Tag: Women's History

Posted on

Meet Dalia Dooley, University Scholar in Special Collections

A woman operating a machine in a propaganda poster "I've found the job where I fit best"
Dalia Dooley, Undergraduate Scholar in Special Collections 2023-2024

During World War II, the American government placed a significant emphasis on directing female opinion as it pertained to the war effort. They launched a targeted propaganda campaign designed to both inform and entice women, offering them opportunities to take on roles that had previously been devoid of feminine influence.

Despite an unprecedented surge in female labor across various industries deemed crucial to the war effort, it became evident that these newfound responsibilities would be transitory, leaving women with an inaccurate perception of enduring opportunities in traditionally male-dominated sectors.

In the context of this era, the establishment of the Office of War Information (OWI) represented a strategic response to the need for efficient wartime information dissemination. Under the directive of Executive Order 9182 issued by President Franklin D.. Roosevelt, the OWI was tasked with formulating and executing comprehensive information programs to enhance understanding of the war’s status, progress, policies, activities, and aims, both within the United States and abroad.

The OWI’s propaganda wielded profound influence through diverse media channels: press, radio, motion pictures, and other pervasive forms of communication. A primary focus of the OWI was to garner female approval and active participation in the war effort. To explore this unique historical context, this research leverages preliminary investigations conducted within the archives of the Office of War Information. These archives encompass a wealth of primary sources, such as correspondence, memos, historical records, and agendas, offering a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the organization. Notably, the archive includes records pertaining to individuals who served as directors and advisors within the Federal Office, with a significant representation of women in these roles.

Despite its vast historical significance, only a minuscule fraction of the Office of War Information Records, equivalent to 0.01%, has been digitized. In December of this year, I will be traveling to the College Park office of the National Archives in order to conduct an in-depth examination of these records. The primary objective of this research is to shed light on the pivotal role played by female directors within the OWI and to unravel the complexities surrounding female-targeted propaganda and feminine influence in its creation. The study will delve into the specific responsibilities of these female directors, their perspectives on OWI productions, and the potential disparities in opinions when compared to their male counterparts.

By focusing on key figures within the organization, such as Catherine Lanham, who served as the Program Manager for the Security of War Information Campaigns, and Mary Keeler, the Program Manager for the Recruitment of Women, this research will unveil their backgrounds and the remarkable paths they traversed to ascend to leadership positions in a domain historically dominated by men. This exploration of the OWI’s female directors aims to contribute to a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of gender, propaganda, and influence during a critical juncture in American history.

Posted on

Women in Wartime – World War I

A young woman in a salvation army uniform on the cover of "Don't Forget the Salvation Army (My Donut Girl)" (1919)

Submitted by Discovery Fellow Preslie Price

I have always been enthralled by 20th century war propaganda since first cracking open a history book in middle school on World War I and II. When I began the DiscoveryFellowship, I was interested in combining that fascination with my passion and love for music of the century, especially surrounding the question of how the pair intersected before the development of mass media such as radio and TV. This notion drew me towards the subject matter of sheet music, which was a popular means of sharing songs across the country and overseas during war time.

Through the Bernard S. Parker World War I Sheet Music Collection, I found a unique bridge between the medium of propaganda and music. When I began, I expected to find only hyper-nationalistic messages and cover art with soldiers. While these elements were present in the collection, a surprising common thread that connected numerous of the pieces was the presence of women on the home front.

Cover illustration of “Each Stitch Is A Thought of You, Dear:” a woman knitting with a service star flag in the background.

The depiction of women differed, but the most common examples were mothers, daughters, and sweethearts both at home and overseas. I had not expected this turn, but I followed it closely through multiple pieces. In Each Stitch Is A Thought of You, Dear (1918) motherhood and its value during wartime is depicted. On the cover of the piece, an older woman is shown stitching behind a Service Star Flag, indicating four members of her family are enlisted in the military.

The imagery of a mother making clothes evoked a domesticity that would have been familiar at the time of production. The contents of the song describe a mother making clothing for her sons in the war and is “Dedicated to that Army of Noble women/mothers/wives/sisters/sweethearts who are doing their bit for the boys ‘over there’.” The mother was used in this piece as a comforting figure for those at home to drive support towards the troops and also to soldiers overseas who had only ever known a small circle at home and were now plunged in the unfamiliar. This notion can also be seen in the advertisement on the back which encourages buying more sheet music containing patriotic songs for those here or abroad, spreading the message in an age before radio broadcast.

Cover illustration of “Don’t Forget the Salvation Army” depicts a young woman in military attire grinning with a bucketful of Salvation Army doughnuts to be given away to soldiers. The background has three strong red, white, and blue sections and also contains the seal of the Salvation Army.

After discovering the former piece, I was interested to find more sheet music with other types of women on the home front, even after the war’s end. Don’t Forget the Salvation Army (My Doughnut Girl) (1919) immediately stood out due to its cover imagery of a woman in military attire carrying donuts surrounded by patriotic hues. The lyrics celebrate her for bringing coffee and donuts to soldiers through the Salvation Army (as a result of donations) and encourages listeners to continue supporting their efforts.

The two letters on the back were unique to this piece, both supporting the Salvation Army and the mission of the doughnut girls. The women volunteering played a tangible role in aiding troops while still fulfilling a traditionally feminine work position (providing food and comfort as a means of care). The song recounts how soldiers listening would be reminded of food/comfort at home and positive times with the doughnut girls. Those at home listening would be reminded of the pressing need to support initiatives such as the Salvation Army and the importance of female volunteers.

The back of “My Donut Girl” showed an illustration of Salvation Army women as well as endorsements from the publisher and a letter promoting the Salvation Army’s efforts.

Through the mass production and sale of sheet music within the country, patriotism and American opinion on the war were more easily transmitted and support could be gathered quickly. While both pieces present women in two separate wartime roles, they each portray women as patriotic agents able to aid troops through traditional domestic work such as cooking and sewing. The two pieces connect the cause of the war to a familiar and personal subject, and make an emotional appeal that publishers hoped would be received well throughout the country.

advertisement with imagery of soldiers and a convincing message to buy more booklets to support war efforts on the home front and overseas.
Advertisement on the back of “Each Stitch Is A Thought of You, Dear” (1918) advertising compilations from the publisher, Leo Feist, Inc.
Posted on

Fallen Women, pt. I

The Maid of Damascus - from the Illustrated London News

Submitted by Discovery Fellow Carly Achinapura

In my research, I have been looking into how texts regarding female chastity are directed toward women of different social classes in Victorian England. I am especially interested in how these texts address the archetype of the ‘fallen woman’ – a woman whose loss of her virginity places her on the path of ruin and, oftentimes, death. In researching 1800s conduct literature and theology pamphlets, I discovered the pamphlet “An Address to Young Women on the Preservation of a Virtuous Mind, and Virtuous Conduct.” The pamphlet was written in 1844 by Reverend E.T.M. Phillipps and cost four pennies, making the pamphlet an affordable reading option for both lower- and middle-class women.

Philipps - Letter to Young Readers
This manner of addressing the audience in a small statement in the front matter to gain their trust is a practice that was unseen in the other pamphlets I observed, and demonstrates the rhetorical tactics that Phillipps used as the long-term rector of a small, rural parish.

            The front matter of the pamphlet contains a message from the author addressing the pamphlet to “My Dear Young Friends” (2), which emphasizes that the pamphlet was aimed at the innocent, naïve young woman of the lower or middle class. In placing the woman’s value on her virtue, Phillipps emphasizes that “the sacrifice of chastity destroy[s] the usefulness of women” (16), thus framing the unmarried, sexually liberated woman as a degenerate in British Victorian society. Phillipps frames the virtuous woman as one whose “‘fidelity is inviolable, and her purity unsullied’” (17). An interesting development in this text is Phillipps’s approach to prostitution and ‘fallen women’ under Christian belief systems. In a religion that emphasizes redemption and repentance in the modern day, we find a much more unforgiving system of beliefs in the Victorian Era. The prostitute is given an incredibly negative depiction, called “impatient of controul, and refusing restraint” (14). Even if attempting to find repentance for their sins, Phillipps’s approach to Christian belief as a minister outright rejects these women in their attempts to do so. Even if a woman was “not only reformed in practice but brought to genuine repentance for her sin” and was “a sound believer in the Lord Jesus Christ,” things would not “be restored to their original soundness” (15).

–        “Paul et Virginie:” an engraving done for The Illustrated London News (1844) of the painting by Henri-Frédéric Schopin. Inspired by the popular eighteenth-century novel about two childhood friends who are separated to preserve Virginia’s morality, Paul’s naked foot is emphasized over Virginia’s covered one. This engraving appeared with a poem titled “Paul and Virginia,” where Virginia must depart from Paul and the two express their romantic feelings for one another.

            This pamphlet creates an incredibly limiting social role for the women reading it and paints an utterly damning picture of the prostitute and other types of ‘fallen woman’ by association. In a society in which the prostitute is a temptress to worthy men and deemed as unable to repent, the prostitute is thoroughly demonized. Framing the prostitute, who oftentimes could be equated to the ‘fallen woman,’ in this manner results in the damning of the prostitute in the eyes of those who could help make change for the ‘fallen woman’ (the upper- or middle-class woman) and those who could later become a ‘fallen woman’ due to economic hardship or sexual assault (the lower-class woman). Furthermore, at a time in which more philanthropic organizations were established to aid the ‘fallen woman,’ this work heavily relies on the use of scare tactics to scare the woman from losing her chastity and committing a sin so as to not become useless in and rejected by her patriarchal society.

Posted on

Congratulations to Katherine DeClaire!

University Scholar Katherine DeClaire spent her time in the collections investigating how ideals of women’s behavior and sexual health informed the activity of women in the suffrage as well as the labor movements. She examined conduct books for young men and women, as well as the papers and scrapbooks of the labor activist Margaret Dreier Robins.

Her paper “Disorderly Conduct: Women’s Health and Women’s Rights (1883-1930) was just published in the latest issue of the Journal of Undergraduate Research, which was just released this month.

You can read Katherine’s article, as well as the other articles in the edition, by clicking the button below.

Go to the Journal of Undergraduate Research


Congratulations to Katherine on the publication, as well as her hard work and dedication over the course of the fellowship.

Posted on

Selling Wellness

Cover of JH Kellogg, Ladies' Guide to Health and Disease

This post comes to us from Discovery Fellow Arianna Zhai

I have a passion for reading psychology and the “self-help” genre of books, which look into why people think and behave in patterns.  At the beginning of my research, I aimed to look into the broad category of medical advice literature. Public attitudes toward mental health and health in general has changed so much, that practices that were considered reliable and standard are viewed now as nonsensical. By working in Special Collections, I hoped to learn more about the remedies and recipes from the 19th and 20th centuries that reflect the evolution of public understanding of people’s health.

Citrus Fruit and the Nation’s Health (undated), from the PK Yonge Library of Florida History

I started with almanacs from the 19th and 20th centuries. Almanacs were printed and distributed by pharmaceutical companies and were used by the public as a “one stop shop” of information. Many different publications of almanacs contained overlapping medical knowledge pertaining to common accidents, such as burns, drowning, and animal bites. It was very interesting for me to note how prescribed treatments changed over time and were affected by historical events.

For example, an almanac published in 1914 prescribed using “some stimulant such as whiskey or brandy” in order to revive someone after an accident. However, this treatment was no longer (publicly) recommended after the onset of Prohibition in the 1920s.

A folding anatomical model inside The Ladies’ Guide to Health and Disease (1893)

I also looked through a medical book about Ladies’ Health that was published by John Harvey Kellogg in 1893. It was interesting to see how societal expectations of women differed at the time of the book’s writing. Kellogg recommended for girls to be allowed to play outside in the sun like boys and to receive a similar education, which surprised me in a book that was written long before the Women’s Rights Movement in the 1960s. Kellogg also condemned the use of corsets in women’s fashion, complete with diagrams of organs in the torso. This contrasts with the Shakespearian Annual Almanac that was published in 1870, which wrote that women seeking equality “claim for the elevation of her sex that which would be its greatest ruin and depression.” Comparing these two sources was interesting because it shows just how much public perception and knowledge can change over a few decades.

Currently, I am reading recipe books from the 19th centuries and learning more about medical recipes that are listed for different illnesses. I am hoping to also be able to read more about mental health and the perceptions towards it during the time period that these works were written.

Posted on

Nature’s Wonders

This post comes to us from Discovery Fellow Hannah Whitaker

Through my Discovery Fellowship I have accessed dozens of unique and beautiful pieces of literature. My focus has primarily been on natural history; I am interested to see how natural history texts have evolved over time. I began in the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature, reading books about insects and animals written for children in the Victorian Era.

My favorite was Birds and Insects by Jane Bragg, which features a young girl with boundless curiosity waltzing through her garden and conversing with each critter she finds.

The creatures speak back, of course, responding with factual information about themselves in an almost Lewis-Carrollian way. This ability to freely converse with animals is pervasive in Victorian Children’s literature, I have found, and while less common in 20th century American literature, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings maintained this magical ability in her posthumously released children’s story The Secret River.

Cover of the book The Look About Club

These natural history books emphasize the intrinsic value of each creature,

whether written primarily for pleasure or education. Thomas Say’s reference book, American Entomology, is inscribed with the Stillingfleet poem “Each moss/ Each shell, each crawling insect, holds a rank/ Important in the plan of Him who fram’d/ This scale of beings.” This poem illustrates the author’s fondness for all creatures, regardless of shape, size, or species. Birds and Insects (1844) and The Look-About Club (1887) each highlight the importance and value of each animal. In Birds and Insects, the animals are imbued with feelings, begging the reader to discontinue hunting. The father in The Look-About Club beseeches his children to be gentle with the animals they study.

Despite evolution in writing styles, authors recognized the fragility and beauty of the natural world nearly two centuries ago; a haunting and timely warning to modern-day readers. More recent texts, such as Forest in the Sand by Marjory Bartlett Sanger (1983) and Voices of the Earth: Florida’s Environmental Storybook with Pictures to Color by Kristin Farquhar (1992) also detail the necessity of maintaining the balance of the ecosystem.

Marjory Bartlett Sanger, Forest in the Sand (1983) , from the PK Yonge Library of Florida History

css.php