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 has resulted in the assembling of an archive of 30,000 wartime letters written by United States women. These 30,000 letters provide clear and unequivocal evidence of the many important ways that women actively participated in the war effort, and they vividly illustrate women’s growing sense of self and their place in the world. In short, they offer perceptive insights into heretofore unexplored, but fundamental, aspects of the war and they 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
In addition, 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. In fact, 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 on the letter writers, etc. provided by the donors of these letters. A collection finding aid is available here.
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 Bryant University at: .
For further inquiries or information regarding this collection please contact:
Professor Judy Barrett Litoff
or visit Dr. Litoff's web site at:
http://web.bryant.edu/~jlitoff/
