Project MUSE®: Journal of Women's History - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Women's History.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (1989) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of Women's HistoryTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Women's History1527-20361042-7961Latest articles in Journal of Women's History. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Guest Editorial Note: Special Issue: Female Humanitarian Aid in Europe during the Greater War (1912–1925)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983893
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The five contributions in this special issue center on female humanitarians in international philanthropy during and after the First World War. Contemporaries noted the omnipresence of women working in humanitarian spaces such as committees, fundraising events, hospitals, and canteens. As Herbert Hoover wrote: “Giving themselves to the actual manual labor of serving the lowly and helpless; to do it with cheerfulness, sympathy and tenderness, not to hundreds but literally to millions, this is woman’s work.”1 Yet this prevalent “woman’s work” was long eclipsed in the historiography by a focus on large-scale logistics and executive meetings, characterized at the time as “men’s work," and by a narrative built around a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100/image/coversmallGuest Editorial Note: Special Issue: Female Humanitarian Aid in Europe during the Greater War (1912–1925)2026-02-20text/htmlen-USGuest Editorial Note: Special Issue: Female Humanitarian Aid in Europe during the Greater War (1912–1925)2026-02-202026TWOProject MUSE®934402026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-20Editorial Note
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983894
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Those who lived through the era of the First World War (1914–1918) witnessed a rapid escalation in women’s participation in and direction of transnational humanitarian aid agencies. Across Europe, women of seemingly every social station heeded the call to aid their fellows, and in the process transformed political, social, and economic institutions. In this Special Issue, “Female Humanitarian Aid in Europe during the Greater War (1912–1925),” Guest Editors Nel de Mûelenaere and Wendy Wiertz have brought together five research articles that nuance our understanding of women’s humanitarian aid work. Their own introduction to the Special Issue, and Sophie De Schaepdrijver’s Postscript, provide essential context by
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100/image/coversmallEditorial Note2026-02-20text/htmlen-USEditorial Note2026-02-202026TWOProject MUSE®49762026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-20Fighting the “doom hovering over Europe”: Rosa Genoni and Hilda Clark, Two Feminist Professionals in Postwar Humanitarian Aid
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983895
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In November 1922, only a few weeks after the fascist takeover, the renowned Italian feminist, pacifist, and fashion designer Rosa Genoni (1867–1954) formulated a public appeal in support of an international peace conference in The Hague. The document that Genoni wrote in her capacity as head of the Italian section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) combined humanitarian with pacifist goals.1 A firsthand witness of the establishment of the first fascist regime, the committed socialist openly warned her audience of future hostilities and disasters:In order to avert famine, civil war and the threatening doom hovering over Europe, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100/image/coversmallFighting the “doom hovering over Europe”: Rosa Genoni and Hilda Clark, Two Feminist Professionals in Postwar Humanitarian Aid2026-02-20text/htmlen-USFighting the “doom hovering over Europe”: Rosa Genoni and Hilda Clark, Two Feminist Professionals in Postwar Humanitarian Aid2026-02-202026TWOProject MUSE®1090692026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-20Gendered Identity and Spaces of Medical Work: Doctor Ruth A. Parmelee in Ottoman Harpoot During the Great War Era
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983896
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This article examines the life and work of American physician Ruth Azniv Parmelee (1885–1973) in Ottoman Harpoot, located in central Anatolia, during the Great War era. In early 1914 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), an influential nondenominational missionary organization, appointed Dr. Parmelee, an obstetrician and gynecologist, to the Harpoot Missionary Hospital. The emancipation of American women, who chose foreign missions for professional advancement, and the segregation of the sexes in Ottoman society, where expectant mothers were reluctant to call a male doctor, created an opportunity for the ABCFM. By going into private homes and running the maternity ward at the Harpoot
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100/image/coversmallGendered Identity and Spaces of Medical Work: Doctor Ruth A. Parmelee in Ottoman Harpoot During the Great War Era2026-02-20text/htmlen-USGendered Identity and Spaces of Medical Work: Doctor Ruth A. Parmelee in Ottoman Harpoot During the Great War Era2026-02-202026TWOProject MUSE®1098352026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-20Feminine Humanitarianism: Muriel Paget’s Mission to Slovakia and the Baltic States (1920–1922)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983897
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The end of World War I in east-central Europe could hardly be defined as a turning point for local populations. After four years of war and harsh occupation regimes, the collapse of multinational regimes paved the way for the emergence of independent states in the area; however, a series of regional conflicts, reflecting the crisis of governance and the coexistence of multiple loyalties, threatened new states’ endurance. New power elites faced formidable internal problems. The new states lacked almost everything: not only had war and occupation destroyed the economic fabric of those lands, but mobilization, mass displacement and repatriation, requisitions, and the spread of contagious diseases represented ticking
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100/image/coversmallFeminine Humanitarianism: Muriel Paget’s Mission to Slovakia and the Baltic States (1920–1922)2026-02-20text/htmlen-USFeminine Humanitarianism: Muriel Paget’s Mission to Slovakia and the Baltic States (1920–1922)2026-02-202026TWOProject MUSE®951492026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-20“The Motherly Hearts and Hands of Proletarian Women”: The Communist Women’s Movement’s Humanitarian Aid to Soviet Russia, 1920–1922
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983898
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The Communist Women’s Movement (CWM) emerged in 1920 following the foundation of the Communist International (or the Comintern) in 1919.1 Women’s emancipation had long been an important point on the socialist agenda. The Comintern’s goal was to bring women into Communist Parties, to train them as managers and leaders so they could work with men to bring about socialist transformation. Women workers’ emancipation was seen as an integral component of this transformation.The structures for the CWM were integrated into Communist Parties. However, at their First Conference (1920), the CWM decided to establish special agitation institutions for women (to which men could belong as well) to coordinate work by local women’s
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100/image/coversmall“The Motherly Hearts and Hands of Proletarian Women”: The Communist Women’s Movement’s Humanitarian Aid to Soviet Russia, 1920–19222026-02-20text/htmlen-US“The Motherly Hearts and Hands of Proletarian Women”: The Communist Women’s Movement’s Humanitarian Aid to Soviet Russia, 1920–19222026-02-202026TWOProject MUSE®1236952026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-20“Assisting in many other ways”: An Examination of the Work Undertaken by Scottish Women Humanitarians in Support of Belgian Refugees in the First World War
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983899
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The first Belgian families, groups, and individuals arrived in Scotland within days of their mass displacement following the German military advance to the Belgian coast in October 1914, and the last refugees stayed until April 1919.1 The all-male Glasgow Corporation Belgian Refugee Committee (GCBRC) raised funds around Scotland throughout the war years to finance the displaced Belgian people who were accommodated, educated, and employed in the country. Scotland housed about 19,000 of the approximately 250,000 Belgian refugees who came to Britain during the war.2 The committee was an offshoot of the city council’s magistrates’ committee. The GCBRC was unique in administering care and raising funds to support
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100/image/coversmall“Assisting in many other ways”: An Examination of the Work Undertaken by Scottish Women Humanitarians in Support of Belgian Refugees in the First World War2026-02-20text/htmlen-US“Assisting in many other ways”: An Examination of the Work Undertaken by Scottish Women Humanitarians in Support of Belgian Refugees in the First World War2026-02-202026TWOProject MUSE®973682026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-20Postscript: A (Re)balancing Act: Women’s Humanitarian Aid during the Greater War
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983900
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The history of the Greater War of 1912–1925 is also the history of expanding, cohering, and professionalizing humanitarian efforts.1 As Nel de Mûelenaere and Wendy Wiertz stress in their Introduction to this Special Issue, the war—let us take this term to mean the Greater War—not only accelerated and scaled up humanitarianism, but it also “altered its practices and purposes.” The field of humanitarian intervention drew in ever more women and men, as volunteers or in paid positions, in executive or foot-soldier roles, in organizations that could be faith-based or secular, para-governmental or nongovernmental, local or international, and everything in between. Humanitarian intervention evolved into structural welfare
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100/image/coversmallPostscript: A (Re)balancing Act: Women’s Humanitarian Aid during the Greater War2026-02-20text/htmlen-USPostscript: A (Re)balancing Act: Women’s Humanitarian Aid during the Greater War2026-02-202026TWOProject MUSE®337082026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-20Early Modern Bodies
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983901
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Early modern bodies are popular subjects of study in part because they are so bizarre to our modern minds. Breastmilk was menstrual blood by another name. Sweat and spit expelled corrupt matter, one of many paths toward restoring the body to health. Early modern men and women understood, visualized, and inhabited bodies so differently than we do now, and that unfamiliarity is part of what makes them so fascinating. It also makes them useful entry points for early modern mentalities. Bodies can crack open past ways of thinking, acting, and being that seem otherwise inaccessible to us. They can offer insights into seemingly unrelated aspects of past perceptions, exposing not only ideas about health and wellness but
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100/image/coversmallEarly Modern Bodies2026-02-20text/htmlen-USEarly Modern Bodies2026-02-202026TWOProject MUSE®234542026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-20Women, Gender, and Methods in American Jewish History
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983902
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Historians have long recognized that women have played important roles in American Jewish history. Charlotte Baum, Paula Hyman, and Sonya Michel published The Jewish Woman in America in 1976, and Jacob Rader Marcus, widely considered the founder of the subfield, published the documentary collection The American Jewish Woman in 1981.1 Within these works and others, women’s historians described the intellectual, political, spiritual, economic, and family lives of Jewish women in the US. The recognition of women, however, has not always translated into their lives or stories being integrated into the broader narratives, nor has it always meant careful analysis of gender as a category.Over the last two decades
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/100/image/coversmallWomen, Gender, and Methods in American Jewish History2026-02-20text/htmlen-USWomen, Gender, and Methods in American Jewish History2026-02-202026TWOProject MUSE®254622026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-20