Women’s History Month is celebrated across Australia, the USA and the UK during the month of March, with International Women’s Day falling on the 8th of March.
To celebrate, we’re highlighting four articles from the archives of BBC History Revealed, Ancient Egypt, Military History Matters and Cornucopia on all things medieval women, the Cleopatras of the Ptolemaic Empire, feminist pioneers and Turkish art history.
We’ve used Exact Editions’ comprehensive search function to find these articles from the digital archives of our publishing partners and showcase the extraordinary histories of women.
1. “Everything You Wanted to Know About Medieval Women”: From the August 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
“When unmarried women formed alliances or started businesses together, it raised suspicion and uncertainty among society. An example from 14th-century Prague involved women running a herb shop, living together but not with their husbands. They were reported to the archdeacon, who, although he couldn’t pinpoint the exact issue with their situation, still considered them suspect.”
Dr Eleanor Janega tells you everything you wanted to know about medieval women in this accessible Q&A style interview, where she delves into topics such as women in the medieval workplace, childbirth, the lives of black medieval women, and medieval beauty standards. This article is a great place to start if you’re looking to broaden your medieval women’s history knowledge.
Read the article on pages 28–31 here.
2. “The Cleopatras — Part 1: Cleopatra I, The Syrian”: From issue 137 of Ancient Egypt
“Recently I published an academic book on Cleopatra Thea and Cleopatra III, sister-queens who dominated two Hellenistic royal dynasties: the Seleucids and the Ptolemies. Their intertwined lives were so extraordinary, and the times they lived through were so brutal and brilliant, that the writing experience set me thinking: might an exploration of the Cleopatras aimed at a more popular readership be of interest?”
Part 1 of “The Cleoparas” series by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones explores the life of the Ptolemaic princess Cleopatra, who would later become queen of the Seleucid Kingdom. With this series, Llewellyn-Jones aims to explore the lives and legacies of the less well-known Cleopatras of the Ptolemaic empire.
Read the article on pages 12 —19 here.
3. “Women at War”: From issue 95 of Military History Matters
“Born in Paris in 1908, Simone de Beauvoir belonged to that unlucky generation which lived through both World Wars. She was also one of the 20th century’s seminal thinkers. Not only was she a key progenitor of the existentialist philosophical movement, but she also made a towering contribution to feminist theory, publishing her first feminist book, LeDeuxièmeSex (The Second Sex) in 1949 — four years after the end of the Second World War.”
This article by Seema Syeda covers Simone de Beauvoir’s fascinating life and the philosophical contributions she made to the study of feminism. Through her works like “The Second Sex”, she challenged the confinement of women’s domestic roles and shone a light on the entrenched misogyny of Western culture.
Read the article on pages 12–13 here.
4. “Women’s Own”: From issue 63 of Cornucopia
“The array of pronouns in the title of the show I–You–They is a reminder of a search for identity and recognition that predates the Republic. Just a handful of female artists have managed to battle their way past the men into the canon of Turkish art history. But this autumn, in a celebration of solidarity and accomplishment, a new show at Meşher, under the patronage of Çiğdem Simavi, opens the door to a previously unseen plethora of talent and vision.”
In this article, Andrew Finkel highlights the extraordinary work of female Turkish artists working between 1850 and 1950. Finkel begins the article with a still life by Mukaddes Saran painted in 1993, and describes that Saran’s still life portraits were often the inspiration for many of her better-known male counterparts.
Read the article on pages 18–19 here.
All links included in this blog are available until 18th May 2025.
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