Louisa May Alcott’s enduringly popular novel Little Women is no stranger to adaptation. Over the past century, the classic American coming-of-age story (published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869) has graced the silver screen six times. The latest adaption by director Greta Gerwig was just released in theaters, and its star-studded cast includes Emma…

Mainstream literature written for women in the nineteenth century reflected expectations about how women should think. Dime novels with titles like All for Love of a Fair Face, The Story of a Wedding Ring and The Unseen Bridegroom littered the shelves of bookshops. Male editors assumed women could not possibly want to read serious non-fiction, particularly…

In the early 1830s, a self-described phalanx of 20,000 angry women rose from the tumult of Jacksonian America. Enraged at the prevalence of urban prostitution and the casual acceptance of male licentiousness, they spoke out. Loudly, fiercely, they railed against the double standard that punished women but not men for promiscuity and involvement in prostitution….

A short history of the women who founded the world’s largest lesbian archive — and the pets who lived there.  In November 1973, the Gay Academic Union (GAU) held its first conference at John Jay College in New York City. A product of the intellectual and activist ferment following the 1969 Stonewall uprising, the GAU…

In December of 2017, the Center for Women’s History at New-York Historical Society launched Women at the Center, a new blog and social media project to highlight everything we do. Over the past year, our team has composed 46 blog posts, capturing the wide range of exhibitions, public programs, scholarly initiatives, and educational endeavors that the…