Reading List: Women’s History Month & Persons Day

October is Women’s History Month, commemorating the achievements of women and girls throughout history. Further, October 18 is Persons Day, honouring Canada’s highest court’s decision to include women in the legal definition of “persons” on October 18, 1929. In celebration, we’ve pulled a selection from our Spring and Fall 2017 catalogues that explore the histories of individual women or the larger scope of the female experience. From literature to Indigenous perspectives, public policy to religious studies, these sixteen titles illuminate stories of women from Canada and abroad.

Vatican II and Beyond: The Changing Mission and Identity of Canadian Women Religious

By Rosa Bruno-Jofré, Heidi MacDonald, and Elizabeth M. Smyth

A look at the impact of Vatican II through the Canadian Religious Conference and the lived experience of Sisters Alice Trudeau and Mary Alban.

Staging Modernist Lives: H.D., Mina Loy, Nancy Cunard, Three Plays and Criticism

By Sasha Colby

Three plays dramatize the lives and works of key modernist female writers, making a case for performance in literary research.

Catharine Parr Traill’s The Female Emigrant’s Guide: Cooking with a Canadian Classic

Edited by Nathalie Cooke and Fiona Lucas

A guidebook for women immigrants to nineteenth-century Canada in a deluxe edition that shows why it is still relevant today.

Desire Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada

Edited by Heather Davis, copublished with Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art

Bringing together contemporary Canadian feminist art through the entangled relations of desire and desire for change.

TransCanadian Feminist Fictions: New Cross-Border Ethics

By Libe García Zarranz

A cutting-edge feminist study of borders and transnational ethics in Canadian literature since the turn of the twenty-first century.

Secwepemc People, Land, and Laws: Yerí7 re Stsq’ey’s-kucw

By Marianne Ignace and Ronald E Ignace, foreword by Bonnie Leonard

An exploration of Secwépemc history told through Indigenous knowledge and oral traditions.

A Grand Adventure: The Lives of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad and Their Discovery of a Viking Settlement in North America

By Benedicte Ingstad

A riveting account of two people’s adventures, perseverance, and discoveries.

Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister: The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen

By Sheila Johnson Kindred

A revealing account of a naval officer’s young wife during the Napoleonic War, and her influence on Jane Austen’s fiction.

Trance Speakers: Femininity and Authorship in Spiritual Séances, 1850-1930

By Claudie Massicotte

A thought-provoking exploration of women’s voices and their agency in practices of trance possession.

L.M. Montgomery and War

Edited by Andrea McKenzie and Jane Ledwell

Reclaiming the place of a writer best known for depicting the lives of girls and women, as a groundbreaking writer about war.

Travelers through Empire: Indigenous Voyages from Early Canada

By Cecilia Morgan

An exploration of Indigenous people’s experiences travelling from Canada to Britain and beyond from the 1770s to 1914.

Victor and Evie: British Aristocrats in Wartime Rideau Hall

By Dorothy Anne Phillips

The experiences of a governor general and his family in the early twentieth century, revealed through recently released letters and diaries.

The Devout Hand: Women, Virtue, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Italy

By Patricia Rocco

Exploring the role of women artists in creating visual imagery during the Renaissance.

Writing Herself into Being: Quebec Women’s Autobiographical Writings from Marie de l’Incarnation to Nelly Arcan

By Patricia Smart

Quebec women’s struggle for self and portrayal of their society in autobiographies, letters, and private diaries.

Obligations and Omissions: Canada’s Ambiguous Actions on Gender Equality

Edited by Rebecca Tiessen and Stephen Baranyi

A critical examination of government practices concerning gender.

Into Silence and Servitude: How American Girls Became Nuns, 1945-1965

By Brian Titley

A critical examination of the recruitment and formation of American Catholic nuns during the final decades of convent expansion.