Women in World History, 1400 to present

Primary Source Collections

What is a Primary Source?

Primary Sources are those documents and other material that allow you to come closest to answering your research question. If, for example, you are interested in understanding women's life in China during the 17th century (1600s), then you'll want to find sources Chinese women wrote about their lives during the Ming (lasted until 1644) or Qing (1644-1912) dynasties. 17th century male, Jesuit priests from Rome writing about those women offer useful material - but those sources are only primary if you can't get the texts written by Chinese women.

To find relevant sources--particularly if language is an issue--it can be helpful to look for document collections (also called readers or anthologies) of texts on specific topics, temporal periods, and/or geographic spaces. Below, you'll find a few suggestions. If you have questions, contact the History Librarian Bee Lehman.

What's on This Page

This page has a lot on it. You can use the following anchors (links down the page) to jump straight to a relevant box.

This is a select list. To see even more possibilities for material historians can use for studying women's history, see Women's History in Primary Sources in the Women's History Resource Guide.

Conquest and Contact: European and Indigenous Women in the Americas

Afro-Latino Voices: narratives from the early modern Ibero-Atlantic world, 1550-1812 by Kathryn Joy McKnight (Editor); Leo J. Garofalo (Editor)
Call Number: Ebook Central
ISBN: 9780872209930
Publication Date: 2009
A landmark scholarly achievement . . . With judicious commentary by several of the leading experts in the field, this book dramatically expands the canon of texts used to study the black Atlantic and the African diaspora, and captures the tenor of the 'black voice' as it collectively engaged the power of colonial institutions. Includes chapters (7) such as "Death, Gender, and Writing: Testaments of Women of African Origin in Seventeenth-Century Lima, 1651–1666."
The Spanish Pacific, 1521-1815 by Christina Lee (ed.); Ricardo Padrón (ed.)
Call Number: JSTOR
Publication Date: 2020
The Spanish Pacific designates the space Spain colonized or aspired to rule in Asia between 1521 -- with the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan -- and 1815 -- the end of the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade route. Sources includes several focused on women.
Women in Colonial Latin America, 1526 To 1806 by Nora E. Jaffary (ed., trans.); Jane E. Mangan (ed., trans.)
Call Number: PRINT ONLY O'Neill Stacks HQ1460.5 .W627 2018
Publication Date: 2018
"This outstanding collection makes available for the first time a remarkable range of primary sources that will enrich courses on women as well as Latin American history more broadly. Within these pages are captivating stories of enslaved African and indigenous women who protest abuse; of women who defend themselves from charges of witchcraft, cross-dressing, and infanticide; of women who travel throughout the empire or are left behind by the men in their lives; and of women's strategies for making a living in a world of cross-cultural exchanges. Jaffary and Mangan's excellent Introduction and annotations provide context and guide readers to think critically about crucial issues related to the intersections of gender with conquest, religion, work, family, and the law." --Sarah Chambers, University of Minnesota

Marriage and Family in Early Modern Europe and China

Renaissance Humanism by Margaret L. King (ed., trans.)
Call Number: Ebook Central
ISBN: 9781624661112
Publication Date: 2014
King shows that Renaissance thinkers had a lot to say, not only about the ancient world--one of their habitual passions--but also about the self, how civic experience was configured, the arts, the roles and contributions of women, the new science, the 'new' world, and so much more.
Includes a chapter (9) on "Women and Humanism."
Chinese Funerary Biographies by Patricia Buckley Ebrey (Editor); Ping Yao (Editor); Cong Ellen Zhang (Editor)
Call Number: JSTOR
ISBN: 9780295746401
Publication Date: 2019
Tens of thousands of epitaphs, or funerary biographies, survive from imperial China. Engraved on stone and placed in a grave, they typically focus on the deceased's biography and exemplary words and deeds, expressing the survivors' longing for the dead. Includes a selection focused on women.
Medieval Italy: texts in translation by Katherine L. Jansen (ed.); Joanna Drell (ed.); Frances Andrews (ed.)
Call Number: JSTOR
Publication Date: 2009
Has a chapter (10) on "Marriage, Family, and Children" looking at the 14th and 15th centuries in Italy.
Judaism in Practice: from the Middle Ages through the early modern period by Lawrence Fine (ed.)
Call Number: JSTOR
Publication Date: 2021
This collection of original materials provides a sweeping view of medieval and early modern Jewish ritual and religious practice. Includes several texts specifically about women.
Voices of Early Modern Japan: contemporary accounts of daily life during the age of the Shoguns by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis
Call Number: Taylor & Francis eBooks
Publication Date: 2020
In this newly revised and updated 2nd edition of Voices of Early Modern Japan, Constantine Nomikos Vaporis offers an accessible collection of annotated historical documents of an extraordinary period in Japanese history, ranging from the unification of warring states under Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early seventeenth century to the overthrow of the shogunate just after the opening of Japan by the West in the mid- nineteenth century.

The Enclosure of Women in Europe, China, and the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman World by Hakan T. Karateke (ed.); Helga Anetshofer (ed.)
Call Number: O'Neill Stacks DR485 .O885 2021 (PRINT ONLY)
Publication Date: 2021
Translations of documents from the Ottoman Empire including a chapter (5) on "Dream Letters of a Sufi Woman in Skopje, 1640s."

Gendered Knowledge, Gendered Citizenship: The Enlightenment and Atlantic Revolutions

British Women's History: a documentary history from the enlightenment to World War I by Alison Twells
Call Number: O'Neill Stacks HQ1596 .T84 2020
ISBN: 135017386X
Publication Date: 2020
Brings together excerpts from over one hundred documents detailing women's experiences from the end of the eighteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War.
The Catholic enlightenment : a global anthology by Ulrich L. Lehner; Shaun Blanchard (eds)
Call Number: JSTOR
Publication Date: 2021
Includes translations of material on women and education, science, literature and other topics.
The Enlightenment : a brief history with documents by Margaret C. Jacob
Call Number: O'Neill Stacks B802 .J253 2001
Publication Date: 2000
Selections by some of the period’s most important thinkers include pieces by Mary Wortley Montagu, and more.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries
Collection of women's diaries and letters covering colonial times to 1950.

Nationalism and Gender

The Zionist Idea: a historical analysis and reader by Arthur Hertzberg
Call Number: Ebook Central (limited users)
Publication Date: 2014
A classic since its initial publication in 1959, The Zionist Idea is an anthology of writings by the leading thinkers of the Zionist movement, including Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha-Am, Martin Buber, Louis Brandeis, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Judah Magnes, Max Nordau, Mordecai Kaplan, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Chaim Weizmann, and David Ben-Gurion.
Discourses of collective identity in Central and Southeast Europe (1770-1945) : texts and commentaries by Vangelis Kechriotis; Maciej Gorny; Ahmet Ersoy (eds)
Call Number: JSTOR
Publication Date: 2010
This volume presents and illustrates the development of the ideologies of nation states, the "modern" successors of former empires. They exemplify the use modernist ideological framaeworks, from liberalism to socialism, in the context of the fundamental reconfiguration of the political system in this part of Europe between the 1860s and the 1930s. Can be used to explore topics like masculinity and nationalism.
Documenting First Wave Feminisms by Nancy Forestell; Maureen Moynagh
Call Number: JSTOR
Publication Date: 2014
This book is the second of a two-volume anthology of primary source documents on feminism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
A database of primary documents that includes the diaries and letters of women from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Access writings by full text searching (simple or advanced) or by exploring the tables of contents.

1850-1940 (includes material on the Right to Vote)

Early Feminist Publications: The Lily, National Citizen and Ballot Box, The Revolution
Early Feminist Publications: The Lily, National Citizen and Ballot Box, and the Revolution.

Chinese American Voices: from the gold rush to the present by Judy Yung (Editor); Gordon Chang (Editor); Him Mark Lai (Editor)
Call Number: JSTOR
Publication Date: 2006
Offering a textured history of the Chinese in America since their arrival during the California Gold Rush, this work includes letters, speeches, testimonies, oral histories, personal memoirs, poems, essays, and folksongs. Includes some texts by women.
Documenting First Wave Feminisms by Maureen Moynagh (ed.); Nancy Forestell (ed.)
Call Number: JSTOR
Publication Date: 2012
Using primary documents dating from the abolitionist movement to the Second World War, Maureen Moynagh and Nancy Forestell investigate the tensions inherent in organizing early transnational feminist movements. Includes texts on Empire from India, Kuwaiti and Chilean texts on suffrage, as well as material on citizenship, birth control, and other topics.
Gender Roles & Rights by Micah Issit (ed.)
Call Number: Ebook Central
Publication Date: 2018
This book provides an essential resource for history and social studies research and an accessible commentary on the ways in which the idea of gender roles have evolved. It discusses the complex issues of gender roles and gender rights throughout history, and includes a timeline of significant events related to gender roles and rights. Focuses on the U.S. in the 20th century.
The Mexico Reader by Gilbert M. Joseph; Timothy J. Henderson (eds.)
Call Number: De Gruyter
Publication Date: 2003
The Mexico Reader is a vivid introduction to muchos Méxicos--the many Mexicos, or the many varied histories and cultures that comprise contemporary Mexico. Includes several document either by or about women.
Treacherous Texts: an Anthology of U.S. Suffrage Literature, 1846-1946 by Mary Chapman (ed.); Angela Mills (Editor)
Call Number: JSTOR
ISBN: 9780813550756
Publication Date: 2011
Treacherous Texts collects more than sixty literary texts written by smart, savvy writers who experimented with genre, aesthetics, humor, and sex appeal in an effort to persuade American readers to support woman suffrage.
Wrongful Deaths: Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea by Sun Joo Kim (trans.); Jungwon Kim (trans.)
Call Number: JSTOR
Publication Date: 2013
This collection presents and analyzes inquest records that tell the stories of ordinary Korean people under the Choson court (1392-1910). Extending the study of this period, usually limited to elites, into the realm of everyday life, each inquest record includes a detailed postmortem examination and features testimony from everyone directly or indirectly related to the incident.
Available means : an anthology of women's rhetoric(s) by Joy S. Ritchie; Kate Ronald (eds.)
Call Number: JSTOR
Publication Date: 2001
"I say that even later someone will remember us."--Sappho, Fragment 147, sixth century, BC Sappho's prediction came true; fragments of work by the earliest woman writer in Western literate history have in fact survived into the twenty-first century. But not without peril.

Post-1945 (includes idea of Women's Rights)

Women and Social Movements International - 1840 to Present
Primary source material focusing on women's international activism since the mid-nineteenth century with content from international agencies like the United Nations, Women's Africa Committee. Recommend focus on those two.

Chinese comfort women : testimonies from Imperial Japan's sex slaves by Peipei Qiu; Zhiliang Su;Lifei Chen
Call Number: Ebook Central (limited users)
ISBN: 9780774825467
Publication Date: 2013
Chinese Comfort Women is the first English-language book featuring accounts of the "comfort station" experiences of women from Mainland China, forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the Asia-Pacific War. Through personal narratives from twelve survivors, this book reveals the unfathomable atrocities committed against women during the war and correlates the proliferation of "comfort stations" with the progression of Japan's military offensive. Drawing on investigative reports, local histories, and witness testimony, Chinese Comfort Women puts a human face on China's war experience and on the injustices suffered by hundreds of thousands of Chinese women.
Women Writing Africa by Margaret Daymond (ed.); Dorothy Driver (ed.); Sheila Meintjes (ed.).
Call Number: Black Women Writers on ProQuest
ISBN: 1558614060
Publication Date: 2002
Presenting voices rarely heard outside Africa, some recorded as early as the mid-nineteenth century, as well as rediscovered gems by such well-known authors as Bessie Head and Doris Lessing, this volume reveals a living cultural legacy that will revolutionise the understanding of African women's literary and cultural heritage.
The Crunk Feminist Collection by Brittney C. Cooper; Susana M. Morris; Robin M. Boylorn
Call Number: Project MUSE
Publication Date: 2016
Essays on hip-hop feminism featuring relevant, real conversations about how race and gender politics intersect with pop culture and current events. For the Crunk Feminist Collective, their academic day jobs were lacking in conversations they actually wanted. To address this void, they started a blog that turned into a widespread movement.

O'Neill Library

Bapst Library

Burns Library

Educational Resource Center

Law Library

Social Work Library

Theology & Ministry Library

O'Connor Library

Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies

Women in World History, 1400 to present

Primary Source Collections

What is a Primary Source?

What's on This Page

Conquest and Contact: European and Indigenous Women in the Americas

Marriage and Family in Early Modern Europe and China

The Enclosure of Women in Europe, China, and the Ottoman Empire

Gendered Knowledge, Gendered Citizenship: The Enlightenment and Atlantic Revolutions

Nationalism and Gender

1850-1940 (includes material on the Right to Vote)

Post-1945 (includes idea of Women's Rights)