Lady Mary Montagu was an 18th century noblewoman whose contributions to the fields of travel writing and medicine were nearly forgotten due to her sex.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Feminist Writer, Lecturer, and Thinker
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist writer, lecturer, and thinker at the turn of the 20th century. Despite her lack of formal education, she authored Women in Economics, a foundational text of early feminism, and became known as a preeminent sociologist, philosopher, and social critic. Her works of fiction represented the psychological impact of traditional […]
Melanie Klein, the Founding Mother of Children’s Psychology
As with many fields of study, the canonical works of the social sciences are overrun with the findings of white males. But in the field of psychoanalysis, Melanie Klein, a Viennese Jewish woman, made an impact on the field with her unlikely-sounding theories published in her book The Psychoanalysis of Children, where she documents infants’ […]
Suzanne Valadon, self-taught artist of Bohemian Paris
Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) was a successful, self-trained artist of Montmartre in Paris. She began her career modelling for such artists as Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir, and was close friends with Degas and the composer Erik Satie (who proposed to her immediately — but she turned him down). Watching how the artists painted her, she taught herself […]
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, self-taught scholar and poet of New Spain
Born in New Spain (now Mexico) in 1651, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a nun who wrote what is considered the first feminist manifesto. She was revered as a prodigy during her lifetime, and was one of the most widely published writers of the period. The illegitimate child of a creole woman and […]
