Tuesday, February 23, 2021

WOMEN WHO CHANGED THE WORLD: AFROAMERICAN HISTORIAN WOMEN


Black History Month is packed with reflections of figures from the past whose names have sometimes been long buried or ignored. But what about the historians who unearthed and preserved their stories to begin with? Many of them were women, writes Pero Gaglo Dagbovie—and they made critically important contributions to the field of history itself.

Dagbovie explores the work of Black women historians between 1890 and the mid-1950s. It was a time of dramatic change for Black Americans, who pushed forward into the academy and the professions despite social and financial barriers. Men saw opportunities before women, who were socialized to seek professional roles defined as feminine while they also faced the roadblock of racism. As a result, many Black women historians were unable to break into academia.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t find ways to hone their education and expertise. From self-taught historians to Progressive-era novelists to those who at last did receive professional training and doctorates, Dagbovie characterizes history’s Black women as dynamic and driven."

https://daily.jstor.org/black-women-have-written-history-for-over-a-century/?utm_campaign=generalmarketing&utm_content=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_source



First known symphony ever composed by a British woman – Alice Mary Smith’s Symphony in C minor.

 

Alice Mary Smith´s Symphony in C minor


https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/alice-mary-smith-first-known-british-woman-compose-symphony/

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

WOMEN WHO CHANGED THE WORLD: ROSA LUXEMBURG (1871-1919)

 

"In this work, (The accumulation of capital,1913) Luxemburg sought to investigate the systemic conditions which made capitalist accumulation possible in the first place. Goods obviously had to be sold, to accumulate the profit that capitalists would reinvest to perpetuate the system. But, given the claims by Marx that capitalist production necessarily outstrips demand, she noticed that no incentive existed for capitalists to reinvest. Without reinvestment the system would collapse, so that an outlet for the profitable disposition of excess goods had to exist. That outlet she saw in terms of exports to pre- capitalist territories: in short, imperialism.

Imperialism is subsequently neither a mere aberration of an otherwise healthy system, as reformers wished to believe, nor “the highest stage of capitalism” (Lenin). Luxemburg saw it as intrinsically connected with capitalism from the beginning. And yet, since the flow of capitalist goods into pre-capitalist areas would eventually transform them into industrial ones, it was also obvious to her that capitalism must create its own historical limit beyond which looms the spectre of “breakdown.” As for the interim, it will become marked by increasingly ferocious competition between advanced states for those steadily diminishing pre-capitalist territories. Militarism and nationalism will therefore grow in conjunction with the imperialism that capitalism engenders."

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/luxemburg-rosa


Sunday, February 7, 2021

WOMEN WHO CHANGED THE WORLD: ANNIE MONTAGUE ALEXANDER, PALEONTOLOGIST (1867-1950)

 

"In 1900, Annie Montague Alexander started attending paleontology lectures at the University of California at Berkeley. These talks changed her life. She fell in love with paleontology and didn’t miss a lecture for more than a year straight. Despite her keen interest in science, Alexander thought she wasn’t cut out for the minutiae of research. “Plagued by migraines and problems with her eyes, [Alexander] realized at a relatively young age that she would never be able to do any sort of close, detailed work,” writes Alexander’s biographer, biologist Barbara R. Stein. “Instead her financial competence, her influential nature, and her skill with a shotgun would all play pivotal roles in her life.”"

https://daily.jstor.org/annie-m-alexander-paleontologist-and-silent-benefactor/?utm_campaign=generalmarketing&utm_content=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter