Campaigns of Curiosity by Elizabeth L. Banks

Introduction by Brooke Kroeger

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About

Celebrating a decade of Columbia Global Reports, the Forerunners series revives groundbreaking works of investigative journalism and incisive analysis published a century before CGR’s founding. These texts, once forgotten or underexplored, reflect CGR’s core mission: fearless reporting, global perspective, and intellectual rigor. Each selection remains strikingly relevant today, offering historical insights that challenge contemporary perspectives and reaffirm the power of journalism to shape the world.

A nineteenth-century Barbara Ehrenreich, journalist Elizabeth L. Banks investigated working conditions for women in England by going undercover and taking low-wage jobs. From exploring the lives of domestic workers to infiltrating factories, her courageous and witty narrative was a pioneering text of early feminism, highlighting the power of journalism in challenging strict adherence to traditional, rigid societal norms and fighting for the equality of women in Victorian Britain. First published in 1894, Campaigns of Curiosity is her autobiography.

With an introduction by Brooke Kroeger, journalist and professor emerita at New York University.

Excerpt

From the introduction: Self-reliance and hope for a journalism career came early to Elizabeth Leonor Banks but not success. After too long a failure to launch at home, she burst onto the bi-continental scene from London in 1893 as that star-spangled “American Girl.” Her steps retraced those of Nellie Bly, who had turned her own flagging fortunes into The New American Girl sensation of 1887 in New York City. The unlikely accomplishments of these two driven twenty-somethings became the A and the B of the six-year arc of the stunt girl reign, a boon for woman reporters that brought the high-impact, personality-driven undercover exposé into the profession’s investigative armory.

Notices

Article

UPI – “Isle of Dogs”

        “Isle of Dogs” By Brooke Kroeger isle-ofdogs-st__louis_post_dispatch_sun__jan_15__1978_ January 1978  

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Article

UPI: “The West Bank: This Land is Whose Land?”

Israeli settlers and the Palestinians: Whose Land?

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Article

UPI: “The West Bank: A new breed of leadership”

Palestinian leadership in the occupied West Bank, Summer 1980.

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Article

UPI: “The Golan Heights: The Camp David Fear in the Occupied Golan Heights”

Israelis in the Golan Heights, 1980.

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Article

UPI – Recap of Israel’s Attack on Iraq’s Nuclear Reactor, June 7, 1981

How the Israelis managed to blow up Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981.

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Article

UPI – “Spot Analysis: Palestinian Autonmy and the Late Moshe Dayan”

Spot analysis: Moshe Dayan and the Palestinians.

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