In the late 1980's, Bryant University Professor Judy Barrett Litoff launched a nationwide search for letters written by civilian and military women during World War II. That search resulted in an archive of 30,000 wartime letters written by United States women. These letters provide clear and unequivocal evidence of the important ways that women participated in the war effort, and vividly illustrate women’s growing sense of self as well as their place in the world. They offer perceptive insights into unexplored, but fundamental, aspects of the war and have formed the basis of the numerous books that Professor Litoff has written on World War II:
- 1990 Miss You: The World War II Letters of Barbara Wooddall Taylor and Charles E. Taylor
- 1991 Dear boys : World War II Letters from a Woman Back Home
- 1991 Since You went away
- 1994 We're in This War, Too
- 1997 American Women in a World at War
- 1997 Dear Poppa: The World War II Berman Family Letters
- 2000 What Kind of World Do We Want?
- 2003 Fighting Fascism in Europe
- 2006 An American Heroine in the French Resistance
- 2011 Dancing with Colonels: A Young Woman in Wartime Turkey
- 2013 Miss You: The World War II Letters of Barbara Wooddall Taylor and Charles E. Taylor (pbk. edition)
- 2013 Bryant College Goes to War
- 2018 Bryant College Goes to War (revised electronic edition)
Additionally, the U.S. Women and Letter Writing Project has been the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles and has been featured on a number television and radio programs. The letters have also been incorporated into documentary films, including the Emmy Award nominated PBS documentary, "The Perilous Fight: America's World War II in Color." They have also been featured in various anthologies on World War II. The Women and Letter Writing Project represents the largest archive of its kind in the United States – if not the world. This collection also includes supplemental information about the letter writers, which was provided by the donors of these letters.
Transcription Information:
Material in square brackets and in footnotes have been supplied by the transcribers.
Copyright Statement:
© 2007. Bryant University. All Rights Reserved. For permission to use, copy, and/or distribute the materials in the U.S. Women and World War II Letter Writing Project, please contact the Douglas and Judith Krupp Library at:
