In 1840, the American press widely circulated illustrations of Queen Victoria’s wedding cake. It was a 300-pound, 14-inch-tall and 10-foot-wide […]
A Woman Who Wrote About War: Recovering Ellen N. La Motte’s The Backwash of War
I love the old American spiritual “Down by the Riverside.” In fact, my first book borrows its title, War No […]
Between the Pages: Victorian Women’s Letters to H. Lenox Hodge
This essay was first published at Fugitive Leaves, the blog of The History Medical Library of The College of Physicians […]
A Brief History of “Bouncing Back”
So the world has witnessed yet another round of the Royal Baby bonanza — from tracking Meghan Markle’s maternity style, […]
“Our Moral Obligation:” The Pastors That Counseled in Pre-Roe South Carolina
On December 8, 1971, a Presbyterian pastor in Greenville, SC counseled three women on their “problem pregnancies,” ultimately connecting them […]
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 […]
Japan’s Once and Future Female Emperors
With the abdication today of the Japanese emperor, Akihito, and the passage of the throne to his son, talk has […]
Murder and Motherhood in 1950s Ireland: The Trial of Abortionist Mamie Cadden
On the evening of April 17, 1956, thirty-three-year-old Helen O. visited nurse Mamie Cadden at 17 Hume Street, Dublin, for […]
“Considerable Grief”: Dead Bodies, Mortuary Science, and Repatriation after the Great War
In September 1919, Mary McKenney was forced to relive the horrors of her husband Arthur’s death. Sergeant Arthur McKenney was […]
Intersex Revolutionary War Hero Did Good Because Doctors Did No Harm
The startling knowledge that the Polish nobleman and military leader, Casimir Pulaski, a hero of the American Revolution, may have […]
