Women's Work in the Long 19th Century

Overview of the Website

This website provides resources for students and teachers interested in studying women’s work in the United States during the “long” nineteenth century, 1780-1920. Our site brings together recent scholarship and primary print texts from that period, along with visual representations of women’s work in a variety of popular culture locations (e.g., magazines, newspapers, advertising cards, book illustrations, photography). By situating our array of images within particular cultural contexts, we hope to facilitate interpretations acknowledging the complex relationships between representations of social experiences and everyday life. Toward that aim, we highlight how the images we have gathered communicate values, beliefs and goals associated with women’s work, whether or not they provide accurate depictions of “real” women’s lived experiences.

In addition to our gallery of images and associated interpretive material, the website also includes syllabi and resource materials from some of our past offerings of courses on women’s work.

Researching and writing in collaborative groups, students enrolled in the fall 2001 class drafted some entries in the "Themes for Study" section. Their names appear at the end of the entries they authored. Dr. Pullen and Dr. Robbins revised, corrected and edited the student submissions before publishing them on the website.