NEW Online Resource: Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000

Decorative image of women throughout American History.I am pleased to report that Bodleian readers now have access to Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000.

Loosely organized around the history of women in social movements in the United States between 1600 and 2000, the site seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding of U.S. history while making the insights of women’s history accessible to scholars and students. It features document projects, as well as extensive collections of primary sources. Women and Social Movements in the United States is also an online journal, and our access includes issues up to and including 2019, which feature  document projects and book reviews, as well as a host of other material, including essays, roundtables, and other special features.

Primary source collections within Women and Social Movements in the United States includes:

  • Memoirs, biographies and historical works of women in the U.S. suffrage movement, including the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage, by Stanton, Anthony and others, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as Revealed in Her Letters, Diary and Reminiscences, as well as an online edition of the biographical dictionary Notable American Women (1971-2004).  
  • An almost complete run of Equal Rights, the official publication of the National Women’s Party, 1923-1954.
  • More than 1,800 items written by black women suffragists, 1831-1965
  • 42 major contemporary published works that examine women’s activism from the time of the Civil War to the mid-1950s.
  • 640 publications from the League of Women’s Voters (1923-1999), taken from the League’s library in Washington D.C.
  • More than 1,850 publications of state and local commissions on the status of women, and 73 reports on gender bias in state courts, 1983-2002
  • Records from the National Consumer’s League from 1904 to 1934.
  • Transcriptions of 25 women’s rights conventions (1848-1870), three national conventions of anti-slavery women (1836-1838) and the conference minutes for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 1874-1898.
  • Annual reports of the WCTU, 1874-1898.
  • Transcripts of interviews with female US historians who developed the field of women’s history in American academia from the 1960s onwards.

Alongside the above collections, Women and Social Movements in the United States also includes 129 document projects, which present and interpret primary sources, a dictionary of social movements and organisations and a chronology of American women’s history.

This compliments our similar collection, Women and Social Movements, International 1840-present which includes 150,000 pages of conference proceedings, reports of international women’s organizations, publications and web pages of women’s non-governmental organizations, and letters, diaries, and memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-nineteenth century.

You can access Women and Social Movements, United States here, or via the Bodleian Libraries Database A-Z.  Note that you will need to use your Single Sign On to access this resource.