When your heart tells you to do one thing, and your parents tell you to do another, what do you do? 22-year-old Perpetua faced this dilemma 1,800 years ago in ancient Carthage. She faced a grisly death in an ancient Roman arena with her slave, Felicitas, at her side. Their tale is full of bizarre twists, gladiators, preemie babies, religious visions, and even a “most ferocious cow.” Our guest is Eliza Rosenberg, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow …
Constance Fenimore Woolson was one of the most popular writers of the 19th century. Though her life was full of drama, excitement and fame, for nearly a hundred years she’s been known only for the story of her death. Our guest, Dr. Anne Boyd Rioux, is changing that with her biography of Woolson, Portrait of a Lady Novelist. We join forces to help put this astonishingly brilliant writer “back in the canon.” Anne Boyd Rioux’s …
Hundreds of years ago, Caroline Herschel lived a real-life Cinderella story. Except instead of marrying a handsome prince, she became a world-renowned astronomer! Her brutal childhood was one of servitude, suffering and loneliness. Childhood diseases piled on the misery, stunting her growth, disfiguring her face and blinding her in one eye. But Caroline Herschel’s story is an incredibly beautiful tale of triumph and achievement. Her meteoric rise to fame for her astonishing astronomical discoveries led …
Alma Schindler Mahler was a brilliant composer, pianist, and “influencer” who has largely been remembered only for the men with whom she had relationships. Her musical compositions are finally beginning to be recognized for their brilliance and performed on stage in the past few years, and her reputation as a “femme fatale” is long overdue for an overhaul. The “It Girl” of turn of the century Vienna, Alma Schindler was a famed wit, a renowned …
Sally Lunn was born in France, but moved to Bath, England in 1680 to escape religious persecution. She brought with her a special skill: baking delicious brioche-style bread. Developing her own unique recipe, she sold her buns in the streets of Bath, soon becoming famous for the “Sally Lunn Bun.”Fast-forward 350 years to the 1930s: a baker in Bath with a love of archaeology decided to excavate the ground beneath his own house. What he …
Claudia Jones (born Claudia Cumberbatch) was a journalist, Black Nationalist and prominent member of the American Communist Party. Emigrating from Trinidad to NYC at eight years old, she was an extremely well-known peace activist and worked toward civil rights and women’s rights in America. Arrested for giving a speech promoting peace and women’s rights, in 1955 she was deported to England. There she founded the nation’s first Black newspaper, continued her work fighting racism and …
Living in Saxony 1100 years ago, in a culture much like the Vikings, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim probably witnessed violence against women all the time. Violence was a part of society, and she retreated to an intellectual life. But there, too, she found violence against women in the ancient Roman plays she was reading. If she couldn’t change society, at least she could change the plays! She rewrote them, altering the plots so that the women …
Bessie Margolin grew up in the New Orleans Jewish Orphan’s Home, was one of the first women to graduate from Tulane Law School and earned her PhD in Law from Yale University in 1932. Her groundbreaking work as Assistant Solicitor of Labor for the New Deal’s Fair Labor Standards Act championed many of the wage and hour rights Americans take for granted today and enshrined in law the basic human dignity of American workers. She …
Maria Ruiz de Burton was a writer, entrepreneur and businesswoman, and the first Mexican-American woman to publish a novel in English. Born in 1832 in Baja California, Mexico to a prominent Spanish family, Maria Amparo Ruiz was fifteen when the Mexican-American war ended and California became part of the United States. She married the commander of the American forces that invaded Baja shortly after the end of the war, and his career took them all …
A classic story of a young woman defying her parents to follow her heart, but with a fascinating Russian twist! Sahib Gizzatullina lived for the stage, introducing Russian audiences to theater for the first time in their lives. She and her penniless traveling theater troupe experienced all the passion, heartbreak, and drama that you’d expect from a roving band of actors. But they did it during Russia’s most turbulent time: through the reign–and murder–of Tzar …
