Library Research Guides: Gender Studies: Databases

Getting Started with General Databases

A database is an electronic collection of information organized to help patrons access relevant information. Unlike search engines, databases are extensively tagged to help patrons find information and include citations. Below you will find lists of databases ranging from general to highly specific.

If you would like to begin with a broad search, try the following databases or searching in OneSearch@IU, our resources which brings together much of IU Libraries' content, allowing one to simultaneously search IUCAT, scholarly article databases, news and popular publications to retrieve a wide range of materials across subject areas.

Academic Search (EBSCO)
Provides full-text coverage of magazine, newspaper, and scholarly journal articles for most academic disciplines.
This multi-disciplinary database provides full-text for more than 4,500 journals, including full text for more than 3,700 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,000 titles.
JSTOR
Provides searchable full-text of historical runs of important scholarly journals in the humanities, arts, sciences, ecology, and business.
JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization established with the assistance of The Mellon Foundation, provides complete runs of hundreds of important journal titles in more than 30 arts, humanities, and social science disciplines. These scholarly journals can be browsed online and searched, and the page images can be printed for those available in full-text. The IUB Libraries subscribe to current content for only some titles available through JSTOR. Includes access to the following collections: Arts & Sciences, Business, Hebrew Journals, Ireland Collection, Lives of Literature, Public Health Collection, Security Studies Collection, Sustainability Collection.

All journals in JSTOR start with the first volume. Many include content up to a "moving wall" of 3-5 years ago, although some journals have a fixed ending date for their content in JSTOR. Please check individual journals for exact dates of coverage.

For information about access to this resource for IU alumni, contact the Indiana University Alumni Association.
Nexis Uni
Includes articles from local, regional, national and international newspapers, magazines, online journals, television and radio broadcasts, newswires and blogs, transcripts, and legal research, as well as federal and state cases and statutes, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1790. Also includes access to Nexis Dossier.
Comprehensive coverage of news and current events, government, business, medical, and legal topics, as well as general reference information is included. Formats found in Nexis Uni are: international and domestic newspapers, magazines and trade journals, broadcast transcripts (NPR, ABC News, CBS News, and CNN), company financial information, industry and market news, federal and state case law, law reviews, medical news and abstracts, and state and country profiles. Includes business information on over 80 million U.S. and international companies and 75 million executives. Non-English language news sources are available in Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Dutch. Campus news from some 400 college/university papers and over 50 wire services are also available.
To access Nexis Dossier select "Business" (near the bottom of the Nexis Uni homepage). Then select "Create a Company List" in the Company Dossier box.
Project Muse
Provides full text access and indexing for e-journals and e-books from a variety of scholarly publishers. Covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others.

Specialized Databases

Gender: Identity and Social Change
Primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Includes sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.
Material has been sourced from across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Key areas represented in the material include: employment and labor, education, government and legislation, the body, domesticity and the family. Includes records from men’s and women’s organisations and pressure groups, detailing twentieth-century lobbying and activism on a wide array of issues to reveal developing gender relations and prevalent challenges.
Gender Studies Database
Citations to articles, books, conference papers, pamphlets, dissertations and other publications about gender inequality, masculinity, post-feminism, and gender identity.
Gender Studies Database provides indexing and abstracts covering the full spectrum of gender-related scholarship. It offers over a million records from scholarly and popular publications, including journals, books, conference papers and theses.
GenderWatch
Full text database with a focus on how gender impacts a variety of subject areas.
GenderWatch is a full text database of nearly 400 periodicals and other publications that focus on how gender impacts a variety of subject areas. Publications include academic and scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, booklets and pamphlets, conference proceedings, and government, and special reports.

Archives of Sexuality and Gender
Provides access to materials exploring important aspects of LGBTQ life. Includes periodicals, newsletters, manuscripts, government records, organizational papers, correspondence, an international selection of posters, and other primary source materials.
Includes access to five modules: LGBTQ History Since 1940, part 1; LGBTQ History Since 1940, part 2; Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century; International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture; and L'Enfer de la Bibliotheque Nationale de France Digital Archive.
LGBT Magazine Archive
Access to archival runs of 26 of the most influential, longest-running serial publications covering LGBT interests. Includes the pre-eminent US and UK titles – The Advocate and Gay Times, respectively. Includes access to collection 1 and collection 2.
Chronicles more than six decades of the history and culture of the LGBT community. In addition to LGBT/gender/sexuality studies, this material also serves related disciplines such as sociology, political science, psychology, health, and the arts.
LGBT Studies in Video
LGBT Studies in Video is a cinematic survey of the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as well as the cultural and political evolution of the LGBT community. Includes access to volume 1 and volume 2.
LGBT Thought and Culture
LGBT Thought and Culture is an online resource hosting books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.
LGBTQ+ Source
Index citations and selected full-text literature in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender studies
Includes a variety of scholarly, popular and regional resources, journals, books, magazines and more.
LGBTQ+ Library Catalog
The LGBTQ+ Library Catalog contains materials pertaining to asexual, bisexual, gay, intersex, lesbian, transgender, and queer issues. These resources include books, videos, CDs, and periodicals. This collection is intended to be a resource for both research and entertainment.
The LGBTQ+ Library provides lending services to the entire community; anyone can register to become a patron with a photo ID.
Queer Pasts
Collection of primary source document collections and curatorial essays aimed at students and scholars of queer history and culture. The database uses “queer” in its broadest and most inclusive sense, to embrace topics that are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender and to include work on sexual and gender formations that are queer but not necessarily LGBT.
Each document exhibit includes 20-40 primary source documents; whenever possible, they are available in both transcribed (searchable) and original form. Every exhibit also includes a critical introductory essay that helps explain the significance of the primary sources in historical terms and in relationship to previous scholarship.
Sex & Sexuality
Explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors throughout the twentieth century. Produced in collaboration with the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collections, the resource includes the work of leading American sexologists, sex researchers, and organizations.
Users will be prompted to confirm that they are over the age of consent to access this resource. Please be aware that this resource contains material of a sexually explicit nature. Content includes, but is not limited to, descriptions and imagery of sexual violence; non-consensual sexual activity; sexual activity including minors; surgery and suicide.

Includes research papers and records spanning the tenures of the first three Institute directors; Dr Alfred C. Kinsey (1947-1956), Dr Paul H. Gebhard (1956-1982) and Dr June Reinisch (1982-1993).

Contemporary Women's Issues (Gale OneFile)
A multidisciplinary, full-text database of articles about issues that influence women's lives around the world.
Includes articles from mainstream periodicals, the alternative press, and other hard-to-find sources, with a focus on the issues that influence women's lives around the world. Issues covered include domestic violence, employment and the workplace, gender equity, family, reproductive health, and human rights.
98 percent of the articles are full text. Records are indexed by subject, region, article type, and publication type.

Women's History

Everyday Life & Women in America
Provides access to primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. Includes monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.
First World War
Primary source documents related to the First World War, covering personal experiences of men and women, recruitment, the development and dissemination of various forms of propaganda, women's war work, the Home Front and international perspectives.
Document types include: personal narratives, diaries, newspapers, posters, postcards, photographs, printed books, military and government files, ephemera, artwork, personal artifacts and film. Also includes secondary source materials such as interactive maps, and chronologies.

Modules include: Personal Experiences; Propaganda and Recruitment; Visual Perspectives and Narratives; A Global Conflict
Oxford Classical Dictionary, Third Edition
Reference work on the classical world. Covers all aspects of ancient life - political, economic, philosophical, religious, artistic, and social. Includes over six thousand entries ranging from long articles to brief definitions. There is substantial coverage of women in the ancient world, sexuality, Asia and the Far East, Judaism, and early Christians. Thematic articles reflect the current emphasis on multidisciplinary approaches to classical studies.
Southern Women and their Families in the 19th and 20th Centuries, holdings of the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Digital access to records documenting the complex lives of southern women from the antebellum era through the Civil War and into the last 3 decades of the 19th century.
Women at Work during World War II: Rosie the Riveter and the Women's Army Corps
Consists of two major sets of records documenting the experience of American women during World War II: Records of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, and Correspondence of the Director of the Women's Army Corps.
The first series documents the role of the Women's Bureau as an investigative agency, as a clearinghouse for proposed changes in working conditions, and as a source of public information and education. Items in this first series include reports of the bureau director to the secretary of labor, records of bureau-sponsored conferences, and speeches and articles by women officials of the bureau. The second series of Women's Bureau records consists of a detailed study on the treatment of women by unions in several midwestern industrial centers, complete with extensive background interviews and other research materials; community studies conducted nationwide on the influx of women to industrial centers during the war; and subject files and correspondence on women's work in war industries, including issues like equal pay and child care.

Women's Writing

Black Women Writers
Black Women Writers presents 100,000 pages of literature and essays on feminist issues, written by authors from Africa and the African diaspora. Facing both sexism and racism, Black women needed to create their own identities and movements. The collection documents that effort, presenting the woman’s perspective on the diversity and development of Black people generally, and in particular the works document the evolution of Black feminism.
Black Women Writers includes fiction, poetry, and essays. Among the authors are Nikki Giovanni, Maryse Condé, Barbara Ransby, Angela Davis, Rhoda Reddock, Margaret Walker, Ama Ata Aidoo, Rosa Guy, Sonia Sanchez, Olive Senior, and Barbara Ransby. Works are in their original languages, although an English translation executed by the original author may be available. Works are reproduced in their entirety and when possible, an image of the original page accompanies the text. The dates of the material range from the 1700s to contemporary pieces.
British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
Collection of British and Irish women's personal writings spanning over 400 years.
Includes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women, and over 100,000 pages of diaries and letters. The collection also includes biographies and an annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
Poetry by approximately 50 Irish women writing between 1768 and 1842.
Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period includes more than 80 volumes of poetry by approximately 50 Irish women writing between 1768 and 1842. Compiled and edited by Stephen Behrendt of the University of Nebraska, the database also offers numerous biographical and critical essays prepared by leading scholars specifically for the project. New content is added to the collection on a regular basis.
Latin American Women Writers
Prose, poetry, and drama composed by women writing in Mexico, Central America, and South America.
Latin American Women Writers is an extensive searchable collection of prose, poetry, and drama composed by women writing in Mexico, Central America, and South America. Also included are essays by Latin American feminists and revolutionaries, who address both the universal concerns of women in every age and the distinctive issues of their struggles in the region.
North American Women's Drama
A full-text database of plays written by women from the United States and Canada, primarily in the 20th century.
Fully-searchable database of original plays by more than 250 women from Colonial times to the present. Each play is extensively indexed, allowing both keyword and multi-field searching. Accompanying materials include reference resources, ancillary information, and a performance database. The collection covers melodrama to contemporary drama, including performance art.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries
Searchable full text of letters and diaries of hundreds of North American women, from the 16th century to 1950.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. Also includes biographies and an annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
Orlando
Provides entries on authors' lives and writing careers, contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies from centuries of women's writing.
Includes British women writers, selected non-British or international women writers, and selected British and international men. Also includes dated items representing events and processes (in the accounts of these writers, but also in the areas of history, science, medicine, economics, the law, and other contexts). (OCLC)
Oxford Guide to British Women Writers
Covers over 400 British women writers in a wide variety of literary genres, including novels, travel writing, poetry, theater, children's books, cook books and religious writings. The authors are "women whose reputations were established before the early 1980s." The editor broadly defines "British," so there are entries for those born elsewhere but whose careers were in an important part tied to Britain.
Perdita Manuscripts
Provides digital access to manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sourced from archives and libraries across the United Kingdom and the USA.
This resource is produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University. “Perdita” means “lost woman” and the quest of the Perdita Project has been to find early modern women authors who were “lost” because their writing exists only in manuscript form.
Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
Collection of 60 volumes of Romantic poetry composed by Scottish women poets. Also includes extensive contemporary critical reviews and numerous scholarly essays specially commissioned for the project.
Victorian Women Writers Project
Provides highly accurate transcriptions of literary works by British women writers of the late 19th century.
The goal of the Victorian Women Writers Project is to produce highly accurate transcriptions of literary works by British women writers of the late 19th century, encoded using the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). The works, selected with the assistance of the Advisory Board, will include anthologies, novels, political pamphlets, and volumes of poetry and verse drama.
Perry Willett, General Editor
Women Writers Online
Contains approximately 200 texts written by women in English from 1400-1850.
Women Writers Online is a full-text collection of early women’s writing in English, published by the Women Writers Project at Northeastern University. It includes full transcriptions of texts published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or inaccessible.

Women's Movements

Fannie Lou Hamer: Papers of a Civil Rights Activist, Political Activist, and Woman
Primary source documents related to voting rights activist and civil rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer.
Fannie Lou Hamer was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The collection includes correspondence, financial records, programs, photographs, newspaper articles, invitations, and other printed items. The papers are arranged in the following series: Personal, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Freedom Farms Corporation, Delta Ministry, Mississippians United to Elect Negro Candidates, Delta Opportunities Corporation, and Collected Materials.
Feminism in Cuba: Nineteenth through Twentieth Century Archival Documents
The collection contains texts, personal letters, journal essays, radio broadcasts, and memoirs from women congresses from Cuban independence to the end of the Batista regime.
The collections, mostly in Spanish, include works by feminists about feminists and their causes, works by men on the status of women, and literary works by feminist writers that illustrate or discuss the condition of women. Among the journals in the collection are items from Aspiraciones, a feminist journal published by the Partido Feminista Aspiraciones, La Mujer Moderno, the journal for the Club Femenino de Cuba, and La Mujer, the journal of the Partido Demócrata Sufragista.
There are also assessments by politicians, jurists, and legislators about the condition of women in the cities and countryside and excerpts from novels, essays and poetry written by women about women. Also included are literary anthologies of Cuban women writers in general as well as literary analysis of these women's works.

Source Library: Personal collection Dr. K. Lynn Stoner
Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records, 1880-1990
Digital access to records of three important women's rights organizations: the National Woman's Party, the League of Women Voters, and the Women's Action Alliance.
Originally a committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the National Woman's Party (NWP) was founded in 1913 when Alice Paul and her colleagues broke away from NAWSA in dissent over strategy and tactics. The Women's Action Alliance, established in 1971 as a grass-roots organization, concerned itself with issues such as employment and employment discrimination, childcare, health care, and education. The League of Women Voters collection documents almost every facet of women's involvement in U.S. politics from 1920 to 1974.
Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires since 1820
Provides access to documents focused on women's perspectives in world history, with a particular emphasis on colonized and Indigenous voices.
Explores prominent themes in world history since 1820: conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality. Includes documents related to the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States Empires, and settler societies in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.
Documents are divided into nine categories:
Asian Empires, 1842-2001
European Empires, 1820-2005
Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1860-2015
Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Empires in the Balkans, 1820-1990
Native Women in North America, 1915-2010
Settler Society in North America, 1805-1940
South Africa, 1899-1987
United States Empire, 1820-2004
Women’s Global Networks in Colonial and Post-Colonial Worlds, 1883-2007
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
This database brings together books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies, documenting the multiplicity of women's activism in public life.
Includes 130 document projects that interpret and present documents, a dictionary of social movements and organizations, and a chronology of U.S. Women's History. Also includes access to teaching tools with lesson ideas and document-based questions related to the website's document projects. Includes access to all new content updates through 2024.
Women's Studies Manuscript Collections from the Schlesinger Library: Voting Rights, National Politics, and Reproductive Rights
Digital access to collections from the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College covering voting rights, national politics, and reproductive rights. The voting rights papers include documentation of national, regional, and local leaders. Collections on reproductive rights are the Schlesinger Library Family Planning Oral History Project, and the papers of Mary Ware Dennett and the Voluntary Parenthood League.
National leaders covered include: Carrie Chapman Catt, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Helen Hamilton Gardener, Julia Ward Howe, Alma Lutz, Anna Howard Shaw, and Lucy Stone. Papers of regional and local leaders include Harriet Burton Laidlaw, Helen Barten Owens, Clementina Rhodes Hartshorne, Mary Garrett Hay, Nellie Nugemt Somerville, Lucy Somerville Howorth, Margaret Foley, Grace Allen Johnson, and Olympia Brown. On the topic of national politics, major collections are those of Molly Dewson, Emma Guffey Miller, Sue Shelton White, Jeannette Rankin, and Jessica Weis.

Women's Publications

Godey’s Lady’s Book: 1830-1898
The most popular women's periodical of its day, with stories, poems, fashion, illustrations and music.
Godey's Lady's Book was intended to entertain, inform and educate the women of America. In addition to fashion descriptions and plates, the early issues included biographical sketches, articles about mineralogy, handcrafts, female costume, the dance, equestrienne procedures, health and hygiene, recipes and remedies and the like. Each issue also contained two pages of sheet music, written essentially for the piano forte. Gradually the periodical matured into an important literary magazine containing extensive book reviews and works by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and many other celebrated 19th century authors who regularly furnished the magazine with essays, poetry and short stories. Also includes hand-colored fashion plates, mezzotints, engravings, woodcuts and, chromolithographs.
Revolution, 1868-1872
Weekly women’s rights newspaper, and the official publication of the National Woman Suffrage Association formed by feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to secure women’s enfranchisement through a federal constitutional amendment.
Published between January 8, 1868 and February, 1872, The Revolution was edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury. The paper’s motto, printed on the masthead of the first edition’s front page, was, “Principle, not policy; Justice, not favors.” Beginning with the second edition, the following was added: “Men, their rights and nothing more; Women, their rights and nothing less.” Later editions had this motto: “The True Republic–Men, their rights and nothing more; Women, their rights and nothing less.”
Soviet Woman Digital Archive
Published initially under the aegis of the of Soviet Women’s Anti-Fascist Committee and the Central Council of Trade Unions of the USSR, in the aftermath of the WWII in 1945, the Soviet Woman magazine began as a bimonthly illustrated magazine tasked with countering anti-Soviet propaganda. The magazine introduced Western audiences to the lifestyle of Soviet women, their role in the post-WWII rebuilding of the Soviet economy, and praised their achievements in the arts and the sciences.
he magazine covered issues dealing with economics, politics, life abroad, life in Soviet republics, women’s fashion, as well as broader issues in culture and the arts. One of its most popular features was the translations of Soviet literary works, making available in English, (and other languages) works of Russian and Soviet writers that were previously unavailable. An important communist propaganda outlet, the magazine continued its run until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
Women's Magazine Archive
Access to the full backfiles of leading women’s interest consumer magazines.
Research fields served by this material are: gender studies, social history, economics/marketing, media, fashion, politics, and popular culture. Includes access to collections 1 and 2. Women’s Magazine Archive 1 provides access to the complete archives of the foremost titles of this type, including Good Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal. Women’s Magazine Archive 2 features several of the most high-circulating, and long-running publications in this area, such as Woman’s Day and Town & Country. Collection 2 also includes titles such as Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, and Essence, which focus on more specific audiences and themes.
Women's Wear Daily Archive
A comprehensive archive of Women’s Wear Daily, from the first issue in 1910 to material from within the last twelve months, reproduced in high-resolution images.

Archives of Sexuality and Gender
Provides access to materials exploring important aspects of LGBTQ life. Includes periodicals, newsletters, manuscripts, government records, organizational papers, correspondence, an international selection of posters, and other primary source materials.
Includes access to five modules: LGBTQ History Since 1940, part 1; LGBTQ History Since 1940, part 2; Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century; International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture; and L'Enfer de la Bibliotheque Nationale de France Digital Archive.
Defining Gender
Searchable full-text of advice literature covering household management, education, leisure, shoppping, sexuality, consumption and sport.
Defining Gender is a collection of fully digitized rare primary source advice literature covering five centuries between 1450 through 1910. The documents have been selected from a European perspective with an emphasis on British and European sources.
Defining Gender contains complete scanned books, pamphlets, periodicals, collections of letters, biographies, short stories, novels, and poetry, as well as recent thematic essays by leading scholars in the field of Gender Studies which place the documents within a broad historical, literary and cultural context.
Currently containing sections on Conduct and Politeness and Domesticity and the Family, Defining Gender includes some of the seminal texts used in Gender studies from authors such as Christine De Pisan, Daniel Defoe, Delarivier Manley, Margery Kempe, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Some key areas of behavior of men and women addressed include cookery, health, courtship, marriage and role of husband and wife, sexuality, courtly behavior, children, education, class, and religion and morality.
Disability in the Modern World: History of a Social Movement
Access to primary sources, supporting materials, and archives, along with 125 hours of video related to disability studies.
Everyday Life & Women in America
Provides access to primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. Includes monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.
Feminism in Cuba: Nineteenth through Twentieth Century Archival Documents
The collection contains texts, personal letters, journal essays, radio broadcasts, and memoirs from women congresses from Cuban independence to the end of the Batista regime.
The collections, mostly in Spanish, include works by feminists about feminists and their causes, works by men on the status of women, and literary works by feminist writers that illustrate or discuss the condition of women. Among the journals in the collection are items from Aspiraciones, a feminist journal published by the Partido Feminista Aspiraciones, La Mujer Moderno, the journal for the Club Femenino de Cuba, and La Mujer, the journal of the Partido Demócrata Sufragista.
There are also assessments by politicians, jurists, and legislators about the condition of women in the cities and countryside and excerpts from novels, essays and poetry written by women about women. Also included are literary anthologies of Cuban women writers in general as well as literary analysis of these women's works.

Source Library: Personal collection Dr. K. Lynn Stoner
Gender: Identity and Social Change
Primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Includes sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.
Material has been sourced from across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Key areas represented in the material include: employment and labor, education, government and legislation, the body, domesticity and the family. Includes records from men’s and women’s organisations and pressure groups, detailing twentieth-century lobbying and activism on a wide array of issues to reveal developing gender relations and prevalent challenges.
Godey’s Lady’s Book: 1830-1898
The most popular women's periodical of its day, with stories, poems, fashion, illustrations and music.
Godey's Lady's Book was intended to entertain, inform and educate the women of America. In addition to fashion descriptions and plates, the early issues included biographical sketches, articles about mineralogy, handcrafts, female costume, the dance, equestrienne procedures, health and hygiene, recipes and remedies and the like. Each issue also contained two pages of sheet music, written essentially for the piano forte. Gradually the periodical matured into an important literary magazine containing extensive book reviews and works by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and many other celebrated 19th century authors who regularly furnished the magazine with essays, poetry and short stories. Also includes hand-colored fashion plates, mezzotints, engravings, woodcuts and, chromolithographs.
LGBT Magazine Archive
Access to archival runs of 26 of the most influential, longest-running serial publications covering LGBT interests. Includes the pre-eminent US and UK titles – The Advocate and Gay Times, respectively. Includes access to collection 1 and collection 2.
Chronicles more than six decades of the history and culture of the LGBT community. In addition to LGBT/gender/sexuality studies, this material also serves related disciplines such as sociology, political science, psychology, health, and the arts.
LGBT Thought and Culture
LGBT Thought and Culture is an online resource hosting books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.
MEF Media Studies & Communication Collection
Streaming full-length documentaries from Media Education Foundation. Films cover critical thinking on the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media, with a special focus on representations of gender and race.
Over 70 documentary films are available for immediate access. Includes some of the most requested titles for classroom use to include: "Killing Us Softly," "Dreamworlds" "Joystick Warriors: Video Games, Violence & the Culture of Militarism," "Game Over: Gender, Race & Violence in Video Games," and "Tough Guise: Violence. Media and the Crisis in Masculinity."
Perdita Manuscripts
Provides digital access to manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sourced from archives and libraries across the United Kingdom and the USA.
This resource is produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University. “Perdita” means “lost woman” and the quest of the Perdita Project has been to find early modern women authors who were “lost” because their writing exists only in manuscript form.
Queer Pasts
Collection of primary source document collections and curatorial essays aimed at students and scholars of queer history and culture. The database uses “queer” in its broadest and most inclusive sense, to embrace topics that are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender and to include work on sexual and gender formations that are queer but not necessarily LGBT.
Each document exhibit includes 20-40 primary source documents; whenever possible, they are available in both transcribed (searchable) and original form. Every exhibit also includes a critical introductory essay that helps explain the significance of the primary sources in historical terms and in relationship to previous scholarship.
Revolution, 1868-1872
Weekly women’s rights newspaper, and the official publication of the National Woman Suffrage Association formed by feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to secure women’s enfranchisement through a federal constitutional amendment.
Published between January 8, 1868 and February, 1872, The Revolution was edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury. The paper’s motto, printed on the masthead of the first edition’s front page, was, “Principle, not policy; Justice, not favors.” Beginning with the second edition, the following was added: “Men, their rights and nothing more; Women, their rights and nothing less.” Later editions had this motto: “The True Republic–Men, their rights and nothing more; Women, their rights and nothing less.”
Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records, 1880-1990
Digital access to records of three important women's rights organizations: the National Woman's Party, the League of Women Voters, and the Women's Action Alliance.
Originally a committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the National Woman's Party (NWP) was founded in 1913 when Alice Paul and her colleagues broke away from NAWSA in dissent over strategy and tactics. The Women's Action Alliance, established in 1971 as a grass-roots organization, concerned itself with issues such as employment and employment discrimination, childcare, health care, and education. The League of Women Voters collection documents almost every facet of women's involvement in U.S. politics from 1920 to 1974.
Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History
Women's travel diaries and correspondence from the early 19th century to the late 20th century.
Women's travel diaries and correspondence from the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. A wide variety of forms of travel writing is represented, ranging from unique manuscripts, diaries and correspondence to drawings, guidebooks and photographs. The resource includes visual material, including postcards, sketches and photographs. Sources cover a variety of topics including: architecture; art; British Empire; climate; customs; exploration; family life; housing; industry; language; monuments; mountains; natural history; politics and diplomacy; race; religion; science; shopping; war.
Includes travel accounts by: Mary Adams Abbott, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Annie Ware (Winsor) Allen, Mary Almy, Philinda Parsons (Rand) Anglemyer, Jessie Anglum, Valina Blake, Rettie Downer Blanchard, Mary Anderson Boit, Sarah (Knowles) Bolton, Tabitha Moffett Brown, Cannon Family, Cornelia James Cannon, Eleanor Cobb, Marion Osborne (Graves) Code, Catherine Coyne, Mary (Gardiner) Davis, Freda Mae (Rustemeyer) De Pillis, Julia Coolidge Deane, Josephine (Jackson) Driggs, Mary Reed Eastman, Maria Fay, Lucy H. Fosdick, Mehetable May (Dawes) Goddard, Eve Grantham Kingsland, Florence Ledyard (Cross) Kitchelt, Rowena (Morse) Langer, Lily Larkin, Elizabeth (Stone) May, Edna Bertha (Rankin) Mckinnon, Eva Alberta Mooar, Alice (Rich) Northrop, Chloe Owings, Harriet (Newell Felton) Parker, Helen Jackson Piper, Ida Pruitt, Ruth Elspeth Raymond, Mrs Edward H. Reeves, Lucile (Osborn) Rust, Lillian Schoedler, Grace (Gallatin) Seton-Thompson, Catherine (Filene) Shouse, Sarah Anne (Keegan) Shurtleff, Corinna Haven Lindon (Putnam) Smith, Louise Stoughton, Marie (Barrows) Streeter, M.L. Sullivan, Rosamond Thaxter, Ella Frances Thayer, Sarah Ann Walker, Evelyn Wendt. (OCLC)
Women in the National Archives
This collection consists of two elements: A finding aid to women's studies resources in The National Archives, and original documents on the suffrage question in Britain, the Empire and colonial territories.

For further film & image resources, see the complete list of resources on the Media Studies Guide.

Disability in the Modern World: History of a Social Movement
Access to primary sources, supporting materials, and archives, along with 125 hours of video related to disability studies.
LGBT Studies in Video
LGBT Studies in Video is a cinematic survey of the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as well as the cultural and political evolution of the LGBT community. Includes access to volume 1 and volume 2.
Independent World Cinema: Classic and Contemporary Film
Includes more than 200 of the most important films produced from the early 20th century to today.
Includes films from independent distributors, such as Milestone Films, Zeitgeist Films, Pragda, and Oscilloscope. The films fit into a variety of disciplines, including cultural history, psychology, gender studies, anthropology, theater, and African American studies.
MEF Media Studies & Communication Collection
Streaming full-length documentaries from Media Education Foundation. Films cover critical thinking on the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media, with a special focus on representations of gender and race.
Over 70 documentary films are available for immediate access. Includes some of the most requested titles for classroom use to include: "Killing Us Softly," "Dreamworlds" "Joystick Warriors: Video Games, Violence & the Culture of Militarism," "Game Over: Gender, Race & Violence in Video Games," and "Tough Guise: Violence. Media and the Crisis in Masculinity."

Women Film Pioneers Project
A scholarly resource created by Columbia University that explores women’s global involvement at all levels of film production during the silent film era.

Chronicling America
Access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages. Search historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages.

Discovering American Women's History Online
This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States.

Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers
Includes over 1,000 newspaper titles from Mexico’s pre-independence, independence and revolutionary periods (1807-1929). PLEASE NOTE: registration is required to download PDFs.
Covers Mexican partisan politics, yellow press, political and social satire, as well as local, regional, national and international news. While holdings of many of the newspapers in this collection are available only in very short runs, the titles are often unique and, in many cases, represent the only existing record of a newspaper’s short-lived publication.
Independent Voices
Independent Voices is a series of digital collections of the alternative press that are complete runs of newspapers, magazines, and journals drawn from special collections of leading academic libraries.
These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
LGBTQ+ Library Catalog
The LGBTQ+ Library Catalog contains materials pertaining to asexual, bisexual, gay, intersex, lesbian, transgender, and queer issues. These resources include books, videos, CDs, and periodicals. This collection is intended to be a resource for both research and entertainment.
The LGBTQ+ Library provides lending services to the entire community; anyone can register to become a patron with a photo ID.
Victorian Women Writers Project
Provides highly accurate transcriptions of literary works by British women writers of the late 19th century.
The goal of the Victorian Women Writers Project is to produce highly accurate transcriptions of literary works by British women writers of the late 19th century, encoded using the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). The works, selected with the assistance of the Advisory Board, will include anthologies, novels, political pamphlets, and volumes of poetry and verse drama.
Perry Willett, General Editor

Gender Studies

Getting Started with General Databases

Specialized Databases

Women's History

Women's Writing

Women's Movements

Women's Publications

Social media

Additional resources

Featured Databases

IU Libraries