This 12th c manuscript is the oldest remaining copy of “The Tale of Gengi”, written by the lady courtier Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th c. Murasaki is a great example of how women’s history could create fantastic innovations in their response to being marginalized. In this case, women like Murasaki invented Japanese writing. They
One of the most pleasurable parts of mythology is that the stories get written anew with succeeding generations. You can see that here with two illustrations of the Ancient Greek Goddess Nyx: the first is by William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1884 (_La Nuit_) and the second is by J.H. Williams III, illustration of Mother Night for
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Jamestown was the first permanent settlement by the English in the Americas, but its earliest years were hardly successful — in fact, the community almost died out at first, during the “starving time” winter of 1609-10. As settlers faced disease and drought, they also were surrounded by the hostile Powhatan peoples, which meant that leaving
Clio was the Ancient muse of history, and this painting by the 17th-century Dutch artist Johannes Moreelse has the saucy expression that comes from being a Time Lord (or Lady).
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It’s really difficult for me, dear readers, not to love the Whore of Babylon, the metaphor and shibboleth from the New Testament Book of Revelations. As a reminder, here are some lines from that apocalyptic book: “‘Come, I will show you the judgement of the great whore who is seated on many waters, with whom
This post is about a mathematical puzzle and a French astronomer-mathematician who tried to solve it: the Three-Body Problem, and Nicole-Reine Lepaute, an aristocratic woman working in Enlightenment-Era France. (See images one and two.) Practically as soon as Isaac Newton developed his ideas about gravity, he also realized that, while he could predict the orbits
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She looks wide-eyed in this picture to me, but Milunka Savic was the opposite of an ingenue. This 20th-century Serbian fought in the Balkan Wars and the First World War, and in World War II spent time in a Concentration Camp. She cleared these hurdles with chutzpah to spare and is the most decorated female
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It is both St Patrick’s Day and Women’s History Month, so I thought it might be appropriate to feature one of Ireland’s most prolific composers, Ina Boyle. Never heard of her? Even in her lifetime, as she was churning out chamber music, choral pieces, concertos, and symphonies, most of her work was never performed, so
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“Now all shame is exhausted. . . For in the weakened state of the [Roman] commonwealth, things came to such a pass that . . . A foreigner, Zenobia by name, proceeded to cast about her shoulders the imperial mantle, [and was] ruling longer than could be endured from one of the female sex .
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This is the July 31, 1978 cover of Time magazine, heralding the origin of in vitro fertilization which had been made possible in the previous years with the efforts of Robert Edwards, Patrick Steptoe, Barry Bavister, and Jean Purdy. Purdy had been the one to actually create the first human embryo through IVF, and held the
This is a beautiful modern artistic rendition of one of China’s most famous poets: Li Qingzhao (1084- ca. 1155). Her works reflect a sort of artistic craftsmanship that cannot be translated into English, and also a unique window into a woman’s mind from a time of strident patriarchy. Most of her writings have been lost,
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