Early Social Media, Women, and Teaching the Eighteenth-Century Magazine

Abstract: The Enlightenment as a period and concept is under renewed scrutiny for its role in industrialization and capitalism and for initiating the notion of "separate knowing," which prized those who were valued for their thoughts and assumed that a vast majority did not have such important thoughts. The study of women's writing, which are now standard texts on classroom syllabi, has grown to include a wider interest in women's roles in the book trade and specifically in magazines, which can be referred to as early social media. This essay offers an argument and a framework for teaching women's roles in eighteenth-century magazines.