Women@Iowa

In the winter of 1955, 17-year-old Dora Lee Martin won the title Miss State University of Iowa (as the UI was then called). While winning this contest, based on female nominations and male votes, was uncommon enough for a freshman, Martin's status as the first African American student to be awarded such an honor gained media attention all over Iowa, across the country and around the world.

One of the most prolific content providers to the Iowa Digital Library is the University of Iowa’s Iowa Women’s Archives. IWA is located in a separate space on the 3rd floor of the Main Library, and houses over 1100 manuscript collections that document the lives of Iowa women from all backgrounds and walks of life.

In this dissertation, Donna A. Lancianese looks at the impact of social class on how we relate to one another. Through focus groups at the University of Iowa, she establishes socially constructed profiles of the "Rich Guy" and the "Poor Guy," using them to gain a greater understanding of how social classes are constituted and how gender alters or conforms to these ideas.

Chelsea D. Burk's 2014 essay in the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies looks at Leslie Marmon Silko's influence on poet Jo Harjo. In particular she examines the ways in which Harjo's character Noni Daylight extends ideas introduced by Marmon Silko's character Yellow Woman.

In 2014, Associate Professor of Political Science Timothy M. Hagle published an examination of Iowa voters in presidential and midterm elections since the year 2000. Professor Hagle focuses on party and gender as he looks at who votes, how often, and when.

A tri-autobiography, Tight Spaces shares the remarkable stories of three women (and UI students): Kesho Scott, Cherry Muhanji, and Egyirba High. Their stories and essays examine the social and physical geographies of the Midwest and the place of race, class, age, gender, and sexuality within them. These "tight spaces" are opened and explored, fleshed out and felt, in the sensitive, wry, and determined voices of the book.

Althea "Bee" Moore was an undergraduate student at the University of Iowa (then known as the State University of Iowa) from 1924 to 1928. Very active socially, the scrapbook's collection of photographs, clippings, invitations and concert programs reflect Moore's wide acquaintance among the African American community of Iowa in the 1920s.

The Morris Family Papers collection in the University of Iowa Libraries – University Archives follows the academic and professional lives of two generations of Iowans.

In honor of the 90th Anniversary of women’s suffrage, the UI Libraries digitized thousands of documents, photographs, and artifacts highlighting Iowa’s unique heritage. The materials come from the Iowa Women's Archives, the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Special Collections Departments of The University of Iowa and Iowa State University libraries.

In this collection of performance essays, Suzanne Marie Cody uses shoes and clothes to explore the many lives a woman may live. Each pair conveys a different experience, a different time and different lessons like chapters of a book, while constantly calling attention to what it means to walk a mile in a woman's shoes - whether they're hiking boots or red stilettos.

Linghua Xu’s 2015 MA thesis uses the 1934 Shanghai film New Woman to closely examine the place of women in Chinese society. Writes Xu:   The conception of “new woman”(xin nü xing, 新女性) was popularized during the New Culture Movement beginning from 1919, which was a whole-scale criticism and rethinking of Chinese culture surrounding almost every aspect of Chinese

In Marilda Janet Oviedo’s 2013 dissertation Growing up Latinita: Latina girls, online ‘zine production, and identity formation, the media products of the non-profit organization Latinitas are examined to understand how they impact their reader’s ideology and how they help create and establish personal identity. Latinitas claims to empower Latina youth through education, including two age

The purpose of this study was to gather descriptive data on the experiences of Black female student athletes. A better understanding of the experiences of Black female student athletes as students, as athletes, and as developing young women may help student affairs practitioners better understand their collegiate experience; provide them with information to make decisions

In this article, originally published in the Journal of Corporation Law in 1997, Marc Linder analyzes the discrepancy in professional footwear between genders, paying particular attention to the apparel expectations of flight attendants.

This article by Meenakshi Gigi Durham, published in the Journal of Children and Media, analyzes through a feminist lens the ways in which the popular Twilight series enforce ideas of gendered violence. Examining both the explicit and implicit verbal and visual messaging of the Twilight books and films, Durham critiques the expectations put forward by the author with regard to masculine violence and feminine acquiescence.

In her 2013 dissertation, Sharon Yih-Chih Lee highlights the gap in vocational literature pertaining to work in the humanities and arts, even more so for Asian American women.

Eve Drewelowe received her BA in Graphic and Plastic Arts from the University of Iowa in 1923. She petitioned the UI in order to pursue her course of study at the graduate level. A year later she completed the MA in Graphic and Plastic Arts, becoming one of the first people in the nation to receive this degree. The collection includes biographical information, correspondence, exhibit materials, manuscripts, travel journals and sketchbooks, scrapbooks, photographs, artwork inventories, and other miscellaneous materials.

In this article, written as part of an undergraduate history seminar at the University of Iowa, Kenneth Dofner argues that feminist theory and action created the foundation that helped shaped policy during and after the Farm Crisis. Looking at the ways in which second-wave feminism shaped grassroots organizing during the Farm Crisis, he illustrates the important social and political role that women played in Iowa's rural communities in the 1980s and beyond.

The Iowa Women's Archives contains thousands of documents related to the lives of African American Women in Iowa. Among those documents are the Edna Griffin Papers - a collection of photographs, interviews, newspaper clippings related to the life of this remarkable Iowan and civil rights activist. The collection also includes her FBI file from 1948 to 1951, which you can help transcribe at DIY History.

In this dissertation, Brittany Nicole Tullis examines the evolution of femininity in male-authored Latin American comics. In particular three authors, Gabriel Vargas’ La Familia Burrón (Mexico, 1948-2009), Quino’s Mafalda (Argentina, 1964-1973), and Love and Rockets (Los Bros. Hernandez, 1981-1996; 2000-present) are closely followed. These examples are used to demonstrate the ability of the comic strip

This article, originally published by the State Historical Society of Iowa, discusses the movement to address woman homemakers, displaced from the home and forced into employment by divorce, widowhood or any variety of marital problems.

Kristine E. Newhall's 2013 dissertation looks at gender barriers in gyms and how space impacts use across gender. Looking at three Massachusetts-based gyms, she traces the use and disuse of gym space and its consequences for women's fitness, who owns it and who shapes it.

In this gendered literary analysis, Victoria Bryan examines the importance of food and eating space as gendered subjects, citing the masculine outsider perspective in dining in the homespace. She uses all key elements of Eudora Welty’s food writing to underscore the highly gendered eating spaces of men and women, and argues the following:   In