Womanica

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Word Weavers: Rabiʿa al-Basri May 15, 2025

Show notes

Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya or Rabiʿa al-Basri (717-801 C.E.) is a highly regarded Sufi saint born in Basra, Iraq. Oral traditions and later written records suggest that she was also a poet. She is thought to be one of the first female Sufi saints and a key figure in developing Ishq-e-Haqeeqi or “divine love,” a central tenet in Sufism.

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This month, we’re talking about Word Weavers — people who coined terms, popularized words, and even created entirely new languages. These activists, writers, artists, and scholars used language to shape ideas and give voice to experiences that once had no name.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.

Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones, Abbey Delk, Adrien Behn, Alyia Yates, Vanessa Handy, Melia Agudelo, and Joia Putnoi. Special thanks to Shira Atkins.

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Word Weavers: Jane Austen May 14, 2025

Show notes

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her novels which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry during the Regency era. She had a great influence on the first Oxford English Dictionary published in 1928 and is quoted over 1,600 times.

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Word Weavers: The Heroines of Jiangyong May 13, 2025

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The Heroines of Jiangyong were women in rural China who made a secret language – Nüshu – to communicate with each other. Nüshu translates directly to “women’s writing” and is a series of phonetic scripts. The practice is estimated to go back as far as the Shang Dynasty 1600 to 1046 BCE. For centuries it was the language of female defiance to the Chinese patriarchy, legitimizing the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of rural women who had been denied access to an education.

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Word Weavers: Myra Laramee May 12, 2025

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Myra Laramee is a Cree/Métis teacher and Elder based in Winnipeg, Canada. She introduced the term Two-Spirit to better define queer identity under Indigenous people’s terms.

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Word Weavers: Ruth Glass May 09, 2025

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Ruth Glass (1912-1990) was a British sociologist and urban planner known for coining the term “gentrification” in 1964 to describe the transformation of working-class neighborhoods by middle-class newcomers. Her work focused on urban change, housing policy, and social inequality, particularly in London.

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Word Weavers: Pauline Rose Clance May 08, 2025

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Pauline Rose Clance (1938 - present) is a psychologist most famous for co-authoring the research paper that first coined the term “imposter phenomenon.” Commonly known as “imposter syndrome” today, the phenomenon Pauline discovered has helped countless women better identify and navigate their feelings of inadequacy in academic and professional settings.

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Word Weavers: María Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos May 07, 2025

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Marcela Lagarde (1968 - present) is a Mexican anthropologist, author, politician and feminist scholar who is credited with coining the term “feminicidio,” first to denote mass killings of women in Juárez, which had begun in the early 1990s. The term was taken up by Latin American feminists, particularly in Mexico and Guatemala, as well as governments, to address the targeted violence towards and murder of women.

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Word Weavers: Josephine Starrs and Virginia Barratt May 06, 2025

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Josephine Starrs and Virginia Barratt were among the creators of the VNS, an Australian feminist art collective born in the early days of the world wide web in the 1990s. The group is credited with coining the term "cyberfeminism."

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Word Weavers: Alice Walker May 05, 2025

Show notes

Alice Walker (1944-present) is novelist, poet and essayist, best known for her novel The Color Purple, published in 1982, which won the Pulitzer Prize and made Alice the first Black woman to win the prize for fiction. Walker is also credited with coining the term Womanist in her 1983 collection of essays In Search of our Mother’s Gardens.

For Further Reading:

The Womanist Reader, Edited by Layli Phillips
Alice Walker Has ‘No Regrets’
Alice Walker

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Word Weavers: Sylvia Wright May 02, 2025

Show notes

Sylvia Wright (c. 1916-1981) was a writer and humorist who coined the term “Mondegreen,” a noun used to describe the result of mishearing a word for another word or phrase. During her career she was an editor for “Harper’s Bazaar,” and published several works of her own.

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