ARCE-OC: A Field of Their Own: Putting the Women of Egyptology in Their Place

Lecture Information

Women, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, must have money and a site of her own if she is to do archaeology. Woolf was talking about writing fiction, but the point remains: women must be free from domestic cares, even just for a little while, if they would be professionally productive. The women who worked in archaeology around the turn of the twentieth century understood this situation keenly and some were able to live out their freedom in a variety of ways. In this talk, the lecturer will (re)introduce several women in the history of Egyptology who carved out spaces of their own through excavation, patronage, and publication and who shaped the discipline with their expertise.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Kathleen Sheppard is a Professor in the History and Political Science department at Missouri S&T in Rolla, Missouri. She earned her MA in Egyptian Archaeology at University College London in 2002, and her PhD in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. Her first book was a scientific biography of Margaret Alice Murray (2013) that focused on Murray’s life and career, both in and out of Egyptology. She has spent her whole career telling the stories of women in Egyptology. Her most recent book, Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age (St. Martin’s Press, 2024) is a grand retelling of the history of Egyptology through the work that women did.