When sociology and economics professor Norman E. Himes published The Medical History of Contraception in 1936, he had made a […]
“Blindness and Boldness”: Haptic Imaginaries from the Operating Theater to the Pandemic Everyday
“It’s like driving a car in the fog”: The Operating Theater A torso, swollen with gas and yellow with antiseptic […]
Sister Mariana’s Spyglass: The Unreliable Ghost of Female Desire in a Convent Archive
In 1731, Sister Mariana de Jesus, a young nun at the Augustinian Convent of Santa Monica in Portuguese Goa, was […]
Misinformation, Vaccination, and “Medical Liberty” in the Age of COVID-19
Vaccination is of critical importance right now. At this moment, the United States is fighting an uphill battle against COVID-19, […]
Liberty and Insanity Sitting in a Tree
In 2011, I participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar entitled “The Problem of Governance in the […]
“I Assumed It Was Urgent”: Helen Hurd’s Story
As an archivist, I gain deep knowledge of people through their personal papers. I come to appreciate their senses of […]
Thucydides, Historical Solidarity, and Birth in the Pandemic
I never felt any particular fear for my safety, or my baby’s, during my first pregnancy in 2016. I felt […]
Not Our First Rodeo: Reading Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider through the Lens of Denver Newspapers’ Coverage of the 1918 Flu Pandemic
Weathering the COVID-19 pandemic in Fort Worth, Texas, I’m continually dismayed by the ways that money and politics are prioritized […]
The Women’s Health Movement and the Dream of the Diaphragm
Half a century after the emergence of the women’s liberation movement, “the pill” remains ingrained in the iconography of second-wave […]
Wearable Immunity: Beauty Lessons from the Pockmarking Era
This pandemic’s “mask wars,” as with the 1918 flu pandemic and HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, have prompted reflections on how […]
