Invitation to publish a blog on the Network website

Do you ever have a sudden or hovering thought that you’d like to develop – if you had the time? Well, it doesn’t have to become an academic paper or book. You could turn it into a short musing of 200–800 words, without ‘peer review’ but with (perhaps) a little helpful editing. The WFTHN Network is looking for you to share your ideas on a wide range of topics our acknowledging/recording/discussing women’s film and television history.

The Network’s blog series started in 2013, and we have published, on average, two a month since then.

The topics cover:

  • women working behind the scenes at various levels in the UK and Irish media industries
  • the silent and early sound periods, and second-wave feminism in the 1970s
  • specific women, films and television programmes, hitherto hidden, lost, ignored
  • reports/reviews on film festivals, conferences and other events, relevant to our focus on women’s film and television history
  • recently, we posted our first video essay, by Catherine Grant, on Laura Jesson’s voice-over thoughts in Brief Encounter.

We get a very good audience for the blogs. Some examples with a high number of views are:

  • Locating the women in Lawrence of Arabia – 6,880
  • Angela Rippon and the Female Firsts – 2,906
  • Tara Prem, a pioneer of British multicultural TV drama – 2,377
  • Becoming Sheffield Film Co-op – 1,560
  • Stars in the Aisles: Portsmouth Cinema Usherettes in the 1930s and 1940s – 1,468

Other well-received blogs include: The Continuity Girl; Sex and the City; and interviews with June Giovanni and Frances Galt; and, amongst those more recent:

The Silent Screen Conference in Amsterdam 2019; Feminist protests at UK Cinemas in 1980; Controversy around women’s programmes on RTE.

We’d be delighted to receive blogs or blog ideas from any of you that fit, even loosely, our history-interest framework. As you know, a blog can be :

  • a calling card for your research, or perhaps developing something within it
  • trying out a new idea, in a more informal context, or laying out a ‘small’ idea
  • writing about a little-known historical woman practitioner of value to our history
  • reporting on or reviewing an event
  • responding to a previous blog

Please take a look at our blog guidelines on the WFTHN website. You can email our blog editor, Angela Martin, for an initial submission or a chat – amartin200@yahoo.co.uk.