24) – the only verse found on a Swedish inscribed stone that commemorates a woman – certainly seems to confirm this.

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Gudrid the Viking, Public Domain
Gudrid’s identity is a bit of a mystery. She is described as beautiful, smart, and political. She appears in a few Viking sagas, but in some she is a poor woman who never even made it to Greenland during her venture, while in others she is a wealthy explorer who not only made it to Greenland but then on to Canada with her husband and a small crew. She landed in what the Vikings called Vinland (“wine land”), modern Newfoundland, where she would live for three years and create a settlement. She would later return to Iceland, but her exploring days were not done.
 
The sagas indicate that Gudrid toured well into her forties and fifties, which was pretty old for back then. In her lifetime it is said that she made eight crossings of the North Atlantic Sea. It is even suggested that she traveled farther than any other Viking, from Scandinavia to Greenland to North America to Rome and back again in her later life. With all figures of history, evidence is needed to separate the fantasy from the reality, and archaeologists have found what they believe to be Gudrid’s home in Iceland based on the sagas, and it is built in the style of those found in Newfoundland settlements, including the one she and her husband were said to have founded. While Gudrid would be the most famous, we can’t forget that there were likely other Viking women along with her crew to help form this settlement. 
 
While Gudrid doesn’t get the same respect as others who made such voyages, historian Nancy Marie Brown points out the importance of the fact that Gudrid was never a tagalong. “She was not dragged along. This was her choice. She could have very easily stayed home in Greenland. She wanted to go.” Five hundred years before Columbus, and another several hundred years before even the heartiest of men were willing to make the leap to settle the New World, Gudrid had already come and gone.   

Isabella and Spain:
Moving back to Columbus, let’s also not forget that he wouldn’t have had the money, ships, or crew for his “discovery” without Queen Isabella of Spain. Queen Isabella and her husband King Ferdinand were trying to unify a Catholic Spain, at the cost of the Muslims and Jews among their population, when Columbus was campaigning for his exploration. Money was not only key to Columbus’ proposed journey, but to the Queen’s and King’s continued unification of Spain, as much of their money had been spent in this pursuit. Columbus’ intent to find a new route to the Asian spice markets would save the Spanish quite a lot of money by avoiding the middle man on the land routes or the pirates on the sea routes.
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portrait of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, wikimedia commons
PicturePortrait of Queen Elizabeth I, wikimedia commons
Upon Columbus’ supposed discovery of a new route to Asia, he returned with a number of “Indians” that represented peoples whom Isabella then believed she would rule. She had ordered some of these captured slaves to be freed, and was even considering the prospect of rights under the Spanish crown, but she would die in 1504 before it was recognized that this was not Asia at all, but something entirely new.
 
Isabella would not be the only Spanish royal to fund expeditions to the New World, but she did help to unify the nation and establish a strong and profitable court to make future expeditions possible. As a result, Spain would hold a monopoly on the exploration and riches of the New World for hundreds of years.   

Spain’s influence would spread throughout South and Central America, and as is typical of European exploration, the indigenous people fell in the crosshairs. Often this was done purely by biology, as diseases spread rapidly throughout native population; other times this was done through pure malice as greater and greater resources were found. Natives were slaughtered, brutalized, and made homeless by the rampaging Spanish conquistadors. Women were not only victimized but also helped to support resistance efforts as well as protect their families through cooperation.

Queen Elizabeth and England:
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The New World became the obsession of all Europeans, and soon the Spanish would not be the only group to be exploring and conquering the Americas. The Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Swedish would all make their presence known, but much like Queen Isabella, it would be Queen Elizabeth I who would make exploration a cornerstone of her reign.
 
Queen of England from 1558-1603, Elizabeth remains one of the most famous and successful European monarchs. She would not only defeat the mighty Spanish Armada and become a powerhouse of politics, economic growth, and art, but she would also set the stage for England to become a primary power in the New World. She was thoroughly educated, with one of her tutors, Roger Ascham, stating that “Her mind has no womanly weakness, […] her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up.” For example, the number of people she saw executed by her father, Henry the VIII– including her mother–had taught her to keep her political and religious views close to her chest until she found herself in power.
 
She quickly restructured the whole power system. She was perpetually scrutinized by a society that viewed women as mere detours to the real figures of power: men. They largely believed women unfit and too temperamental for power. Instead, their job in this game of monarchy was to bring the right men into power by marrying or birthing them. Elizabeth refused to play this role. Both before her crowning and after, she refused to marry. She had English nobles courting her, international nobles courting her, but still she refused each, proclaiming that she had to make a careful decision for the protection of England. In reality, she likely didn’t want to give up her power and actually helped to protect this further by having these individual parties trying to claw their way in. While many feared a civil war if the queen did not bear a natural heir, she played her game well.

She was leading a weak, impoverished nation without a standing army, and a corrupt political system. She used every weapon available to her, including her gender and society’s expectation that she should marry, to manipulate suitors into helping her country. Despite their fears of a woman remaining in power, she convinced many of the love she had for her country through these efforts. 
 
Throughout her reign she would face opposition, both internal and external, religious and secular, but she remained vigilant in her vision of England rising in power. She poked the European bears of France and Spain with sanctioned privateering and raids on their international ports, and despite its general weakness, her naval forces defeated the mighty Spanish Armada. Here, too, she played on society’s gender roles by parading in front of her men in armor, promising them great reward if victorious, and proclaiming, “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.” Their victory rocketed them into a position of naval strength, which would soon become naval superiority.
 
Her reign is not without controversy. Executions, bursts of rage, political manipulation, attempts to subjugate the Irish, famines, and more would pepper her reputation, but in her efforts to compete with her European counterparts, she too would look to the possibilities of the New World. Not unlike what the Spanish experienced in their conquest of South and Central America, the English found themselves facing populations of indigenous people occupying the lands the Europeans felt they so deserved.

Conclusion: Women were at the forefront of European efforts to discover a better path to Asian markets. When looking at this period through a wider lens that includes the roles of women, how does your perspective of exploration change? How are women’s efforts remembered, and how can they be better celebrated or analyzed?

Draw your own conclusions

Learn how to teach with inquiry.
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Radegund, Wikimedia Commons
Picture
Death of Brunhild, Public Domain
Did Queen Isabella's pressure cause genocide?
She commissioned Columbus' voyage. How much did she know? How much did she control? Should she take responsibility for the genocide of Native Americans?
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​Coming soon!
Did monarchies provide a stronger path to power for women?
Examining the lives of queen regents who ruled in monarchies, students will examine how stable their power was.

​Coming soon!
Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
  • This website, Women in World History has primary source based lesson plans on women's history in a whole range of topics. Some are free while others have a cost.
  • The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has produced recommendations for teaching women's history with primary sources and provided a collection of sources for world history. Check them out! 
  • The Stanford History Education Group has a number of lesson plans about women in World History.
Remedial Herstory Editors. "18. 1000-1600 WOMEN EXPLORERS AND LEADERS​." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2022. www.remedialherstory.com.​

Primary AUTHOR:

Jacqui Nelson

Primary Reviewer:

Dr. Katherine Koh

Consulting Team

Editors

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Kelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University

Dr. Nancy Locklin-Sofer, Consultant
Professor of History at Maryville College. 

Chloe Gardner, Consultant
PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University

Dr. Whitney Howarth, Consultant
Former Professor of History at Plymouth State University

Jacqui Nelson, Consultant
Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University

​Maria Concepcion Marquez Sandoval
PhD Candidate in History at Arizona University
Amy Flanders
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy

Reviewers

Ancient:
Dr. Kristin Heineman
Professor of History at Colorado State University
Dr. Bonnie Rock-McCutcheon
Professor of History at Wilson College
Sarah Stone
PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University
Medieval:
Dr. Katherine Koh
Professor of History at La Sierra University
Dr. Jonathan Couser
Professor of History at Plymouth State University
Dr. Shahla Haeri
Professor of History at Boston University 
Lauren Cole
PhD Candidate in History at Northwestern University
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Hatshepsut successfully negotiated a path from the royal nursery to the very pinnacle of authority, and her reign saw one of Ancient Egypt's most prolific building periods. Scholars have long speculated as to why her monuments were destroyed within a few decades of her death, all but erasing evidence of her unprecedented rule. Constructing a rich narrative history using the artifacts that remain, noted Egyptologist Kara Cooney offers a remarkable interpretation of how Hatshepsut rapidly but methodically consolidated power - and why she fell from public favor just as quickly. The Woman Who Would Be King traces the unconventional life of an almost-forgotten pharaoh and explores our complicated reactions to women in power.
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Byzantine Intersectionality reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in medieval thought and visual culture around sexual and reproductive consent, bullying and slut-shaming, homosocial and homoerotic relationships, trans and nonbinary gender identities, and the depiction of racialized minorities.
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This first comprehensive work on women in pre-Columbian American cultures describes gender roles and relationships in North, Central, and South America from 12,000 B.C. to the A.D. 1500s. Utilizing many key archaeological works, Karen Olsen Bruhns and Karen E. Stothert redress some of the long-standing male bias in writing about ancient Native American lifeways.
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This riveting narrative explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs, from Hatshepsut to Cleopatra--women who ruled with real power--and shines a piercing light on our own perceptions of women in power today.
middle ages (500-1500 AD)
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A history of peasants in the Middle Ages, the story takes the listener into the life of Marion, the carpenter's wife, and her extended family as they struggle to survive through hardship, featuring a year in their lives at the mercy of the weather and the Lord of the Manor.
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This important study provides the only comprehensive survey of Chinese women during the early medieval period of disunion, which lasted from the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty in 220 AD to the reunification of China by the Sui dynasty in 581 AD, also known as the Six Dynasties. Bret Hinsch offers rich descriptions of the most important aspects of female life in this era, including family and marriage, motherhood, political power, work, inheritance, education, and religious roles.
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This critical anthology presents the poems of more than 200 Arabic women poets active from the 600s through the 1400s CE. It marks the first appearance in English translation for many of these poems. The volume includes biographical information about the poets, as well as an analysis of the development of women’s poetry in classical Arabic literature that places the women and the poems within their cultural context. ​
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This book presents a synthetic history of the family--the most basic building block of medieval Jewish communities--in Germany and northern France during the High Middle Ages. Concentrating on the special roles of mothers and children, it also advances recent efforts to write a comparative Jewish-Christian social history.
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Medieval history is often written as a series of battles and territorial shifts. But the essential contributions of women during this period have been too often relegated to the dustbin of history. In Women in the Middle Ages, Frances and Joseph Gies reclaim this lost history, in a lively historical survey that charts the evolution of women’s roles throughout the period and profiles eight individual women in depth.
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These pages capture a thousand years of medieval women's visionary writing, from late antiquity to the 15th century. Written by hermits, recluses, wives, mothers, wandering teachers, founders of religious communities, and reformers, the selections reveal how medieval women felt about their lives, the kind of education they received, how they perceived the religion of their time, and why ascetic life attracted them.
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Berenice II (c. 264-221 BCE), daughter of King Magas of Cyrene and wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes, came to embody all the key religious, political, and artistic ideals of Ptolemaic Alexandria. Though she arrived there nearly friendless, with the taint of murder around her, she became one of the most accomplished and powerful of the Macedonian queens descended from the successors of Alexander the Great.
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For history and biography lovers, the 15th-century life and travels of the extraordinary Margery Kempe, who left her family to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
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The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings; a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the “Dark” Ages were anything but.
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A thousand years ago, a young Japanese girl embarked on a journey from deep in the countryside of eastern Japan to the capital. Forty years later, with the long account of that journey as a foundation, the mature woman skillfully created an autobiography that incorporates many moments of heightened awareness from her long life. Married at age thirty-three, she identified herself as a reader and writer more than as a wife and mother; enthralled by fiction, she bore witness to the dangers of romantic fantasy as well as the enduring consolation of self-expression.
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In Royal Witches, Gemma Hollman explores the lives and the cases of these so-called witches, placing them in the historical context of 15th-century England, a setting rife with political upheaval and war. In a time when the line between science and magic was blurred, these trials offer tantalizing insight into how malicious magic would be used and would later cause such mass hysteria in centuries to come.
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Today, the name of Marie, who became countess of Champagne, is associated with the medieval courts of love, and she is recognized as one of the greatest literary patrons of her day. As the crusades tore her life apart, she ruled over one of the largest domains in France for almost two decades. During that time, and well aware of the disadvantage of being a woman, she was compelled to defend her rights and those of her children--even to the point of going to war against her half-brother, Philip Augustus. 
early modern (1500-1800 ad)
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An important selection from the largely unknown writings of women philosophers of the early modern period. Each selection is prefaced by a headnote giving a biographical account of its author and setting the piece in historical context. Atherton’s Introduction provides a solid framework for assessing these works and their place in modern philosophy.
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Women and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia draws on recent research to underscore the various ways Iberian women influenced and contributed to their communities, engaging with a broader academic discussion of women’s agency and cultural impact in the Iberian Peninsula. By focusing on women from across the socioeconomic and religious spectrum—elite, bourgeois, and peasant Christian women, Jewish, Muslim, converso, and Morisco women, and married, widowed, and single women—this volume highlights the diversity of women’s experiences, examining women’s social, economic, political, and religious ties to their families and communities in both urban and rural environments.
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In Engendering Islands Ashley M. Williard argues that early Caribbean reconstructions of masculinity and femininity sustained occupation, slavery, and nascent ideas of race. In the face of historical silences, Williard’s close readings of archival and narrative texts reveals the words, images, and perspectives that reflected and produced new ideas of human difference. Juridical, religious, and medical discourses expose the interdependence of multiple conditions—male and female, enslaved and free, Black and white, Indigenous and displaced, normative and disabled—in the islands claimed for the French Crown.
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Exploring the works of key women writers within their cultural, artistic and socio-political contexts, this book considers changes in the perception of women in early modern China. The sixteenth century brought rapid developments in technology, commerce and the publishing industry that saw women emerging in new roles as both consumers and producers of culture. ​
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An innovative and valuable resource for understanding women's roles in changing societies, this book brings together the history of Africa, the Atlantic and gender before the 20th century. It explores trade, slavery and migrationin the context of the Euro-African encounter.
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In June 1846 Susan Shelby Magoffin, eighteen years old and a bride of less than eight months, set out with her husband, a veteran Santa Fe trader, on a trek from Independence, Missouri, through New Mexico and south to Chihuahua. Her travel journal was written at a crucial time, when the Mexican War was beginning and New Mexico was occupied by Stephen Watts Kearny and the Army of the West.
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Women Reformers of Early Modern Europe provides an expansive view of women negotiating their faith, voice, and agency in the religious and cultural scene of the sixteenth-century reformations. Women from different geographic contexts (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Holland, and Scandinavia) and from a broad spectrum of vocations and social standings are highlighted along with examples of their original writings in English translation (in some cases brand new).
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This book traces the emergence and early development of segregationist practices and policies in Spanish and Portuguese America - showing that the practice of resettling diverse indigenous groups in segregated "Indian towns" (or aldeamentos in the case of Brazil) influenced the material reorganization of colonial space, shaped processes of racialization, and contributed to the politicization of reproductive sex.
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Considering the presence and influence of educated women of letters in Spain and New Spain, this study looks at the life and work of early modern women who advocated by word or example for the education of women. The subjects of the book include not only such familiar figures as Sor Juana and Santa Teresa de Jesús, but also of less well known women of their time.
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The Princess of the Flaming Womb, the Javanese legend that introduces this pioneering study, symbolizes the many ambiguities attached to femaleness in Southeast Asian societies. Yet, despite these ambiguities, the relatively egalitarian nature of male-female relations in Southeast Asia is central to arguments claiming a coherent identity for the region. This challenging work by senior scholar Barbara Watson Andaya considers such contradictions while offering a thought-provoking view of Southeast Asian history that focuses on women's roles and perceptions.
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Though largely unknown in the West, the seventeenth-century African queen Njinga was one of the most multifaceted rulers in history, a woman who rivaled Queen Elizabeth I in political cunning and military prowess. In this landmark book, based on nine years of research and drawing from missionary accounts, letters, and colonial records, Linda Heywood reveals how this legendary queen skillfully navigated―and ultimately transcended―the ruthless, male-dominated power struggles of her time.
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In this first in-depth study of female homosexuality in the Spanish Empire for the period from 1500 to 1800, Velasco presents a multitude of riveting examples that reveal widespread contemporary interest in women's intimate relations with other women. Her sources include literary and historical texts featuring female homoeroticism, tracts on convent life, medical treatises, civil and Inquisitional cases, and dramas. She has also uncovered a number of revealing illustrations from the period. 
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Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe examines the important roles of women who campaigned with armies from 1500 to 1815. This included those notable female individuals who assumed male identities to serve in the ranks, but far more numerous and essential were the formidable women who, as women, marched in the train of armies. ​
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Articles crafted from lacquer, silk, cotton, paper, ceramics, and iron were central to daily life in early modern Japan. They were powerful carriers of knowledge, sociality, and identity, and their facture was a matter of serious concern among makers and consumers alike. In this innovative study, Christine M. E. Guth offers a holistic framework for appreciating the crafts produced in the city and countryside, by celebrity and unknown makers, between the late sixteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries.
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Meticulously researched and drawing on original source materials written in eight different languages, this study fills a lacuna in the historiography of Christianity in Japan, which up to now has paid little or no attention to the experience of women. Focusing on the century between the introduction of Christianity in Japan by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in 1549 and the Japanese government's commitment to the eradication of Christianity in the mid-seventeenth century, this book outlines how women provided crucial leadership in the spread, nurture, and maintenance of the faith through various apostolic ministries. ​
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Familial Properties is the first full-length history of Vietnamese gender relations in the precolonial period. Author Nhung Tuyet Tran shows how, despite the bias in law and practice of a patrilineal society based on primogeniture, some women were able to manipulate the system to their own advantage. Women succeeded in taking pragmatic advantage of socioeconomic turmoil during a time of war and chaos to acquire wealth and, to some extent, control what happened to their property.
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Wheelwright’s life was exceptional: border-crossing, multilingual, and multicultural. This meticulously researched book discovers her life through the communities of girls and women around her: the free and enslaved women who raised her in Wells, Maine; the Wabanaki women who cared for her, catechized her, and taught her to work as an Indian girl; the French-Canadian and Native girls who were her classmates in the Ursuline school; and the Ursuline nuns who led her to a religious life.
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The History of Mary Prince (1831) was the first narrative of a black woman to be published in Britain. It describes Prince's sufferings as a slave in Bermuda, Turks Island and Antigua, and her eventual arrival in London with her brutal owner Mr Wood in 1828. Prince escaped from him and sought assistance from the Anti-Slavery Society, where she dictated her remarkable story to Susanna Strickland (later Moodie). A moving and graphic document, The History drew attention to the continuation of slavery in the Caribbean, despite an 1807 Act of Parliament officially ending the slave trade. It inspired two libel actions and ran into three editions in the year of its publication. ​
leaders and explorers
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Focusing on the century between the introduction of Christianity in Japan by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in 1549 and the Japanese government's commitment to the eradication of Christianity in the mid-seventeenth century, this book outlines how women provided crucial leadership in the spread, nurture, and maintenance of the faith through various apostolic ministries. ​
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Medieval women were normally denied access to public educational institutions, and so also denied the gateways to most leadership positions. Modern scholars have therefore tended to study learned medieval women as simply anomalies, and women generally as victims. This volume, however, argues instead for a via media. Drawing upon manuscript and archival sources, scholars here show that more medieval women attained some form of learning than hitherto imagined, and that women with such legal, social or ecclesiastical knowledge also often exercised professional or communal leadership.
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The year was 1765. Eminent botanist Philibert Commerson had just been appointed to a grand new expedition: the first French circumnavigation of the world. As the ships’ official naturalist, Commerson would seek out resources—medicines, spices, timber, food—that could give the French an edge in the ever-accelerating race for empire. Jeanne Baret, Commerson’s young mistress and collaborator, was desperate not to be left behind. She disguised herself as a teenage boy and signed on as his assistant. The journey made the twenty-six-year-old, known to her shipmates as “Jean” rather than “Jeanne,” the first woman to ever sail around the globe. Yet so little is known about this extraordinary woman, whose accomplishments were considered to be subversive, even impossible for someone of her sex and class.
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 Much of her life is shrouded in mystery. Putting aside Cecilys role as mother and wife, who was she really? Matriarch of the York dynasty, she navigated through a tumultuous period and lived to see the birth of the future Henry VIII. From seeing the house of York defeat their Lancastrian cousins; to witnessing the defeat of her own son, Richard III, at the battle of Bosworth, Cecily then saw one of her granddaughters become Henry VIIs queen consort. Her story is full of controversy and the few published books on her life are full of guesswork. In this highly original history, Dr John Ashdown-Hill seeks to dispel the myths surrounding Cecily using previously unexamined contemporary sources.
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Born a penniless princess in exile, she became one of the preeminent noblewomen and celebrities of her era, renowned at courts across Europe for her intelligence and wit. And she almost became queen of England: had she lived two months longer, she would have succeeded to the crown before her eldest son, who reigned as George I. At the age of fifty, Sophia wrote her memoirs, which paint a captivating and often humorous portrait of her rich and varied life. She recalls, with insight and verve, her interactions with leading men and ladies (Charles II, Louis XIV, Christina of Sweden) and long-forgotten bit players (cavaliers, concubines, clerics, and quacks). ​
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For history and biography lovers, the 15th-century life and travels of the extraordinary Margery Kempe, who left her family to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
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At the end of the ninth century, a large part of what is now England was controlled by the Vikings—warlike Scandinavians who had been attacking the British Isles for more than a hundred years. Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, was determined to regain the conquered lands. But when he died in 899 A.D., the task passed to his son Edward. In the early 900s, Edward led a great fight against the Viking armies, assisted by the English rulers of Mercia: Lord Æthelred and his wife Æthelflæd, who was also Edward's sister. After her husband's death, Æthelflæd ruled Mercia on her own, leading the army to war and working with her brother to achieve their father's aims. Known to history as the Lady of the Mercians, she earned a reputation as a capable general who was feared by her enemies. In this authoritative biography, Tim Clarkson tells her remarkable life story from childhood to her vital role in saving England from the Vikings.
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Written between 1143 and 1153 by the daughter of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, The Alexiad is one of the most popular and revealing primary sources in the vast canon of medieval literature. Princess Anna Komnene, eldest child of the imperial couple, reveals the inner workings of the court, profiles its many extraordinary personages, and offers a firsthand account of immensely significant events such as the First Crusade, as well as its impact on the relationship between eastern and western Christianity. A celebrated triumph of Byzantine letters, this is an unparalleled view of the glorious Constantinople and the medieval world.
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Compiled by art historians, literary scholars, musicologists, and historians, this essay collection is an innovative and interdisciplinary study of Queen Henrietta Maria and her multi-faceted roles and responsibilities. Elements of the queen's popular biography - her European identity and devout Catholic faith - are only a part of the backdrop against which Henrietta Maria is re-considered. ​
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Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed off the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Joining scientists experimenting with cutting-edge technology and the latest archaeological techniques, and tracing Gudrid’s steps on land and in the sagas, Nancy Marie Brown reconstructs a life that spanned—and expanded—the bounds of the then-known world. She also sheds new light on the society that gave rise to a woman even more extraordinary than legend has painted her and illuminates the reasons for its collapse.
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Sigrid Undset's Catherine of Siena is critically acclaimed as one of the best biographies of this well-known and amazing 14th-century saint. Known for her historical fiction, which won her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928, Undset based this factual work on primary sources, her own experiences living in Italy, and her profound understanding of the human heart.
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Like many modern career women, Isabella was torn between her workaday obligations, her marriage, and child-rearing. Which was she--a visionary, a saint, or a she-devil? Isabella of Castile describes the complex social and psychological forces that drove the queen to become one of history's most famous and quixotic monarchs, a monumental figure who is alternately revered and despised to this very day.
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The Diary recorded by Lady Murasaki (c. 973-c. 1020), author of The Tale of Genji, is an intimate picture of her life as tutor and companion to the young Empress Shoshi. Told in a series of vignettes, it offers revealing glimpses of the Japanese imperial palace - the auspicious birth of a prince, rivalries between the Emperor's consorts, with sharp criticism of Murasaki's fellow ladies-in-waiting and drunken courtiers, and telling remarks about the timid Empress and her powerful father, Michinaga. The Diary is also a work of great subtlety and intense personal reflection, as Murasaki makes penetrating insights into human psychology - her pragmatic observations always balanced by an exquisite and pensive melancholy.
Prehistory (3,300,000-3000 BC)
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They live in caves and huddle around fires, but they are fully human, though they belong to our most ancient history. Risa the Arbiter has now spent years in her role and is known and respected throughout the area. Her children are half-grown and exhibiting traits of independence, both of thought and action. Her tribe has grown along with her and now needs more than one Arbiter can provide alone. Risa struggles with how best to organize her duties and establishes acolytes in each village to screen petitioners.
Ancient HISTORY (3000 BC - 500 AD)
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The men of Athens gather to determine the truth. Meanwhile, the women of the city, who have no vote, are gathering in the shadows. The women know truth is a slippery thing in the hands of men. There are two sides to every story, and theirs has gone unheard. Until now.
 Timely, unflinching, and transportive, Laura Shepperson’s 
Phaedra carves open long-accepted wounds to give voice to one of the most maligned figures of mythology and offers a stunning story of how truth bends under the weight of patriarchy but can be broken open by the force of one woman’s bravery.
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When the weight of their husbands' neglect, cruelty, and ambition becomes too heavy to bear, Helen and Klytemnestra must push against the constraints of their society to carve new lives for themselves, and in doing so, make waves that will ripple throughout the next three thousand years.
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While exploring the haunting cave at her father’s archaeological dig, Lisbeth falls through a hidden hole, awakening to find herself the object of a slave auction and the ruins of Roman Carthage inexplicably restored to a thriving metropolis. Is it possible that she’s traveled back in time, and, if so, how can she find her way back home?
Middle ages (500-1500 ad)
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The earl of Trent's Norman widow, Blanche, and her English steward, Miles Edwulfson, take possession of Blanche's estates, hoping to live a life of peace and quiet. However, they run afoul of a baron named Aimerie, who is building an illegal castle and taxing the surrounding manors--including Blanche's--to pay for it. Aimerie has ambitions that go far beyond this castle, to the heart of the English throne, and he won't let anyone stand in his way. What's more, Aimerie's hot-headed son, Ernoul, lusts after Blanche and wants to make her his wife. When Blanche and Miles refuse to pay Aimerie's taxes, Aimerie vows to crush them.
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Though Japan has been devastated by a century of civil war, Risuko just wants to climb trees. Growing up far from the battlefields and court intrigues, the fatherless girl finds herself pulled into a plot that may reunite Japan -- or may destroy it. She is torn from her home and what is left of her family, but finds new friends at a school that may not be what it seems
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For all fifteen years of her life, Pauline de Pamiers has witnessed an attack on her family, friends, and faith. It’s the early thirteenth century and the Pope and King of France are conducting a Crusade against the Cathars; the only crusade on European soil and against another Christian sect. As a member of this sect in France that sits outside the dominant Roman Church, Pauline is an outsider: young, but independent and bold.
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11th century North Africa. In an attempt to change her destiny, love-struck Zaynab makes a false prophecy: that she is destined to marry a man who will create an empire. Although her plan backfires, Zaynab’s intelligence, beauty and ambition leads to four marriages, each lifting her status higher.
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Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in Europe, is crowned queen of England beside her young husband Henry II. While Henry battles their enemies and lays his plans, Eleanor is an adept acting ruler and mother to their growing brood of children. But she yearns for more than this - if only Henry would listen.
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England, 1364: When married off at aged twelve to an elderly farmer, brazen redheaded Eleanor quickly realizes it won’t matter what she says or does, God is not on her side—or any poor woman’s for that matter. But then again, Eleanor was born under the joint signs of Venus and Mars, making her both a lover and a fighter.
Early modern (1500-1800 ad)
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Runner-up for the National Book Award for Children's Literature in 1969, Constance is a classic of historical young adult fiction, recounting the daily life, hardships, romances, and marriage of a young girl during the early years of the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth.
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Sirma used to be happy. She had a home, loving parents, and wonderful friends. But her quiet mountain village changed forever when she lost her two best friends to a gang of outlaws. The village elders did nothing, fearing the wrath of Hamza Bei – the head outlaw in the area. Not long after, the same outlaws returned and devastated her village. Sirma has had enough. On St. George’s day, she disguised herself as a man and lead her own mountain gang dedicated to protecting the mountain villages and searching for Hamza Bei to put a stop to his tyranny. But the path she has chosen is harsh and merciless. Clashing with gangs of outlaws, surviving the elements in the mountain wilderness, and keeping her men from becoming the scoundrels they’ve sworn to fight are just a few of the challenges. But the biggest issue was the fact that her comrades had no idea they were led by a woman.
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The author of The Soong Dynasty gives us our most vivid and reliable biography yet of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, remembered through the exaggeration and falsehood of legend as the ruthless Manchu concubine who seduced and murdered her way to the Chinese throne in 1861.
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On San Nicolas Island, dolphins flash in the surrounding blue waters, sea otter play in the vast kelp beds, and sea elephants loll on the stony beaches. Here, in the early 1800s, a girl named Karana spent eighteen years alone. Karana had to contend with the ferocious pack of wild dogs that killed her younger brother, constantly guard against Aleutian sea otter hunters, and maintain a precarious food supply. Her courage, self-reliance, and grit has inspired millions of readers in this breathtaking adventure.
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South China coast, 1801. Sold as a child to a floating brothel, 26-year-old Yang has finally bought her freedom, only to be kidnapped by a brutal pirate gang and forced to marry their leader. Dragged through stormy seas and lawless bandit havens, Yang must stay scrappy to survive. She embeds herself in the dark business of piracy, carving out her role against the resistance of powerful pirate leaders and Cheung Po Tsai, her husband's flamboyant male concubine. As she is caught between bitter rivals fighting for mastery over the pirates—and for her heart—Yang faces a choice between two things she never dreamed might be hers: power or love. Based on a true story that has never been fully told until now, The Flower Boat Girl is the tale of a woman who, against all odds, shaped history on her own terms.
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The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces - and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval - she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak.
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She was a normal little girl, daughter of the King of Portugal’s personal physician, and for many years she was convinced that she, just like all the people in her immediate surroundings, was a Catholic. Until one day, on her twelfth birthday, Doña Gracia was led down to the basement of their home by her mother where the family’s deepest secret was revealed to her—"We are Jews.” Doña Gracia did not remain indifferent to this shocking news and little by little, she began to investigate and become familiar with her Jewish roots.
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Etsu Tsudi, a wicked, bloodthirsty ruler of the West African Nupe empire, invades Zazzau; a small village in Hausaland. This triggers an irreversible sequence of events that sets Amina, a would-be warrior princess, on a quest to save her people from Etsu Tsudi’s tyranny. But, against a culture and time when female activism is forbidden, and with looming uncertainty over what Zazzau’s ancestral gods have fated for her, Amina’s quest appears doomed from the start.
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In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of 10 children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial an extraordinary four times in order to get a conviction, to the horror of many in the legal community. Louisa protested her innocence until the end.
Explorers and leaders
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Eccentric Lady Jane Franklin makes an outlandish offer to adventurer Virginia Reeve: take a dozen women, trek into the Arctic, and find her husband's lost expedition. Four parties have failed to find him, and Lady Franklin wants a radical new approach: put the women in charge. A year later, Virginia stands trial for murder. Survivors of the expedition willing to publicly support her sit in the front row. There are only five. What happened out there on the ice?
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Captain Thurídur, born in Iceland in 1777, lived a life that was both controversial and unconventional. Her first time fishing, on the open unprotected rowboats of her time, was at age 11. Soon after, she audaciously began wearing trousers. She later became an acclaimed fishing captain brilliant at weather-reading and seacraft and consistently brought in the largest catches. In the Arctic seas where drownings occurred with terrifying regularity, she never lost a single crewmember. Renowned for her acute powers of observation, she also solved a notorious crime. In this extremely unequal society, she used the courts to fight for justice for the abused, and in her sixties, embarked on perilous journeys over trackless mountains.
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Elizabeth of York, her life already tainted by dishonour and tragedy, now queen to the first Tudor king, Henry the VII. Joan Vaux, servant of the court, straining against marriage and motherhood and privy to the deepest and darkest secrets of her queen. Like the ravens, Joan must use her eyes and her senses, as conspiracy whispers through the dark corridors of the Tower. Through Joan’s eyes, The Lady of the Ravens inhabits the squalid streets of Tudor London, the imposing walls of its most fearsome fortress and the glamorous court of a kingdom in crisis.
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Brunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet-in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport-these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Durn, Sara. “Did a Viking Woman Named Gudrid Really Travel to North America in 1000 A.D.?.” Smithsonian. March 3, 2021. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/did-viking-woman-named-gudrid-really-travel-north-america-1000-years-ago-180977126/.

Groeneveld, Emma. "Women in the Viking Age." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified July 11, 2018. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1251/women-in-the-viking-age/. 

Miles, Rosalind. The Women’s History of the World. London, UK: Harper Collins Publishers, 1988.

​​Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
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        • S1E9 Textbooks and Crossdressing Spies
        • S1E10 It's not about feminism
      • Episodes 11-20 >
        • S1E11 Equal Pay and Ida Tarbell
        • S1E12 Equal Rights Amendment
        • S1E13 Culture Wars and the Frontier PART 1
        • S1E14 Culture Wars and the Frontier PART 2
        • S1E15 Women's Historians and Primary Sources
        • S1E16 Education and Nuns
        • S1E17 Blanks and Goddess Worship
        • S1E18 Thanksgiving and Other
        • S1E19 Feminist Pedagogy and the Triangle Fire
        • S1E20 Mrs. So and so, Peggy Eaton, and the Trail of Tears
      • Episodes 21-30 >
        • S1E21 First Ladies and Holiday Parties
        • S1E22 Sarah, Mary, and Virginity
        • S1E23 Hiding and Jackie O
        • S1E24 Well Behaved Women and Early Christianity
        • S1E25 Muslim Women and their History
        • S1E26 Written Out Alice Paul
        • S1E27 Blocked and Kamala Harris
        • S1E28 Clandestine Work and Virginia Hall
        • S1E29 Didn't Get There, Maggie Hassan and the Fabulous Five
        • S1E30 White Supremacy and the Black Panthers
      • Episodes 31-40 >
        • S1E31 Thematic Instruction and Indigenous Women
        • S1E32 Racism and Women in the Mexican American War
        • S1E33 Covid Crisis and Republican Motherhood
        • S1E34 Burned Records and Black Women's Clubs
        • S1E35 JSTOR and Reconstruction
        • S1E36 Somebody's Wife and Hawaiian Missionary Wives
        • S1E37 Taboo = Menstruation
        • S1E38 What's her name? Health, Religion and Mary Baker Eddy PART 1
        • S1E39 What's her name? Health, Religion and Mary Baker Eddy PART 1
        • S1E40 Controversial and Reproductive Justice PART 1
      • Episodes 41-50 >
        • S1E41 Controversial and Reproductive Justice PART 2
        • S1E42 Sexual Assault and the Founding of Rome
        • S1E43 Sexist Historians and Gudrid the Viking
        • S1E44 Byzantine Intersectionality
        • S1E45 Murder and Queens
        • S1E46 Hindu Goddesses and the Third Gender
        • S1E47 Women's Founding Documents
        • S1E48 Women and Bletchley Park
        • S1E49 Unknown Jewish Resistance Fighters
        • S1E50 End of Year ONE!
    • Season 2 >
      • Empresses, Monarchs, and Politicians >
        • S2E1 Let's Make HERSTORY!
        • S2E2 Empresses, Monarchs, and Politicians: How did women rise to power in the Ancient world? >
          • Women Explorers and Pioneers >
            • S2E29: Women Explorers and Pioneers: Who was the real Lady Lindy?
            • S2E30: What is the heroine's journey of women in the west? ​With Meredith Eliassen
            • S2E31: What is the lost history of the Statue of Freedom? with Katya Miller
            • S2E32: Why did women explore the White Mountains? With Dr. Marcia Schmidt Blaine
            • S2E33: How are native women telling their own stories? with Dr. Ferina King
        • S2E3 How did female sexuality lead to the rise and fall of Chinese empresses? with Dr. Cony Marquez
        • S2E4 How did medieval women rise and why were they erased? ​With Shelley Puhak
        • S2E5 Did English Queens Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn have agency? with Chloe Gardner
        • S2E6 Is Elizabeth a turning point in World History? with Deb Hunter
        • S2E7 How did Maria Theresa transform modern Europe? With Dr. Barbara Stollber-Rilinger
        • S2E8 Were Paul and Burns the turning point in women's suffrage? With Dr. Sidney Bland
        • S2E9 Were the First Ladies just wives? ​With the First Ladies Man
        • S2E10: How did ER use her position and influence to sway public opinion and influence politics? ​With Dr. Christy Regenhardt
        • S2E11: Why was women’s fight for low level offices needed? ​With Dr. Elizabeth Katz
        • S2E12 Should We Believe Anita Hill? With the Hashtag History Podcast
      • Women Social Reformers >
        • S2E13: Women in Social Reform: Should temperance have been intersectional?
        • S2E14: Why are material culture artifacts reshaping our understanding of women's history? With Dr. Amy Forss
        • S2E15: Did 19th institutionalizing and deinstitutionalizing healthcare make it safer? with Dr. Martha Libster
        • S2E16: Why are the interconnections between women and their social reform movements important? With Dr. DeAnna Beachley
        • S2E17: Did WWII really bring women into the workforce? ​With Dr. Dorothy Cobble
        • S2E18: How have unwell women been treated in healthcare? ​With Dr. Elinor Cleghorn
        • S2E19: How did MADD impact the culture of drunk driving?
      • Women and War >
        • S2E20: Women and War: How are Army Rangers still changing the game?
        • S2E21: Should we remember Augustus for his war on women? ​With Dr. Barry Strauss
        • S2E22: Were French women willing participants or collateral damage in imperialism? with Dr. Jack Gronau
        • S2E23: Was Joan of Arc a heretic? ​With Jacqui Nelson
        • S2E24: What changes did the upper class ladies of SC face as a result of the Civil War? with Annabelle Blevins Pifer
        • S2E25: Were Soviets more open to gender equality? ​With Jacqui Nelson
        • S2E26: Why Womanpower in the Women's Armed Services Integration Act of 1948? with Tanya Roth
        • S2E27: What role did women play in the Vietnam War? with Dr. Barbara Tischler
        • S2E28: Why were women drawn into the Anti-Vietnam Movement with Dr. Jessica Frazier
      • Women in World Religions >
        • S2E34: Women and World Religions: How did Confucianism’s enduring impact affect women in China?
        • S2E35: What precedent is there for female Islamic leaders? with Dr. Shahla Haeri
        • S2E36: Were Islamic Queens successful? with Dr. Shahla Haeri
        • S2E37: Is there space for female Islamic leaders today? with Dr. Shahla Haeri​
        • S2E38: Were Protestant women just wives and mothers? with Caroline Taylor
      • Women in Queer History >
        • S2E39: Queer Women in History: How did one woman legalize gay marriage?
        • S2E40: Was Title IX just about sports? with Sara Fitzgerald
        • S2E41: Was Hildegard de Bingen gay? with Lauren Cole
        • S2E42: What crimes were women accused of in the 17th and 18th Century? with Dr. Shannon Duffy
        • S2E43: How should we define female friendships in the 19th century? with Dr. Alison Efford
        • S2E44: Were gay bars a religious experience for gay people before Stonewall? with Dr. Marie Cartier
      • Women and Business >
        • S2E45: Women and Business: Do We still have far to go? With Ally Orr
        • S2E46: How did 16th century English women manage businesses? with Dr. Katherine Koh
        • S2E47: How did free women of color carve out space as entrepreneurs in Louisiana? with Dr. Evelyn Wilson
        • S2E48: Who were the NH women in the suffrage movement? with Elizabeth DuBrulle
        • S2E49: What gave Elizabeth Arden her business prowess? with Shelby Robert
        • S2E50: End of Year Two
        • BONUS DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN'S HEALTH
    • Season 3 >
      • S3E1: Mahsa "Jani" Amini and the Women of Iran
      • S3E2: Feminist Pedagogy
      • S3E3: Women-Centered Questions
      • S3E4: Sara Baartman
      • S3E5: Franco-Algerian War
  • Shop
  • Learn
    • Learning Overview
    • World History >
      • 1. to 15,000 BCE Pre-History
      • 2. to 15,000 BCE Goddesses
      • 3. 10,000 BCE Agricultural Revolution
      • 4. 4,000-1,000 BCE City States
      • 5. 800-400 BCE European Founding Myths
      • 6. 800-300 BCE Asian Philosophies
      • 7. 100 BCE - 100 CE Roman Empire
      • 8. 100 BCE - 100 CE Han Empire
      • 9. 0 CE Monotheism
      • 10. 100-500 Silk Roads
      • 11. 300-900 Age of Queens
      • 12. 700-1200 Islam
      • 13. 1000-1500 Feudalism
      • 14. 900-1200 Crusades
      • 15. 1200-1400 Mongols
      • 16. 1300-1500 Renaissance and Ottomans
      • 17. 1000-1600 New Worlds
      • 18. 1000-1600 Explorers
      • 19. 1450-1600 Reformation
      • 20. 1500-1600 Encounters
      • 21. 1500-1600 Slave Trade
      • 22. 1700-1850 Enlightenment
      • 23. 1600-1850 Asia
      • 24. 1850-1950 Industrial Revolution
      • 25. 1850-1950 Imperialism
      • 26. 1900-1950 World Wars
      • 27. 1950-1990 Decolonization
    • US History >
      • 1. Early North American Women
      • 2. Women's Cultural Encounters
      • 3. Women's Colonial Life
      • 4. American Revolution
      • 5. Republican Motherhood
      • 6. Women and the Trail of Tears
      • 7. Women in the Abolition Movement
      • 8. Women and the West
      • 9. Women in the Civil War
      • 10. Women and Reconstruction
      • 11. The Rise of NAWSA and NACWC
      • 12. Women and Expansion
      • 13. Women and Industrialization
      • 14. Progressive Women
      • 15. Women and World War I
      • 16. Final Push for Woman Suffrage
      • 17. The New Woman
      • 18. Women and the Great Depression
      • 19. Women and World War II
      • 20. Post-War Women
      • 21. Women and the Civil Rights Movement
      • 22. Women and the Cold War
      • 23. Reproductive Justice
      • 24. The Feminist Era
      • 25. Modern Women
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