Eileen Stec - Instruction and Outreach Librarian Sara Harrington - Art Librarian Ferris Olin - Head, Margery Somers Foster Center estec@rci.rutgers.edu July 3, 2007

Research Resources: Subject Research Guides: Women's Studies:
Images of Women

• Images of Women in the Media
• Images of Women in an Historical Context
• Images of Women in Art and Images of Art by Women

This list contains online and print resources useful in obtaining images of women within a context. Some art materials are the creations of women, others contain information about the artists. Some materials focus on women and some general media resources contain limited information about women.

Images of Women in the Media

Beyond Nancy Drew - Girls' Literature in the Sallie Bingham Center For Women's History and Culture
A Duke University project, this bibliography of American girls' literature dates from 1869 through the 1990's. Mostly an historical list of girls reading materials, it is liberally sprinkled with small scanned images of books covers. The reading material is arranged in various topics: Early Literature for Girls; A Christian Upbringing; Etiquettes and Girls' B ehavior; Nurses in Girls' Literature; Outdoor and Adventure Series; Girl Detectives: Mysteries for Girls; Tomboys and Working Girls; Lollipop Power Press; Heroines; and Reference Works, Bibliographies, Scholarly Writings.

From Domesticity to Modernity: What Was Home Economics?
This exhibit was a collaborative effort between Cornell University's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections and the Human Development 455 course Archival Research: Exploring the History of Home Economics. The site includes scanned images, photos, bibliography, timeline, and oral histories concerning one of the few socially acceptable professions open to American women in the early 1900's.

Emergence of Advertising in America 1850-1920 (EAA) Created by Duke University.
"EAA presents over 9,000 images that illustrate the rise of consumer culture, especially after the American Civil War, and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States." The collection covers the subject areas: Broadsides, advertising cookbooks, scrapbooks, tobacco advertising, and follows the advertisements of several large American companies.

Ad*Access - Hygiene, Transportation, Radio, Television, and World War II Created by Duke University.
This database contains images of more than 7,000 advertisements printed mainly in US newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Subjects focus on Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II.

Commercial Closet Created by The Commercial Closet Association, a non-profit education organization.
The site covers three decades of gay and lesbian advertising in mainstream media. Some representations illustrate and enforce stereotypes, some break new ground. There is small but important coverage of lesbians as represented in advertising, most within the 1990's to present.

On women: Films & Videos available through Rutgers Universities Libraries Created by Rutgers University Libraries.
An annotated list of 207 films and videos available for viewing at media library, located in the Kilmer library, Livingston Campus, Piscataway, NJ. A subject index for the list is also provided at the end of the site.(last updated 1996)

Popular Magazines

Academic Search Premier: Rutgers Restricted
An electronic subscription database at Rutgers University Libraries is listed under Indexes and Databases. It hosts a searchable Image Collection containing private archival and news photos on many topics.

National Archives
The online exhibit Powers of Persuasion represents a portion of the World War II posters held in the National Archives and shown in the 1995 exhibition of the same name. The posters are divided into two broad categories: those meant to instill patriotism and celebrate valor, and those meant to show the horrific realities of modern warfare. These broad categories are further divided into subcategories including women during wartime and wartime espionage.

Northwestern University
Northwestern University's World War II Poster Collection database provides a searchable archive of posters emanating from the World War II period. Posters can be searched by keyword, topic, title, or date. The site also includes a helpful FAQ with additional information about World War II posters.

E. H. Tepper Collection of World War II Posters Rutgers University
The E. H. Tepper Collection of World War II Posters covers a wide spectrum of themes. The posters are divided into individual folders, and the entire list of titles and related information can be found online. Use the "find in page" search through the browser window to search for particular keywords of interest.

Images of Women in an Historical Context

Railway Women in Wartime
Photos taken during World War I and II of women working for the British Railway.

Unpacking on the Prairie: Jewish Women in the Upper Midwest
Created by the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest, this site contains many personal photos and images of the life a Jewish woman experienced during the settlement of the American Great Lakes and Plains regions.

WILD: Women in Leadership Database Produced by the Margery Somers Foster Center at Rutgers University Libraries.
This database, includes about 200 digital images and audio/visual materials that are unique archival documents, photographs, memorabilia, videotapes found in the collections of centers, institutes, programs, departments, and libraries at Rutgers. These audio and visual items represent a sampling of such primary sources that focus on women and leadership. They can be accessed through a searchable database, that includes descriptions about the collections from which they have been selected.

American Memory Created by the Library of Congress.
This site houses American historical collections covering 1400's to the present in over 100 collections. Most collections contain reproductions of original text, many have visual images and some contain sound recordings. Only two collections are titled "Woman Suffrage", however, searching for "woman" in most of the collections will produce individual records containing unidentified women. There are also several "African American" and "AfroAmerican" collections , and one "Japanese American" collection included in the site.

New Jersey Women's History A collaboration between the Rutgers University Libraries Margery Somers Foster Center, Special Collections and University Archives and Scholarly Communications Center, and the Women's Project of New Jersey and the New Jersey Historical Society.
This site presents materials of importance to New Jersey women from pre-1775 through the 1990's.

Images of Women in Art and Images of Art by Women

Images of Women in Ancient Art Created by Chris Witcombe, Sweet Briar College
This site was constructed in conjunction with an honors seminar studying images of women in ancient art. It also forms part of a mammoth web guide for research into all areas of the history of art (simply remove the "imageswomen" section from the url to visit the homepage for the larger guide). The ancient art section is divided into geographical regions.

Women Studies Resources, Art and Performance Created by Karla Tonella, University of Iowa
A wide-ranging web guide exploring individual women artists and women's art organizations, arranged alphabetically. The links at the top of the page lead to women's studies resources in related areas, such as feminist theory and history.

Women Artists Created by Patricia Lin, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
This site focuses on self-portraits by women arts, and other representations of women in the arts, from the medieval period to the twentieth century. Short biographies of and a representative image by women artists are included. If possible, relevant web links are provided.

Images of Women in Prints from the Renaissance to the Present Bayly Art Museum, University of Virginia
This virtual exhibition of prints dating from the Renaissance to the present entitled "The Power of Woe, The Power of Life," is the companion to the 1998 exhibition of the same name. The virtual tour allows you to move the physical space of the museum by clicking on particular wall numbers. Images are accompanied by brief textual annotations, and the entire exhibition has a useful introduction.

Art Images for College Teaching
This site provides image associated with the teaching of the history of art in generalized survey courses. The site is not searchable, but even in browsing a number of representative images of women in art or women artists are available across various stylistic periods.

AMICA Library: Rutgers Restricted
AMICA can be found in the Indexes and Databases list on the homepage of the Rutgers University Libraries, or can be searched by title in IRIS. The AMICA Library is an image consortium of works held in North American museums. The database is searchable by creator or artist, title, keyword, and additional fields. The thumbnail images can be enlarged by clicking on the image, and each image is accompanied by full descriptive information, including artist, title, date, media, dimensions, and owner.

ArtWomen.Org
ArtWomen.org focuses on the life of contemporary women artists. The site also has a link to current issues for women artists and reviews of exhibitions of contemporary women artists.

National Museum of Women in the Arts
This is the only museum in the world dedicated solely to the exhibition and promotion of the work of women artists. The web site provides a series of virtual tours with the museum's founder, Wilhelmina Cole Holladay. The extensive table of contents leads to links for best exploring the richness of the entire site.

Women Photographers, UCR/California Museum of Photography
This striking and content-rich site examines the work of women photographers. The site is divided into online "chapters" that document and explore the work of individual women photographers from various time periods.

Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Rutgers University Libraries
The Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series is the longest running art exhibition series devoted to exhibiting and championing the work of emerging and established contemporary women artists. The virtual catalog for each year provides information about the series, statements from the exhibiting artists, and sample images from each artist.

Women Artists Archive Sonoma State University
The Women Artists Archive of Sonoma State University contains information on over 1,400 women artists from the Middle Ages through the present day. The companion web site includes an online gallery and searchable database of Sonoma State's collection relating to women artists. The site also includes a guide for researching women artists in a broader context.

The World's Women On-line!
An international "global exhibit" of female artists. The site does not provide a count of the number of artists included, but, it is estimated at over 1000 participating artists provide one individual work for display on the Internet.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of The New York Public Library, is a major research center for the documentation of those of African descent throughout the world. The site provides a changing array of online exhibitions, as well as a section on digital resources including a rich collection of Images of African Americans from the 19th Century. Online resources include links to selected Internet resources on Africa and the Africa[n] Diaspora.