Author: Kelin Baldridge Smallwood
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Where did she find the time? : The Very Industrious Life of Elizabeth Fee
Elizabeth Fee was a professor, historian, and major figure in the history of science, medicine, and public health in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Over the last six months, while delving into the tangible remnants of her life and work, I have also learned that she was an attentive mentor, an uplifter, a…
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“Napoleon Bonaparte, Martyr of St. Helena,” an Ode to the French Hero
In 1840, during the peak of the ennuie of the bourgeois society of King Louis-Philippe, the body of the French hero Napoleon Bonaparte was returned to France, reigniting the fire and patriotism of his many admirers. This effect took hold in French supporters of Napoleon all over the world and, more specifically, this moment resonated…
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“Getting Fat and Lazy” in World War I France
Stationed overseas in small towns surrounding Dijon, France, David Rosenblum was far from the front line during World War I. Rosenblum described his time in the United States military from 1918 to 1919 as being “just like a vacation and a little hard work.” In his letters home, he talks about girls and ‘grub,’ about…
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Why is Mary Navis not famous?
Why is Mary Navis not famous? She was the “duchess of swing,” the only female leader of a male ensemble who played an instrument, and was once the leading trumpeter in Ina Ray Hutton’s all-female group, the Melodears. She was hugely successful in the big band era of jazz, yet she doesn’t produce a single…
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Injustice in the Justice System: Women in Prison in the Mid to Late 19th Century
Reading through the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons records is not unlike reading nineteenth century crime novels. Many of the crimes presented in the case reports are akin to Jean Valjean’s crime of stealing a loaf of bread that eventually earned him nineteen years in prison in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.…
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Who IS Francis Howard Williams?
Much of the Francis Howard Williams papers consists of correspondence and manuscripts from a literary critic and writer in the late nineteenth century. There is extensive correspondence ranging from 1880 to 1909 between Williams and the “who’s who” of the nineteenth century literary world. These letters contain dialogue concerning poems and texts that Williams both…
Unique at Penn 