Doctor or Doctress presents primary source sets ("stories") composed of the sources left behind by women physicians from history.
Complete with both student and teacher supports, each story may provide a valuable and engaging angle from which to study significant moments and themes in the historical timeline.
Story features
Primary Sources
Letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, and more sorted into Essential Evidence and related sources
Student Supports
Introductory video and text, audio transcripts of featured sources, document and story-level questions to encourage multiple levels of analysis
Companion Teaching Guides
Activity suggestions, discussion questions, lesson plans, suggested outside resources
Project-based learning
Individual student research
- Primary sources and contextual supports make each story a practical starting point for students completing research projects or term papers
- National History Day: See our list of Doctor or Doctress stories that match with this year's theme »
Class-wide projects
Teachers may use Doctor or Doctress stories to create engaging, primary source-driven projects for their classes. For example:
- In a U.S. women's history class, a digital documentary research project asked students to use the sources within a Doctor or Doctress story as the starting point for research for a documentary about the individuals, groups, or events from the sources
- In an English composition class, students analyzed sources showcasing the multiple perspectives on women medical students in 1869 in Pioneers in the Face of Adversity: “The Mob of ‘69” and used evidence from those documents to compose a "Defeat or Defend?" essay on the issue of the inclusion of women in the medical field