Introduction
Primary sources are original materials that provide firsthand information about an event or person. They can be published or unpublished, and might include newspaper articles from the time of an event, diaries, letters, photographs, and videos. The resources listed on this page have a particular focus on women, gender, and/or sexuality. For more information on finding and using primary sources, visit the primary sources section of the History resource guide.
New Gender and Sexuality Primary Source Collections
- Archives of Sexuality and Gender This link opens in a new windowThe Archives of Sexuality and Gender program provides a robust and significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas. This growing archival program offers rich research opportunities across a wide span of human history.
- Defining Gender This link opens in a new windowDiscover five centuries of advice literature from the mid-15th to early 20th century. Research the ideals of social conduct, power distribution within the family, consumption and leisure, education of men and women and gendered perceptions of the body to analyse and challenge the changing views and ideas surrounding traditional gender roles.
- Everyday Life and Women in America, c1800-1920 This link opens in a new windowAmerican social, cultural, and popular history during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.
- Sex and Sexuality This link opens in a new windowThis collection explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Investigating the breadth and complexity of human sexual understanding through the work of leading sexologists, sex researchers, organizations and personal accounts.
- Women's Studies Archive This link opens in a new windowThe Women's Studies Archive documents the social, political, and professional aspects of women's lives, offering resources pertaining to the roles, experiences, and achievements of women in society. The database is in four parts: Issues and Identities; Voice and Vision; Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922; Female Forerunners Worldwide.
Primary Sources
- GenderWatch This link opens in a new windowThis is a database of unique and diverse publications that focus on how gender impacts a broad spectrum of subject areas. With its archival material, dating back to 1970 in some cases, GenderWatch is a repository of important historical perspectives on the evolution of the women's movement, men's studies, the transgender community and the changes in gender roles over the years. Publications include scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books and NGO, government and special reports.
- Godey's Lady's Book This link opens in a new windowPart of Accessible Archives, this collection provides the complete run of Godey’s Lady’s Book, and contains the color plates as they originally appeared. In Philadelphia in 1830 Louis Antoine Godey (1804-1878) published the magazine designed specifically to attract the growing audience of American women. In addition to extensive fashion descriptions and plates, the early issues included biographical sketches, articles about mineralogy, handcrafts, female costume, the dance, equestrienne procedures, health and hygiene, recipes and remedies and the like. Each issue also contained two pages of sheet music, written essentially for the pianoforte.
- North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new windowNorth American Women's Letters and Diaries offers a large collection of women's diaries and correspondence spanning more than 300 years.
- Twentieth Century Advice Literature This link opens in a new windowThis collection offers published primary source materials reflecting historical American attitudes towards race, citizenship, education, work, sex, gender roles, life cycles, family, and religion. Included are professional and employee manuals; society publications, among them sorority and fraternity pledge manuals and Boy Scout and Girl Scout manuals; textbooks discussing home economics, health and hygiene, and sex education; teacher-training and course manuals; commercial literature; and government instruction manuals for various workplaces and industries.
- Women and Social Movements, International - 1840 to Present This link opens in a new windowThis collection of primary resources documents international women’s social movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Included are conference proceedings; reports of international women's organizations; publications and web pages of women's non-governmental organization; and letters, diaries, and memoirs.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new windowFull-text of published histories and records of women’s reform organizations throughout the United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It includes The History of Woman Suffrage; proceedings of the national conventions of female Anti-Slavery societies in the 1830s; proceedings of women’s rights conventions in the 1850s and 1860s; annual reports of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; and local and national histories of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.
- Southern Women Interview Series at the Southern Oral History ProgramPart of UNC's Southern Oral History Program, interviews in this series focus on women's participation in movements for social change. Interviews look at the role of women in the anti-lynching movement of the Depression decade, labor relations, race relations, and other reform movements.
- Empowering VoicesThis digital exhibit, Empowering Voices, provides compelling examples from collections in The University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections that chronicle the growth of the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning) community in the United States, and specifically in Alabama. The items are from the Alabama Forum Records, the Billy Jack Gaither Collection, the Hoole Library Alabama Collection, the Miller-Stephens GLBTQ UA Student Organization Collection, the Tuscaloosa Lesbian Coalition Records, the Wade Hall Papers, and the West Alabama AIDS Outreach Records.
- The Invisible Histories Project
The invisible Histories Project is designed to be a connection between Queer communities and local repositories for the preservation of the history of LGBTQ life throughout the American South. The archive will preserve, collect, and protect the living history of the diversity of the Queer community and experiences both urban and rural.. iHP is a community driven project that seeks to engage Southern Queer people, local universities, libraries, and archives in the process of protecting the vanishing LGBTQ history of our region. - Digital Transgender ArchiveThe purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world.
- African American Newspapers (1827-1998) This link opens in a new windowThis collection includes the full text of historically significant African American newspapers, published in 36 states.
Access requires on-campus authentication.
- Alabama Forum Newspaper ArchiveThe Alabama Forum, published in Birmingham from 1977 to 2002 under editor June Holloway, was one of the longest-running news sources for the LBGTQ community in the state of Alabama. This digital collection consists of 245 issues, published from 1981 to 2002 and totaling more than 4,500 pages.
- Alt-PressWatch This link opens in a new windowAlt-PressWatch includes full-text newspapers and magazines from alternative, independent presses, providing an unmatched, multidisciplinary resource for researchers seeking an alternative to mainstream media perspectives.
- National Citizen and Ballot Box This link opens in a new windowPart of Accessible Archives, The National Citizen and Ballot Box was a monthly journal deeply involved in the roots of the American feminist movement.
- ProQuest Newspapers This link opens in a new windowProvides full text of many U.S. and international news sources. Includes the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Times of London, plus other newspapers and news wires.
- Newspaper Databases in UA LibrariesCan't find what you're looking for above? Follow this link for a comprehensive guide to searching for newspapers at UA Libraries, organized by century.
- Research Portal: Alabama Women's LivesAn interactive research portal highlighting primary resources about Alabama women found in the Division of Special Collections.
Hoole Special Collections
- Radical South Zine CollectionZines created by southern young women, on a variety of personal and political topics, including art, drugs, education, gender and sexuality, mental health, music, people and society, popular culture, race and ethnicity, religion and spirituality, and sex. The collection includes around 60 titles from the 1990s-2000s.
- The David Walker Lupton African American Cookbook CollectionOne of the largest collections of African American cookbooks in the country, the collection allows users to explore various aspects of the relationship between food and African American history and culture. Culinary texts yield far more than recipes when closely scrutinized. They are written from the point of view of an individual or a community and, as such, have much to say about ethnic identity, family and community life, social history, the roles of women and men, values, religion, and economics, as well as the more obvious fields of diet and nutrition, use of agricultural products, the food supply, and general food history.
- Guide to Hoole Special CollectionsIn addition to the collections highlighted above, Hoole is home to many items that shed light on the experiences of historical women, particularly in the South. Explore them at this link.
Williams Collection
- Women's History in the Williams Americana CollectionThis page gives an overview of the materials related to women's history, mostly of Alabama and the South, in the A.S. Williams III Americana Collection, housed on the 2nd floor of Gorgas Library.