Women on the Nile in the "Golden Age" of Travel
February 6, 2020, in the Main Reading Room of the Linda Hall Library. Kathleen Sheppard, Associate Professor in the History and Political Science Department, Missouri S&T The lecture: People have been traveling to Egypt for millennia, but the “Golden Age” of tourism for Westerners began in the mid-19th century. Many travelers are well-known to us because they were already famous, such as Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Mark Twain. Others became famous because of their archaeological work, such as Theodore Davis, Lord Carnarvon, and Howard Carter. We have their diaries, letters, postcards, and more to chronicle their memories. Because many of the travelers were men, we focus much more on them than on women who took holidays on the Nile. Their experience was different than that of their male counterparts. In this talk, I will focus on many of these women and their experiences traveling to Egypt. When should they go? Who should they travel with? What could they do and see? What could they expect to find? And the evergreen question: What should they pack? Join us for an adventure up and down the Nile during the Golden Age of travel. The speaker: Kathleen Sheppard is Associate Professor in the History and Political Science Department at Missouri S&T (formerly UM-Rolla). Her work focuses on the history of Egyptology, and women in the field. Her first book, The Life of Margaret Alice Murray (2013) is a biography of the first university-trained woman Egyptologist in Britain. Her second book, ‘My Dear Miss Ransom…’ (2018) is an edited collection of the letters of Caroline Ransom Williams, the first woman to earn her PhD in Egyptology in the US. Sheppard grew up in Blue Springs and sorely misses the Royals and good barbecue. Video produced by The VideoWorks.
