LibGuides: Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies: Historical & Primary Sources

Databases of Historical & Primary Sources

Below are links to collections of primary sources and historical documents related to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. These are collections provided through the UT Libraries, and many other free collections exist online. Contact Gina Bastone for help finding physical and digitized archival collections related to your research topic.

Archives of Sexuality and Gender This link opens in a new window
1500 - present. Unlimited.
Gale’s Archives of Sexuality and Gender program spans the sixteenth to twentieth centuries and is the largest digital collection of historical primary source publications relating to the history and study of sex, sexuality, and gender research and gender studies research. Documentation covering disciplines such as social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) communities around the world are included, as well as rare and unique books on sex and sexuality from the sciences to the humanities to support research and education. The selection of materials for this milestone digital program is guided by an advisory board consisting of leading scholars and librarians in sexuality and gender studies.
LGBT Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Late 19th century - present. Unlimited users.
LGBT Thought and Culture is an online primary source database hosting the key works and archival documentation of LGBT political and social movements throughout the 20th century and into the present day. The collection contains seminal texts, letters, periodicals, speeches, interviews, and ephemera.
The resource provides a look into LGBT life from the late 19th to the early 21st centuries, covering topics such as bars and saloons, gay communities, clubs and social organizations, gay activism and activists, gay rights, AIDS, films, politics, books, medical treatments and procedures, gender identity, discrimination, and more.
Includes material from the Kinsey Institute Archive and Library, the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, the Jeanne Cordova Papers, the Magnus Hirschfeld Collection, and more.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
1700 - 1950. Unlimited users.
Updated quarterly (until completed). Includes diaries, journals, and letters written by women visiting or living in North America between the years 1700 and 1950. When complete, the database will be the largest collection of women's diaries and correspondence ever assembled and include the personal experiences of 1,500 women from all classes and walks of life.
Gerritsen Women's History Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs This link opens in a new window
1543 - 1945. Unlimited users.
A full text collection of books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. Includes publications from Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. The ASCII text is searchable by keyword and Boolean operators, and records are linked to the corresponding page images, viewable with the Acrobat Reader plugin from Adobe.
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Late 1800s - 2005. Unlimited users.
An archival research resource comprising the full backfiles of leading women’s interest consumer magazines. Titles are scanned from cover to cover in high-resolution color and feature detailed article-level indexing. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005 and these key primary sources permit the examination of the events, trends, and attitudes of this period. Among the research fields served by this material are gender studies, social history, economics/marketing, media, fashion, politics, and popular culture.
Women and Social Movements (U.S.) This link opens in a new window
1600 - 2000. Unlimited users.
Updated quarterly. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000. A resource for the teaching the history of women in the United States. Consists of 74 editorial projects with more than 2200 primary documents intended for use in high school and college history classrooms. Also includes a major collection of links to related websites and a search engine that permits users to do full text searching of all the primary documents mounted on the site.
Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires Since 1820 This link opens in a new window
1820 - present. Unlimited users.
Explores prominent themes in world history since 1820: conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told through women’s voices. With a clear focus on bringing the voices of the colonized to the forefront, this highly-curated archive and database includes documents related to the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States Empires, and settler societies in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.

African American Newspapers, Series 1 This link opens in a new window 1827 - 1998. Unlimited users.
Updated regularly (until completed). When completed, will provide online access to approximately 270 African American U.S. newspapers. Features papers from more than 35 states. The newspapers were scanned from the collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Kansas State Historical Society and the Library of Congress.
Alt-Press Watch This link opens in a new window
Updated monthly. Provides full-text coverage of newspapers, magazines and journals of the alternative and independent press in America. Includes a broad range of critical issues confronting contemporary society, such as ecology and the environment, grassroots organizing, labor, indigenous peoples, and public policy.
Dallas Morning News (Historical) This link opens in a new window
Provides comprehensive coverage for one of the largest daily newspapers in Texas. Accessible by keyword and date searching. Documents major events in Texas, the United States, and the world, providing valuable primary source information. Includes classified and display advertising, photos and graphics.
Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window
Updated monthly. Provides full-text coverage of newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press in America (some international coverage). Includes more than 400,000 full-text articles from 200 publications.
Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
Independent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
Latin American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Provides more than 35 fully searchable newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and elsewhere. Covers the people, issues and events that shaped this vital region.
LAN represents the first collection of the World Newspaper Archive, a partnership between the Center for Research Librariesa community and Readex, a division of NewsBank, to systematically create an extensive Web-based collection of international newspapers. CRL will guarantee the long-term availability of this news content for the CRL community.
Los Angeles Times (Historical) This link opens in a new window
Updated annually. Provides comprehensive coverage for Southern California's largest daily newspaper. Includes all the articles published since the first issue of the paper in 1881. Provides full text and full image articles with digital reproductions of every page, every article and every issue in PDF format. In addition to news stories, includes editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries, birth and marriage announcements, photos, and advertisements.
New York Times (Historical) This link opens in a new window
Updated annually. Includes all the articles published since the first issue of the paper in 1851. Provides full text and full image articles with digital reproductions of every page, every article and every issue in PDF format. In addition to news stories, includes editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries, birth and marriage announcements, photos, and advertisements.
More recent years are also available in other full text resources.
Vogue Archive This link opens in a new window
The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition), from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images. Every page, advertisement, cover and fold-out has been included, with rich indexing enabling you to find images by garment type, designer and brand names. The Vogue Archive preserves the work of the world's greatest fashion designers, stylists and photographers and is a unique record of American and international fashion, culture and society from the dawn of the modern era to the present day.
The Vogue Archive also features specialist indexing of full-page images from photo features. This has been newly created by Condé Nast, with expert indexers using controlled lists to apply keywords to each separate image within a document. There are separate designated fields for Fashion Item (e.g. kimono, Breton jacket, scoop neckline), Person Pictured, Company/brand, Designer Name and Material (e.g. chiffon, wool).
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
An archival research resource comprising the full backfiles of leading women’s interest consumer magazines. Titles are scanned from cover to cover in high-resolution color and feature detailed article-level indexing. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005 and these key primary sources permit the examination of the events, trends, and attitudes of this period. Among the research fields served by this material are gender studies, social history, economics/marketing, media, fashion, politics, and popular culture.
Women's Wear Daily Archive This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive archive of Women’s Wear Daily, from the first issue in 1910 to the current issue, reproduced in high-resolution images. Every page, article, advertisement and cover will be included, with searchable text and indexing. The Women’s Wear Daily Archive preserves one of the fashion industry's most influential reads. Key moments in the history of the industry, as well as major designers, brands, retailers and advertisers are all covered in this publication of record.

Newspapers and magazines listed here are historical collections. For current news sources, please see the Finding News and News Evaluation Guide.

Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index This link opens in a new window
Updated regularly. Covers over 350 international journals as well as book reviews and essays in books about women, sexuality, and gender during the Middle Ages (450 C.E. to 1500 C.E.). Subject coverage for gender and sexuality means that articles on masculinity and male homosexuality are included.
Gerritsen Women's History Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs This link opens in a new window
A full text collection of books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the evolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. Includes publications from Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand. The ASCII text is searchable by keyword and Boolean operators, and records are linked to the corresponding page images, viewable with the Acrobat Reader plugin from Adobe.
Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) This link opens in a new window
Site features include an annotated list of all the human rights related archival collections held at University of Texas at Austin (browseable by region, subject, language, or repository), archived human rights websites (keyword searchable and browseable by language or subject), and links to the HRDI’s online audiovisual collections.
Human Rights Studies Online This link opens in a new window
Provides access to primary and secondary materials (including 75,000 pages of text and 150 hours of video) on human rights issues in the 20th and early 21st centuries in Africa, Asia, Europe, United States, and Latin America. Subject coverage includes Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, Sierra Leone, and dirty wars in Latin America.
Latin American Women Writers This link opens in a new window
Updated regularly. An extensive searchable collection of prose, poetry, and drama by women writers from Mexico, Central, and South America. Also included are essays by Latin American feminists and revolutionaries, who address both the universal concerns of women in every age and the distinctive issues of their struggles in the region.
Currently contains 14,300 pages of prose and poetry and 13 plays; will contain approximately 100,000 pages of prose, poetry, and essays and 300 plays when complete.
LGBT Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
LGBT Thought and Culture is an online primary source database hosting the key works and archival documentation of LGBT political and social movements throughout the 20th century and into the present day. The collection contains seminal texts, letters, periodicals, speeches, interviews, and ephemera.
The resource provides a look into LGBT life from the late 19th to the early 21st centuries, covering topics such as bars and saloons, gay communities, clubs and social organizations, gay activism and activists, gay rights, AIDS, films, politics, books, medical treatments and procedures, gender identity, discrimination, and more.
Includes material from the Kinsey Institute Archive and Library, the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, the Jeanne Cordova Papers, the Magnus Hirschfeld Collection, and more.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories
Updated quarterly (until completed). Provides a view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. When completed, will include more than 100,000 pages of personal narratives including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories. Currently contains 342 authors and approximately 37,500 pages of information.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Updated quarterly (until completed). Includes diaries, journals, and letters written by women visiting or living in North America between the years 1700 and 1950. When complete, the database will be the largest collection of women's diaries and correspondence ever assembled and include the personal experiences of 1,500 women from all classes and walks of life.
Women and Social Movements (U.S.) This link opens in a new window
Updated quarterly. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000. A resource for the teaching the history of women in the United States. Consists of 74 editorial projects with more than 2200 primary documents intended for use in high school and college history classrooms. Also includes a major collection of links to related websites and a search engine that permits users to do full text searching of all the primary documents mounted on the site.
Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires Since 1820 This link opens in a new window
Explores prominent themes in world history since 1820: conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told through women’s voices. With a clear focus on bringing the voices of the colonized to the forefront, this highly-curated archive and database includes documents related to the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States Empires, and settler societies in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.

What is a Primary Source?

Primary sources are produced by participants or direct observers of an issue, event or time period. These sources may be recorded during the event or later on by a participant reflecting upon the event. In some cases, it will be difficult to obtain the original source, so you may have to rely on copies (photocopies, microfilm, digital copies).

Some examples of primary sources include:

Newspapers
Speeches
Government Documents
Legal Documents
Public Opinion Polls
Personal Materials: letters, diaries, interviews, memoirs, autobiographies, and oral histories
Images

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