ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Sources of Visibility: How Archives, Photographs and Cultural Media Shape Representations of Women Scientists

• In Event: Self(re)presentation of a European Scholar Across Political Regimes 3

English Abstract

The representation of women scientists in the media has deep and multifaceted origins shaped by the interplay of institutional archives, alumni associations journals, historical narratives, and broader cultural productions. Focusing on France, this study takes the Écoles normales supérieures—long-standing training grounds for both male and female scientists—as a central case study, given the richness and comparability of their archives. These sources are complemented by the CNRS archives. Together, these collections provide a valuable lens through which to examine how documentary practices have constructed—and at times constrained—the public image of women in science.
Access to archival material emerges as a decisive factor: selective preservation and variable accessibility continue to obscure women’s contributions. The contrasting situations of the École Normale Supérieure and the former École Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles, as well as the CNRS’s increasing efforts to highlight women researchers. Those archives were curated by the scientists themselves, adding another layer of self-representation.
Journals and obituaries from alumnae associations offer additional self-constructed portraits that emphasise achievements, yet frequently reproduce gendered narrative conventions that emphasise modesty, altruism or teaching commitments. A comparative analysis of alumni, alumnae obituaries and photographic archives illustrates the patterned differences.
The study examines theatrical and cinematic portrayals of women scientists—The Half-Life of Marie Curie, Les Palmes de Monsieur Schutz, and plays on Rosalind Franklin and Marthe Gautier—to identify continuities and divergences between institutional sources, cultural narratives and their translation in cinema and theatre works for the general public.
This multilayered approach highlights how archival traces, commemorative practices, and media productions collectively shape the evolving representation of women scientists.

Author

• Anne-Sophie Godfroy, Université Paris Est Créteil