For those of us who teach pre-modern English history and literature, there’s a conversation that happens nearly every semester. When […]
Sexual Education in Schools: The Harm of Exclusion
We teach our children about the birds and the bees, but for some, this talk is as foreign as the […]
Liberal Christians in the Making of Sex Education
In the 1960s conservative Christian leaders like Billy James Hargis and his “Christian Crusade” defined the culture wars over sex […]
Surrender, Discovery, and Recovery: The Many Meanings of Adoption
To write about mid-twentieth century adoption practices in the United States is to position oneself at the heart of dozens […]
For Keeps: Teenage Girls and Anxiety around Sex during the 1990s
In 1995, I was sixteen and experiencing the excitement of my first real love. As if out of a 1990s […]
How to Do It: Sex Education and the “Sex Life”
In 1696, in Somerset county in southwest England, a schoolboy named John Cannon and his friends took their lunchtime break […]
Judy Blume with a Potty Mouth: A Review of Netflix’s Big Mouth
A sex education video plays to a class of middle school students. “As puberty begins, hormones are released and the […]
Almost Fourteen: The Book That Stopped Me in My Research Tracks
One of the things I always warn people about before their first archival trip is just how boring historical research […]
“Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Girls and Sex (But Really Need to Ask)”: Peggy Orenstein’s Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
In American media and pop culture, there is a constant barrage of fear and panic about teens, especially girls, and […]