Demons and Dames

Sarah and Ash are joined by anthropologist and author Margaret Willson, who shares the story of Thurídur Einarsdóttir. Living in Iceland in the 1800s, Captain Thurídur was a famous female sea captain who stood out for her skill at sea and her fearless outspokeness on land. Margaret Willson brings Thurídur to life after decands of research - and even explains how this notorious women ended up solving crimes.

"Let there be freedom for the Indians, wherever they may be in the American Continent or elsewhere in the world, because while they are alive, a glow of hope will be alive as well as a true concept of life." - Rigoberta Menchú

Join Sarah and Dr Linda Westman from the Urban Institute at Sheffield University to discuss the life and accomplishments (thus far) of Rigoberta Menchú. Rigoberta is a renowned Kʼicheʼ Indigenous feminist and human rights activist, politician, and Nobel Peace Prize winner who has spent her life fighting for the lives and rights of indigenous Guatemalans.

Dr Linda Westman is a Postdoctoral Research Associate whose work engages with the governance of sustainability and climate change, urban sustainability transformations, and justice. Dr Westman is excited to join Demons and Dames to discus how Rigoberta's work has provided an alternative perspective on the familiar concept of sustainability.
Documentaries:

• Dawn Gifford Engle. Rigoberta Menchu: Daughter of the Maya (2016). Documentary.
• Pamela Yates, Newton Thomas Sigel. When the Mountains Tremble (1983). Documentary.
• Pamela Yates. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (2011), Documentary.

Testimonial Biography:

• Menchú, R., & In Burgos-Debray, E. (1984). I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian woman in Guatemala

“Emile, for god’s sake do not send my letters to papa. It will be an open to rupture. I will leave the house. I will die...”
So wrote Madeleine Smith to her erstwhile and soon-to-be-deceased lover Emile L’Angelier in 1857. But just what drove this delicately-raised upper middle-class belle (a lover of dances, romantic intrigue and sentimental poetry) to an act of murder? Why did Victorian society have no choice but to let her get away with it?

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Flanders, J. (2011). The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime. Thomas Dunne Books.
House, J. (1961). Square Mile of Murder. W. & R. Chambers.

"Day and night my imagination carried me to the fields of battle, and my ears rang with the groans of my wounded brethren. The spirit of sacrifice took possession of me. My country called me. An irresistible force from within pulled me."

So said Maria Bochkareva in her 1917 memoirs, recounting the passionate impulse that compelled her to join the Russian Army at the outbreak of war in 1914. In just six short years she would become Commander of the inaugural Women's Battalion of Death, prove a short-lived democratic government's staunchest ally, and be the proud recipient of a rather garish golden pistol. Maria Bochkareva propelled women onto the frontline of combat with a passionate ass-kicking bravado rarely seen before - or since.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Botchkareva, Mariya Leontievna, and Isac Don Levine. Yashka: My life as Peasant, Exile and Soldier (1919). Print.
Fell, Alison S., and Ingrid. Sharp. The Women's Movement in Wartime: International Perspectivess, 1914-1919 (2007). Print.
Stoff, Laurie. They Fought for the Motherland: Russia's Women Soldiers in World War I and the Revolution (2006). Print.
Stockdale, Melissa K. “‘My Death for the Motherland Is Happiness’: Women, Patriotism, and Soldiering in Russia's Great War, 1914-1917.” The American Historical Review, vol. 109, no. 1, 2004, pp. 78–116.
The Russian Film Battalion directed by Dmitriy Meshiev and released to cinemas in February 2015

“From Guildford comes a strange, but well attested piece of News. That a poor Woman who lives at Godalmin, near that Town, who has an Husband and two Children now living with her was about a Month past, deliver’d by John Howard an eminent surgeon and man-midwife living at Guildford of a creature resembling a rabbit.” - 'British Gazeteer', 10th October 1726

Meet Mary Toft, who convinced the Enlightenment medical establishment that she had given birth to rabbits. By doing so, she played to established beliefs in the power of the maternal imagination and monstrous birth - and performed a radical act of protest.

WARNING: This episode contains graphic descriptions that may be distressing to those who emotionally project onto rabbits as a species. As well as those invested in the correct pronunciation of 'Goldaming'.

BILBLIOGRAPHY:
Bondesen, J. (1997). A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities. I.B. Tauris.
Lynch, J.T. (2008). Deception & Detection in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
Todd, D. (1995). Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century England. University of Chicago Press.

Ashley Mauritzen and Sarah Worley-Hill introduce their Podcast and explain what all the fuss is about. Are you excited? We can hardly contain ourselves.

Originally aired November 2019