Bluestocking Oxford

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Bluestocking Oxford

Oxford-based online journal celebrating and investigating the intellectual and artistic achievements of women throughout history.

We are an Oxford-based online journal celebrating and investigating the intellectual and artistic achievements of women throughout history. Get in touch and write for us by contacting [email protected], we'd love to hear from you!

31/12/2025

Check out our latest review: ''All eyes on her': Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A Museum' by Ruby Tipple on our website now!

The countdown to New Year's has begun: extravagance, frivolity and sartorial splendour are in order. Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), the iconic French queen and chatelaine of Versailles Palace, would surely have approved. But is it limiting to reduce Antoinette's legacy to the influence she had on eighteenth-century consumerism and the couture that graces today's runways? Might there be more to the it-girl at the heart of the French Revolution? Almost certainly, claims Ruby Tipple (._), who visits the V&A's thought-provoking 'Marie Antoinette Style' exhibition for this week's Bluestocking article. She writes:

'Throughout Marie Antoinette Style, we are reminded of how each generation has taken the symbol of 'Marie Antoinette' to suit the conditions of their times. What about today, then? How should we see her in her first UK exhibition?'

Discover more via link in bio.

17/12/2025

Check out our latest article: 'Ten Days to Expose a System: Nellie Bly's Intervention in Institutional Power' by Iona Mandal on our website now!

Nellie Bly (1864-1922) was a pioneer of investigative journalism. When she caught wind of the institutional abuse at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell Island in New York City, she risked her own health and sanity in pursuit of an exposé. Rather than conducting interviews, Bly immersed herself in life as a patient. She experienced the routine injustices that facilitated psychological subjection and which devalued women's experiences as a matter of course. Iona Mandal follows Bly's trail, revealing how she subverted the power dynamics inherent in 'stunt journalism':

'Bly’s writing refuses the sentimental conventions that nineteenth-century women journalists were expected to follow. She does not weep on the page; she does not ask the reader to pity her. Instead, she exposes the asymmetry of power with a journalist’s restraint sharpened into moral clarity.'

Find out more - link in bio.

10/12/2025

This year's Bluestocking girls have arrived. We're delighted to introduce you to our new team.

Would you like to contribute to this very special chapter of our magazine? Send pitches on your heroines to [email protected]. We're launching the careers of new writers and historians today!

03/12/2025

Check out our latest article: ''Wild and Frail and Beautiful': When Virginia Woolf met Euphemia Lamb' by Andrea Obhozler on our website now!

Who is the mysterious ingénue that stares out from countless paintings, sketches and sculptures of the early twentieth century? Nina Forrest - or rather, Euphemia Lamb (1887-1957), as she was dubbed by painter Henry Lamb for her resemblance to the portrait of Saint Euphemia by Andrea Mantegna. Hailing from the slums of Manchester, a chance encounter catapulted her into the heart of British Modernism, where she came to lead a storied existence of romances with bohemian artists and, inspired by them, began informally educating herself. But what did Woolf, with her Bloomsbury airs, make of the alluring artists' model Euphemia? In her Bluestocking article, Obhozler writes:

'Apart from her stint teaching at Morley College between 1905-1907 and her relationships with her servants, how many common people did Woolf come across? In 1906 a seventeen-year-old girl called Nina Forrest from a Manchester slum arrived at 46 Gordon Square in London.'

Read the full article - link in bio!

Andrea Obhozler is the author of A Bloomsbury Ingénue: The Lives and Loves of Euphemia Lamb published by Unicorn, 2025.

19/11/2025

Check out our latest article: 'Hedwig Klein: Between Language and Erasure under the Third Reich' by Shelly Foreshaw Brookes on our website now!

One of the most widely used Arabic dictionaries today has a dark history. Jewish scholar Hedwig Klein (1911-1942) was singled out by the N***s for her virtuosity as an Arabic philologist. As she watched those around her deported to concentration camps, the autocratic regime put Klein to work on a dictionary that would spread Hitler's ideology to the far reaches of the East. Her scholarship was appropriated and unacknowledged, and the purposes which it served violated all her moral and religious values. Shelly Foreshaw Brookes brings Klein's work to light and stresses the importance of fighting against intellectual appropriation and persecution. She writes:

'Forced to relocate to a Jewish-designated house, she witnessed the deportation of her family and neighbors. Under N**i orders, she continued her work on the Arabic-German dictionary– labouring in the very field she loved to serve a government intent on her eradication. The cruelty of this irony is hard to fathom: her passion for Arabic scholarship was being used to further genocide.'

Read now - link in bio.

15/11/2025

We invite you to join us at Christ Church for Bluestocking Film Salon: Somewhere Else Entirely, a rare insight into the life and work of one of Britain’s renowned poets – Ruth Fainlight – in a film created by acclaimed photographer and close friend, Emily Andersen. It offers a vivid portrait of Fainlight, now aged 94, delicately drawing out different fragments of the poet’s life and exploring themes of memory, time, loss and friendship.

The film screening in the Michael Dummett Lecture Theatre will be followed by an exclusive Q&A with Emily Andersen and Ruth Fainlight, hosted by Bluestocking Editor-in-Chief Olivia Hurton. We will be discussing the dialogue between poetry and film, creative processes, and Fainlight's literary friendships with Sylvia Plath, Robert Graves and others.

After the talk, we invite you to join the speakers and the Bluestocking team at the drinks reception. The dress code is poets and muses, so come in your artistic fineries and prepare for an enchanting evening!

07/11/2025

DEADLINE EXTENDED! THERE IS STILL TIME TO BE A PART OF THIS YEAR'S BLUESTOCKING TEAM AS SCIENCE EDITOR 💙

Love science, writing and women's history? We’d love to hear from you. Please send over your CVs and a short covering letter to [email protected].

05/11/2025

Check out our latest article: 'Vivienne Westwood: Punk Anarchist or Monarchist?' by Jessica Phillips on our website now!

It's Bonfire Night, the time of year when the history of anarchism is thick in the air. But what about the original sartorial rebel, Dame Vivienne Westwood (1941-2022)? The woman who opened a shop called S*X, who went knicker-free to Buckingham Palace, and who was a master of repurposing rubbish to make haute couture. Surely she was punk incarnate. In her article for Bluestocking, Jessica Phillips puts Westwood's punk credentials to the test. She writes:

'Perhaps it is audacious for me to challenge the relationship between the Mother of Punk, Vivienne Westwood (1941-2022), and the clothes that she created. But, I do not think that the term ‘punk’ fits Westwood’s fashion brand as we know it today. The fact that the punk aesthetic has defined her legacy demonstrates the success of her fashion at shocking its audience and stoking up controversy, but ultimately it has overshadowed the more conservative politics of its designer.'

Read now - link in bio!

23/10/2025

BLUESTOCKING IS LOOKING FOR NEW TEAM MEMBERS!

Want to join one of Oxford University's most exciting publications? Our mission is to champion the intellectual history of women through publishing brilliant new writing and hosting salons. We need a team of heroines to make it happen. Send us your CV and a covering letter outlining your experience and enthusiasm for women's history. If you have questions about any of the roles or want some more information, email [email protected]. Undergraduate, master's and doctoral students are all encouraged to apply. Applications due by 2nd November 2025.

22/10/2025

Check out our latest article: 'A singularissima donna in Renaissance Italy: The cultural patronage of Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici' by Céline Rémont-Ospina on our website now!

If you were a Neapolitan noblewoman in Renaissance Italy, how would you wield political influence? With lavish art, of course. Learning from no other than Ferrante, King of Naples, Alfonsina Orsini de ' Medici (1472-1520) used her independent wealth to commission spectacular palazzos and jewel-like paintings. Her intention: to flaunt her dynastic power - she hailed from the famed Orsini line and married into the House of Medici - and cement her close relationship with Pope Leo X. Céline Rémont-Ospina transports Bluestocking readers into the world of Alfonsina's patronage, rebuking contemporary detractors, who thought her a spendthrift, and highlighting some of her greatest achievements. Rémont-Ospina writes:

'Alfonsina's negative reputation has continued throughout the ages, with twentieth-century scholarship – probably following contemporary historians – portraying her as greedy and despicable. Alfonsina was certainly capable of manipulating her surroundings, and without her status or wealth she may never have achieved anything; but the same could be said of her male relatives who, in contrast, have remained prominent figures in cultural memory.'

Read now - link in bio!

08/10/2025

Check out our latest article: 'Sylvia Plath's Fig Tree: Navigating Feminist Choice' by Cosima Yeo on our website now!

Sylvia Plath's only novel The Bell Jar (1963) contains imagery as arresting as anything found in her poetry. At its centre is an exploration of female identity in crisis, one epitomised by a fast-fading fig tree. But why has this striking, poetic image been so often uninterrogated by scholars? And what are its implications for third-wave principles of choice feminism? Cosima Yeo attempts to untangle the branches of Plath's thought, following a path of clues left in poems, journals, and her novel. Yeo writes:

'Critical to the simile of the fig tree is a notion of binarism: to choose is to forsake. Each fig represents a distinct identity, and when chosen excludes all others. This double-bind seems central to The Bell Jar, as Esther manifests both a sense of abhorrence at the thought of housewifery, and a compulsive need to adhere to societal expectations.'

Link in bio!

24/09/2025

Check out our latest article: 'Cinema of True Love: Celine Song's Materialists' by Maisie Corkhill on our website now!

Based on Celine Song's stint as a matchmaker in New York, Materialists perplexed critics when it hit the big screen. Was it a romantic comedy, as the marketing campaign insisted, or a cynical critique of the way capitalism has been hardening hearts? In her article, Maisie Cork looks at transactional relationships and their history in cinema and discovers where the value of Song's Materialists lies. She writes:

'To me, Song’s vision for Materialists is crystal clear [...] It confronts how we cannot help but assign value to people, so that Lucy’s client has to remind her (and us), “I’m not merchandise. I’m a person”. [...] Mainstream body modifications, like preventative botox, and more outlandish procedures like the cosmetic height surgery mentioned in the film (available since before 2020) are marketed as a shrewd investment in your future – if you can afford it. Our era yearns for a storyteller like Song to question whether there may still be something authentic that survives at this stage of human relationships under capitalism.'

Link in bio!

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