Gale Review Team

We upload guest posts on behalf of our visiting writers and editors.

The History of International Women’s Day and the Origins of Women’s History Month

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By Rachel Holt, Acquisitions Editor for Gale International

Happy International Women’s Day (#BalanceforBetter) and may your Women’s History Month 2019 be an enlightening one!

Every year March marks the month where several countries around the world celebrate female contributions to society by recognising their achievements throughout history. However, the origins of how both these events came into being are themselves fascinating episodes in feminist history. If “history is written by the victors” then who decides which people and events from the past deserves our attention?[1]

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Queer Progress on the High Seas: Exploring LGBTQ Naval Experiences with the Global Encyclopedia of LGBTQ History

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By Jo Stanley, academic contributor to Gale’s Global Encyclopedia of LGBTQ History

Having a rainbow at your fingertips is more than handy – it’s a luxurious necessity. So the publication of Gale’s Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History is something I celebrate. It will be extremely satisfying for those who want to quickly find out what so many reference works have previously omitted about LGBTQ history.

As an expert on the gendered sea I’ve previously been pleased to contribute to other encyclopedias, but being able to add my entry on the UK merchant and royal navies to the Global Encyclopedia of LGBTQ History is even more special. Why? Because I’m giving clear information about something still difficult to find material about. There’s been no such succinct summary anywhere else.

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Sex! … and Sexuality, and Gender

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By Phil Virta, Senior Acquisitions Editor at Gale

Please be aware that this blog post contains content that may be offensive to some readers; the decision to read the post is at your own discretion.

Mention the word ‘sex’ while you’re chatting with anyone and you’re likely to get a variety of responses from rational to emotional to visceral, depending on whom you are speaking to:

“Did you just say ‘sex’?”
[Lewd laughter]
“I’m so embarrassed right now that I’m blushing.”
“Ewwww!”
“I’m a doctor; we can have a frank discussion.”
“What about sex?”

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Who is the Founder of Modern Singapore?

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By Vanessa Tan, Editorial Assistant with Gale Asia

In 2019, Singapore will commemorate her bicentenary since the landing of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826) on the island on 28 January 1819. Raffles’ name now stretches beyond the widely known narrative of the nation-state’s genesis. Today, the name carries pomp and prestige—Raffles City and Raffles Hotel are both prominent landmarks situated in the richest areas of Singapore, while Raffles Institution remains the highest-ranked secondary educational institution in the country, having produced many of the country’s top-performing scholars and politicians.

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Western Books on Southeast Asia Collection

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By Gregory Green, Curator of the John M. Echols Collection on Southeast Asia, Cornell University Library

The Gale Archives Unbound collection titled Western Books on Southeast Asia brings together nearly three hundred years of writings by travellers from Europe to Southeast Asia.  These publications range from official reports of government sponsored expeditions to personal journals of people travelling through the region on business or pleasure.  With that variety, one can expect to find a wide range of observations in the collection.  Much of the information is quite accurate, while a large amount is based on misunderstandings of what people were seeing, or in other ways, simply incorrect.  Whether accurate or not, the collection provides a clear view of how Southeast Asia was seen during this period of time by Western eyes.

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Surprising Search Results: From Crystal Therapy to Singing Bowls

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By Rebecca Bowden, Associate Acquisitions Editor

If one was researching current affairs, political history, or a particular literary period, Gale Primary Sources would be an obvious place to look. It is full of useful archives, from newspapers like The Times and The Independent, to huge collections of diverse primary sources, such as Nineteenth Century Collections Online. But what if you were researching something altogether more obscure – say, palmistry, feng shui or crystal therapy? It may surprise you that Gale Primary Sources continues to shine!

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Inside the BNP: Being a Mole in the British Far-Right

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By Rebecca Bowden, Associate Acquisitions Editor On 29 March 1984, at 10:25pm, Channel 4 aired ‘The Other Face of Terror’. According to Elizabeth Cowley, writing for the Daily Mail, ‘if I didn’t know this documentary was fact and that the people we see and hear…were real, I’d swear it was an over-the-top political thriller.’ The … Read more

Ernest Mason Satow: An Essay

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Sir Ernest Mason Satow, British diplomat and renowned Japanologist, was a lynchpin of Anglo-Chinese and Anglo-Japanese relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During his long diplomatic career, Satow wrote many books on the region, including several on Japan during the transition from rule by the Tokugawa shogunate back to imperial power in the … Read more

Jack’s Alive to Card Castles: Entertainment in the Victorian Parlour

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By Rebecca Bowden, Associate Acquisitions Editor

The upper and middle classes of the Victorian period had more leisure time than their counterparts of previous generations, yet they did not have the electronic devices which sap much of our free time in the twenty-first century – televisions, games consoles , mobile phones… our Victorian ancestors had to create their own fun!

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The Contested Legacy of The Iron Duke, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo

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By Tom English, Gale Field Sales Executive – North UK

I remember being told in my very first history lecture at university that there’s no such thing as ‘the truth’. I also remember the passion with which the esteemed professor near-bellowed this message to a large group of fresh faced undergraduates. He was adamant. Another professor gave each and every one of his students a letter pointing out that one doesn’t go to university to learn history, but to read history. The message was clear: seeking out and drawing upon a variety of sources and perspectives is an essential part of a history degree.

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