Women’s studies, gender, and sexuality

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Scope note(s)

  • SCA was founded in 1976 with a significant collection of materials related to women’s history and women’s studies as the cornerstone of the department. Acquired in 1967 by university librarian Doris Lewis from the National Council of Women of Canada, the donation included the Council’s library on the history of women in Canada. Present in these collections are the papers of individual women and women’s organizations, and reference files that support the study of women’s history in Canada from the mid-nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. In general, the collections fall into the following broad categories: birth control and eugenics, broadcasting and journalism, domestic arts, education, medicine and science, organizations, politics, women’s rights and suffrage, and writers.

    SCA's ever-growing book and periodical collections have a wide historical and geographical focus, including works on the role and place of women in society from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Of note is the British Women's Periodicals Collection, which consists of some 35,000 issues of British women's magazines published from 1893 to 1977 that cover topics such as cooking, crafts, advice, fashion, and health, along with advertisements illustrating contemporary attitudes and concerns.

    In addition, SCA actively collects materials that support the study of gender diversity, sexuality, and social justice, including collections that document intersectional and/or racialized identities. Current collections include poems, plays, essays, and other works by John Herbert, a Canadian playwright and theatre director, best-known for his play, Fortune and Men’s Eyes, and the records of the Glow Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity at the University of Waterloo, the longest-running queer and trans student organization in Canada. Additional collections include zines authored by and focused on queer, trans and Two-Spirit people, and a wide selection of paperback books featuring lesbian themes by authors such as Ann Bannon, Artemis Smith, and Randy Salem.

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      Hierarchical terms

      Women’s studies, gender, and sexuality

        Equivalent terms

        Women’s studies, gender, and sexuality

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          Women’s studies, gender, and sexuality

            7 Archival description results for Women’s studies, gender, and sexuality

            7 results directly related Exclude narrower terms
            Zagar family photograph album.
            SCA420-GA488 · Collection · 1930-1955

            Photograph album containing photographs and other materials related to the Zagar family with an emphasis on their youngest daughter Margaret Ann.

            Photographs and ephemera in album cover the lives of the Zagar family from the early 1930s to the early 1950s. First sheets include photographs of the grandmothers, parents (Stephan and Wilma), twin oldest daughters (Rosalyn and Marilyn Ann), and youngest daughter as a baby (Margaret Ann). Rest of sheets focus on Margaret Ann and her development from early childhood to adulthood after having contracted Polio as an infant. Photographs include family pictures and celebrations, class photographs at the Gompers School for the Handicapped (located at South State St. and 123rd, Chicago), photographs of Margaret Ann's development at different stages, and photographs of family friends. Album also contains religious ephemera, school ephemera related to Gompers School events, and a newspaper clipping related to a function at Gompers School.

             Zagar family
            Va-Jel pamphlet.
            SCA389-GA454-1 · Collection · ca. 1925

            One single folded page pamphlet advertising Va-Jel germicidal jelly. Recto also has an advertisement for Va'antiseptic douche. The products claim to offer a new freedom for women and a happier life through voluntary motherhood.
            Reconstruction.
            SCA415-GA483 · Collection · 1866

            Broadside of a poem delivered by Lizzie Doten on September 23, 1866 at Library Hall, Chelsea, titled "Reconstruction." The poem addresses then President Andrew Johnson and criticizes his approach to the South at the end of the American Civil War. She believed that Johnson was too lenient on the South and allowed too much wealth and influence to remain with Southern Confederate politicians. She also criticizes Johnson for being unconcerned with Black suffrage or the rights of Black soldiers who fought for the Union. She ends her poem with the rallying cry "...let the ballot finish what the bayonet has begun."

             Doten, Lizzie
            Mabel Welma Fox scrapbook album.
            SCA392-GA457 · Collection · 1921-1923, 1925

            Collection consists of a scrapbook album created by Mabel Welma Fox during her time at the University of Michigan (1921-1923). The scrapbook is covered with correspondence, photographs, newspaper clippings, ephemera, physical objects, and annotations that guide the reader through Fox’s university life.

            Photographs are of Fox’s house guests, parties, field trips, prom, graduation, and members of the Betsy Barbour women’s residence hall. Newspaper clippings and full editions include Michigan Daily, College News, The Detroit News Mail edition, and Detroit Free Press, as well as others unidentified. Ephemera includes posters, invitations, tickets, and programs for events; place, calling, membership, and business cards; envelopes with receipts (including for tuition, lodging and rent, transportation, raffle tickets, and memberships); report and grade cards; poetry clippings and pages stripped from books; notebooks with course notes; cards and napkins; materials related to 1923 Commencement; and booklets for the University of Michigan Women’s League. Physical objects include decorations made with crepe paper for different events, a pencil tied to a notebook, and a mini frying pan from a dinner event, and rose leaves and petals.

            The scrapbook is housed in a production scrapbook published by the College Memory Book Company from Chicago (Illinois, USA) with copyright from 1918, W.M.W. Clay, and with the title “National Memory and Fellowship Book.”

            The first 25 pages of scrapbook include pre-printed sections used by Fox and/or her colleagues. Preprinted sections include annotations, drawings, photographs and ephemera (by students from Michigan, the United States, Japan, and China).
            Pre-printed sections are:

            • Register of friends,
            • Faculty and Campus,
            • Student Hall of Fame,
            • Comparative Athletic Record,
            • School and Social Functions,
            • My Favourites,
            • Entertainments, Lectures, Plays,
            • Memorable Trips,
            • Clubs and Societies,
            • Professors I Have Met,
            • Dates and Doings,
            • Things Worth-Wile Noting,
            • Lest you forget.

            The remainder of the pages are part of the same production scrapbook but do not show section titles. Some pages are left unused. And some items look like they were clipped from another scrapbook (including several items that were inside an envelope pasted to backcover).

             Fox, Mabel Welma
            Letter from Reverend Alfred H. Tyrer with birth control pamphlets.
            SCA402-GA468 · Collection · 1941

            Materials related to Reverend Alfred Henry Tyrer’s books and publications on birth control, sex education, and marriage life.

            Includes pamphlets and order forms for Tyrer’s books Where did we come from, mother dear? (Marriage Welfare Bureau, 1939) and Sex, marriage and birth control (Marriage Welfare Bureau, 1936), and ephemera related to the books and the Marriage Welfare Bureau.

            Also contains booklet Marriage welfare : some facts about birth-control by Reverend Alfred Henry Tyrer which acted as promotional material for the book Sex, marriage and birth control. Booklet includes sections: Birth-control, the population problem, definition of birth-control, birth control and war, mothers who die in child-birth, infant mortality, birth control vs. infanticide, birth-control vs. abortions, birth-control vs. degeneracy and disease, birth-control vs. prostitution, economics and birth-control, divorce, religion and birth-control, the present status of birth-control, a prairie marriage.

            Materials were enclosed in an envelope sent from Ontario on July 10, 1941, and with a letter addressed to Steve E. Chorney from Ranfurly (Alberta) acting as an introduction to the publications and explaining their importance.

             Tyrer, Alfred Henry
            Consent card.
            SCA390-GA455-1 · Collection · ca. 1930

            One possibly satirical consent card, stating that the woman who fills the card in is giving her permission to engage in sexual acts with the man who has given her the card. It also grants the man indemnity under the Mann Act.