Study the Sisterhood
Recovering the 1884 Woman’s Literary Department for the 21st Century
Discovery & Recovery
This Beautiful Sisterhood of Books is a collaborative digital humanities project. Our purpose is to recover the contents and history of the Woman’s Literary Department from the 1884 World’s Fair and “recover the exclusion” of Black women and their work from the original exhibit.
By exploring these exhibits, short essays, and original documents, you will learn about . . .
- early women’s rights history,
- early Black organizing,
- women and library history,
- women and bibliographic activism,
- women in world’s fair and exposition culture,
- archival recovery.
We encourage you to read between the lines, and reflect on . . .
- how (and why) the 1884 Woman’s Department strove to define — and delimit — the concepts of “Woman” and “Womanhood”; and
- how race, class, and regional politics shaped gendered meanings in the 1884 Woman’s Department and in our digital reconstruction.
Original Research
Articles and Exhibits about the 1884 World’s Fair
Featured Exhibit
Black Women and the 1884 World’s Fair
Drawing from our study of Black women’s literature, Black literary history, and recovery scholarship, we have attempted to recover an untold part of the story of the Woman’s Department at the 1884 New Orleans World Fair and the “beautiful sisterhood of books” it included.
Short Essays
Original Documents
Teach the Sisterhood
This Beautiful Sisterhood Project provides a curriculum including readings and educational resources to support educators in integrating the Beautiful Sisterhood collection, including the digital archive and exhibits, into their classrooms.
With our curriculum, you can:
Deep Dive Further into Material about the 1884 World’s Fair.
Teach the Historical and Political Context Surrounding the Fair.
Teach Critical Research and Writing Skills using Materials about the Fair.
Contribute Content and Educational Resources about the Fair.