New Humanities Indexes and Databases

BLACK DRAMA - 1850 TO PRESENT. Contains the full text of 1,200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 170 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.

BRITISH & IRISH WOMEN'S LETTERS & DIARIES, 1500 - 1900. Currently includes the immediate experiences of 201 women, as revealed in approximately 38,000 pages of diaries and letters.

EARLY ENCOUNTERS IN NORTH AMERICA. 170 sources with over 40,000 pages of letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters between peoples, cultures, and the environment.  The collection is centered on present-day Canada and the United States with some limited coverage of Mexico.

NORTH AMERICAN IMMIGRANT LETTERS, DIARIES, AND ORAL HISTORIES. With writings from 71 authors, the collection provides a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada. Includes more than 100,000 pages of personal narratives including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories, . several thousand pages of Ellis Island Oral History interviews. The materials begin around 1840 and extend to the present, focusing heavily on the period from 1820 to 1880. People from many countries are represented, including recent waves from Latin America and Asia.

SCOTTISH WOMEN POETS OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD. Contains 60 volumes of Romantic Poetry from 47 poets, extensive contemporary critical reviews, as well as material specially written for this database by leading scholars.

WOMEN'S HISTORY ONLINE, 1543-1945 (The Gerritsen Collection).  An electronic collection containing page images of 4,000 books and 265 periodicals from around the world on the condition of women, evolution of feminism, and women's rights. The collection was begun in the late 1800s, by Dutch physician and feminist Aletta Jacobs and her husband C. V. Gerritsen. Materials relate to women's experience in the public arena, as well as women's lives within the home.   A variety of topics covered include woman's relationship to her culture, lives of women in other countries, marriage, home and motherhood,  education for "proper ladies," mental activity dangerous to women's health,  women in industry, women in the professions,  early popular health books,  interaction between men and women,  temperance movement , and the legal status of women.   The anti-feminist case is presented as well as the pro-feminist; many other titles present a purely objective record of the condition of women at a given time. The broad scope allows scholars to trace the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of one country's movement on those of the others. In many cases, it also provides easy access to primary sources otherwise available only in a few rare book rooms.

To locate these new resources, select "Journal, magazine, & newspaper indexes and reference databases" from the Library's home page, and choose either the "Women's Studies" or "Arts & Humanities" topical list to locate the new titles.  Off-campus access to these databases is available to UWSP students and staff through Virtual Private Network (VPN). Click here for VPN instructions.