Little has been published about press organizations, and even less about women's press organizations. This book is the first to document the history of women's press organizations. In addition to rich historical accounts of some of these organizations, it also provides a picture of many of the women journalists involved in these press organizations, many of whom were leaders, both in journalism and in the social movements of their time. This book is a description and analysis of forty women's press organizations that have been key to the development of women writers of the press since the first established organization in 1881. Each entry describes the challenges faced by women that brought about the establishment of the organization at that particular time and place, some of the women who played key roles in the group's leadership, the group' s major activities and programs and its contributions to women of the press. The main purpose of these organizations was to provide women with a place where they could discuss professional issues and career strategies at a time when they were largely excluded from or marginalized by male-dominated media institutions. However, many also reflected the interests of some of the social and political reform movements associated with the women's movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, including the woman suffrage, peace, and ERA movements. Although some of the organizations described here no longer exist, new ones have taken on the challenge, in a profession where women still do not have equity.

Women and Journalism offers a rich and comprehensive analysis of the roles, status and experiences of women journalists in the United States and Britain. Drawing on a variety of sources and dealing with a host of women journalists ranging from nineteenth century pioneers to Martha Gellhorn, Kate Adie and Veronica Guerin, the authors investigate the challenges women have faced in their struggle to establish reputations as professionals. This book provides an account of the gendered structuring of journalism in print, radio and television and speculates about women's still-emerging role in online journalism. Their accomplishments as war correspondents are tracked to the present, including a study of the role they played post-September 11th.

The first study to focus on white and black women journalists and writers both before and after the Civil War, this book offers fresh insight into Southern intellectual life, the fight for women's rights and gender ideology. Based on new research into Southern magazines and newspapers, this book seeks to shift scholarly attention away from novelists and toward the rich and diverse periodical culture of the South between 1820 and 1900. Magazines were of central importance to the literary culture of the South because the region lacked the publishing centers that could produce large numbers of books. As editors, contributors, correspondents and reporters in the nineteenth century, Southern women entered traditionally male bastions when they embarked on careers in journalism. In so doing, they opened the door to calls for greater political and social equality at the turn of the twentieth century.

Looking at the personal interaction between each first lady from Martha Washington to Laura Bush and the mass media of her day, Maurine H. Beasley traces the growth of the institution of the first lady as a part of the American political system.

At her first press conference, Eleanor Roosevelt, uncertain of her role as hostess or leader, passed a box of candied grapefruit peel to the thirty-five women journalists. Nearly sixty years later, Hillary Clinton, an accomplished professional woman and lawyer, tried to mollify her critics by handing out her chocolate-chip cookie recipe. These exchanges tells us as much about the social-and political-roles of women in America as they do about the relation of the first lady to the press and the public. Looking at the personal interaction between each first lady from Martha Washington to Laura Bush and the mass media of her day, Maurine H. Beasley traces the growth of the institution of the first lady as a part of the American political system. Her work shows how media coverage of first ladies, often limited to stereotypical ideas about women, has not adequately reflected the importance of their role.

This book presents the story of Ruby A. Black, a feminist who broke new ground for women in Washington journalism in the 1920s and 1930s as a correspondent for a Puerto Rican newspaper and the first biographer of Eleanor Roosevelt. It offers access to the secret correspondence that shows how Black used her friendship with Roosevelt to advance the political career of Luis Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rico's first elected governor. The book describes Black’s effort, ultimately unsuccessful, to become both a well-regarded journalist and a political operative in the nation’s capital, a feat particularly difficult for a woman. It contends Black’s closeness to Roosevelt proved both a help and a hindrance to Black’s stature as a journalist.

Literary Tourism and the British Isles: History, Imagination, and the Politics of Place explores literary tourism’s role in shaping how locations in the British-Irish Isles have been seen, historicized, and valued. Within its chapters, contributors approach these topics from vantage points such as feminism, cultural studies, geographic and mobilities paradigms, rural studies, ecosystems, philosophy of history, dark tourism, and marketing analyses. They examine guidebooks and travelogues; oral history, pseudo-history, and absent history; and literature that spans Renaissance drama to contemporary popular writers such as Dan Brown, Diana Gabaldon, and J.K. Rowling. Places discussed in the collection include “the West;” Wordsworth Country and Brontë Country; Stowe and Scotland; the Globe Theatre and its environs; Limehouse, Rosslyn Chapel, and the imaginary locations of the Harry Potter series. Taken as a whole, this collection illuminates some of the ways by which “the British Isles” have been created by literary and historical narratives, and, in turn, will continue to be seen as places of cultural importance by visitors, guidebooks, and site sponsors alike.