Interactive Women’s History Timeline

The Women’s History Timeline is a clever feature found on the BBC Woman’s Hour Web site (see previous post).

Across the top is a series of thumbnail photos, each representing a decade in British women’s history.  Clicking on a thumbnail launches a narration of major events illustrated by a series of photographs.  Each narration is approximately 90 seconds long.  The site includes a transcript as well.

I thought the timeline was intriguing and motivating.  It’s a great way to get an overview of British women’s history.  Being from the United States, I liked being able to compare women’s experiences in the U.K. to women’s experiences in the United States.

I would love to include something like this as an introduction to my podcast project about my mother’s experience in World War II, but alas, no time to learn more software.  The timeline appears to have been created in Flash. 

Podcasts About Women in World War II

My class project, Soldiers Without Guns: The Patton Girls in World War II, is a series of interviews with my mother and aunts about their experiences during World War II. 

I decided to look for similar podcasts – whether done as family history or oral histories.  I found a couple of examples I’ll describe over the next few posts.

First, Women Welders in World War Two, is a podcast from a BBC Radio Show called Woman’s Hour.   The 8:05 minute podcast describes the work of Dr. Margaretta Jolly, who found letters written by women welders in Yorkshire, England, and turned the letters into a book, Dear Laughing Motorbike.  Although this podcast focuses on women in the United Kingdom, whereas my family is all in the United States, I found one point particularly interesting:

“We don’t want to exaggerate the idea that this work was, in any simple sense, liberating.  We often tend to do, now, looking back.  That’s one of the images.  Rosie the Riveter is standing for some kind of simple image of women going into the workplace or being liberated.  I realize through interviewing the women today and through reading the letters that it wasn’t in any way glamorous or romantic.  They did it, first of all, for money.  And they went into those jobs because they were called up by the Labor Exchange.”

But as one of the woman welders emphasized,

“When you were doing it, you felt that you were helping the war.”

I found similar sentiments in my interviews.  My mother and aunts recognized it was a good opportunity, especially to make money, which was important because they had grown up relatively poor.  However, they believed they were helping the war effort in their own way and were proud of it. 

Woman’s Hour: History and Science Archive lists other podcasts regarding women’s role in history.

History Through Songs

One of my favorite podcasts is the Nashville Nobody Knows produced and hosted by Candace Corrigan.  It has great music by Nashville artists and musicians who should be on the radio, but usually aren’t.

Well, it turns out that Candace is herself a singer-songwriter and a historian!  Her album, Through a Woman’s Voice, is a series of songs based upon women’s diaries and other oral history.  Each song tells the story of a specific woman from the frontier to the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. 

Among my favorites are “Jubilee” about Ella Sheppard Moore (1851 – 1914), one of the original Fisk University Jubilee Singers, and “Doctor Woman of the Cumberlands” about Dr. May Cravath Wharton (1873 – 1959).  Candace has an amazing ability to express a heart-felt story within a musical style authentic to the time period, while still keeping her own musical style.

On Candace’s Web site, you can listen to the songs and read a description of each woman profiled.  Through a Woman’s Voice won Best Radio Documentary, National Communicator Awards 1998. 

Listen to Through a Woman’s Voice at http://candacecorrigan.com/music.html.