Professor Amanda Vickery's journey to uncover the story of female creativity reaches the 18th century. The focus turns to the industrial powerhouse that is Britain and the glittering French court of Marie Antoinette. Despite being regarded as second class citizens when it came to art, this was an era when ingenious women seized a galaxy of fresh opportunities to stamp their creativity on the age; from a designer who would revitalize the British silk...

One of Canada's most celebrated authors and short story writers, Margaret Laurence was born in a small prairie town in Manitoba. She was a founder of the Writer's Trust of Canada, a nonprofit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community. She is best known for her novel The Stone Age, set in fictional Manawaka. This classic documentary film traces her life from the early days. The images of her small Presbyterian hometown...

After every war, someone has to clean up...someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road so the corpse-filled wagons can pass, writes Wislawa Syzmborska in "The End and the Beginning." Called the Mozart of poetry, she is known for her use of deceptively simple language that slowly builds to a powerful revelation, especially in poems that were inspired by wartime events in her native Poland. This compelling program acquaints viewers with the...

Recognized from an early age as a poet of remarkable ability, the writer who was to become known as Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American woman to be awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize, in 1945. Composed of archival footage and commentary from scholars and friends who discuss the personal events that affected her life and infused her work with its themes of tragic love and unfulfilled maternal love, this program provides an in-depth portrait...

Taking inspiration from science and technology as well as art history, Anna Campbell Bliss developed a style that synthesized many of the movements of early 20th-century modernism. This film traces the broad spectrum of Bliss's life and work, ranging from the influences of her early childhood and her groundbreaking career as a Harvard-trained architect to her emergence as a cutting-edge artist fusing a wide range of elements - mathematics, computers,...

Raised within the socially restrictive mores of a transient middle-class family and troubled with a stammering problem, Ana Maria Matute took refuge in literature. At 17, she began to use her experiences to probe the themes of lost childhood, injustice, and the lives of the marginalized. She soon developed a fresh prose style that deftly blended fantasy and realism, revitalizing the mid-20th-century Spanish literary scene. This landmark program features...

Surveying the uncompromising life and career of the erstwhile Amandine Aurore-Lucie Dupin, this program familiarizes viewers with her literary output, political beliefs, and the widely varied circles she inhabited. Beginning with her birth in Paris, the film describes Sand's semi-aristocratic upbringing, stifling marriage, turbulent romances, creative evolution, and visionary proto-feminist stance. Sand's memoir excerpts and artworks are featured;...

Born in Cuba to Chinese parents, award-winning novelist Zoe Valdes has achieved worldwide recognition for portraying the struggles and dreams of women. This program highlights her upbringing, education, and influences, as well as examining several of her most important books, including La Hija del Embajador and Te Di La Vida Entera.

The feminine form has inspired artists for thousands of years-but have the results done justice or injustice to women? What specifically does the history of sculpture tell us about attitudes toward womanhood and ideas of feminine beauty? British art critic Waldemar Januszczak addresses those questions in this challenging, eye-opening program. After tracing the representation of women from the prehistoric Venus of Willendorf and Venus de Milo to Marc...

When Maxine Hong Kingston was growing up in California, she listened to her parents' stories and memories of their native China. In her highly acclaimed memoirs, The Woman Warrior and China Men, she linked those tales of tradition to the story of her own American experience, blending childhood memory, meditation, and magic. They are the most widely taught books by a living American author on college campuses today. In this program with Bill Moyers,...