Now that the academic summer break is well and truly over, WSG wants to highlight the rigorous research of WSG members online. Over the past twenty years the internet has allowed new academic formats to take root and flourish and two great examples are the Orlando Project, co-run by WSGer Isobel Grundy, and the Early Modern Medicine blog, co-edited by WSG committee member Sara Read.
The Orlando Project is a textbase of women’s writing in the British Isles from the beginnings to the present. Collaboratively authored and published by the University of Cambridge online since 2006 and available by subscription, the database is usually open access every March, Women’s History month. Recent entries from WSG’s time period include Lady Hester Pulter (1605-1678) a significant poet who has remained unknown because she did not circulate her work, even in manuscript; Margaret Calderwood (1715-1774) a journal writer; Maria Susanna Cooper (1737-1807) a novelist and poet; and Isabella Hamilton Robinson (1813-1887), an erotic (possibly fantasist) diarist.
The Early Modern Medicine blog was founded by the University of Hertfordshire’s Dr Jennifer Evans and is a fast-growing collection of short essays on all aspects of early modern health, medicine, and gender. Previous posts include discussions of postpartum incontinence, the therapeutic use of human body parts, and prayer and spa cures. Jennifer and Sara also welcome guest bloggers and book reviewers.
In some ways the Orlando Project and the Early Modern Medicine blog represent two poles in the kind of innovative scholarly work, on women’s and gender studies in the early modern period and eighteenth century, that can be presented and disseminated online. And as a group that prides itself on its independent, radical approach, WSG is happy to have connections with both.
Women's Studies Group 1558 - 1837 