About the archive
From Joan of Arc to George Sand, Mary Edwards Walker to Marlene Dietrich and Colette to Coco Chanel, trouser-wearing women have been associated with transgressive acts of protest and play. Linked with periods of social and political upheaval, women’s liberation, radical thought, aesthetic innovation and erotic freedom, trouser-wearing women have historically represented an illegitimate assumption of authority and power – of ‘wearing the trousers’ – that destabilises fixed notions of sexual difference and threatens the very fabric of the social order.
Women in Trousers: A Visual Archive is a collection of digital images that together tell a story about women in trousers as a history of social, cultural and political change. It offers a visual account of the complex and sometimes contradictory meanings assigned to and by trouser-wearing women in public space. Images have been drawn from a range of sources, including newspapers, periodicals, photographs, illustrations and drawings. While trousers and other bifurcated garments provide its primary focus, the archive is also home to images that illuminate more generally the history of women and dress reform in Britain, Europe and America.
The archive is a work in progress. We will be adding images in the coming months and invite users to contribute personal images and photographs to the 'Who wore the trousers?' section of the archive. A number of the images included in the archive are drawn from Special Collections and Archives at Cardiff University. Should you wish to use any of these images, please contact wearingtrousers@cardiff.ac.uk for further information. Copyright information is provided for all other images (see below for further information).
Women in Trousers: A Visual Archive is a collection of digital images that together tell a story about women in trousers as a history of social, cultural and political change. It offers a visual account of the complex and sometimes contradictory meanings assigned to and by trouser-wearing women in public space. Images have been drawn from a range of sources, including newspapers, periodicals, photographs, illustrations and drawings. While trousers and other bifurcated garments provide its primary focus, the archive is also home to images that illuminate more generally the history of women and dress reform in Britain, Europe and America.
The archive is a work in progress. We will be adding images in the coming months and invite users to contribute personal images and photographs to the 'Who wore the trousers?' section of the archive. A number of the images included in the archive are drawn from Special Collections and Archives at Cardiff University. Should you wish to use any of these images, please contact wearingtrousers@cardiff.ac.uk for further information. Copyright information is provided for all other images (see below for further information).
About us
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Director
Becky Munford is a Reader in English Literature in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University, where she teaches and researches in the fields of modern and contemporary women’s writing, feminism and popular culture, gender theory and gothic. She is currently writing a monograph entitled Making Strides: A Literary and Cultural History of Women in Trousers. |
Research assistant
Amber Jenkins is a PhD student at Cardiff University. Her research is concerned with the influence of the Hogarth Press on Virginia Woolf’s compositional processes. She is a member of the Modernist Network Cymru (MONC) and Cardiff's Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research. |
Designer
The archive was designed by Michael Goodman, who recently completed his PhD, which explores how the digital is changing our relationship to Shakespeare, at Cardiff University. He is the Director of the Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive. The design and concept of Women in Trousers: A Visual Archive is indebted to the Database of Mid-Victorian Illustration and The Illustration Archive, directed by Professor Julia Thomas at Cardiff University. |
Copyright information
The authors of this digital resource are committed to respecting and protecting the copyright in all material incorporated within, and generated by, the Women in Trousers project. Much of the material included within our archive is either out of copyright or otherwise in the public domain; however, we understand some of these works may still be in copyright. Where this is the case, all reasonable attempts have been made to establish and seek permission from the copyright owner. Wherever reasonably practicable, acknowledgement and attribution is paid to the original artist, the original source of publication, and the source of the digital surrogate.
If you have a question regarding this resource, or you are the copyright owner of material found on this site and would like to discuss our use for this project, please contact us by e-mail: wearingtrousers@cardiff.ac.uk Every reasonable step has been taken to ensure the correct use of images on our website. In the event of a challenge regarding the use of a copyright material, the material will be blocked from view as soon as reasonably and practicably possible and will remain blocked until we have been able to resolve the matter; if appropriate, we will ensure the image is either removed temporarily or permanently from our website as appropriate.