As we see with COVID-19, the darkest periods in history expose the best — and worst — of humanity. Some […]
Plague in the Age of Twitter
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Twitter over the past week. Some evenings, it feels like I can’t […]
How the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Gave Working Women a Place to Breathe
In September of 1909, San Francisco’s businessmen opened the latest issue of the Merchants’ Association Review, looking forward to reading […]
Mesmerism, (Im)propriety, and Power Over Women’s Bodies
Mesmerism had promise. According to accounts of popular demonstrations and parlor séances of the 1830s through the 1850s, a subject […]
Pathologizing Politics: Eugenics and Political Discourse in the Modern United States
Carrie Buck was three months shy of her twenty-second birthday when she was forcibly sterilized on October 19, 1927. Buck’s […]
Eugenic Sperm
In 1974, a Los Angeles Times staff writer interviewed Dr. Donald Adler, a Beverly Hills gynecologist who ran a sperm […]
The Spaces of Screening: Tracing the Spatial Geographies of Mobile Mammography from Carparks to the Cosmos
In 2019, Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) launched a new cancer detection initiative. In this pilot program, the NHS harnessed […]
Where a Pregnancy Can Last for Years: The Remarkable Colonial Reports of Sleeping Pregnancies in the Maghreb
A couple patiently waits for a healthy child after a pregnancy that has lasted several years. A desperate widow claims […]
“Kiss Via Kerchief”: Influenza Warnings in 1918
Just over one hundred years ago, New York Health Commissioner Royal S. Copeland responded to the threat of “Spanish” influenza […]
Carrying Community: The Black Midwife’s Bag in the American South
The classic 1953 documentary film All My Babies features the life and work of Mary Coley, a legendary African-American “granny” […]
