For the last decade, I’ve been reading and writing about other women’s pain. Contractions lasting 72 hours. Feverish deliriums after […]
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 […]
The Lady with the Alligator Purse
A Tisket a Tasket, Three Little Fishies, Baa Baa Black Sheep — these nursery rhymes were an integral part of […]
Mange, Morphine, and Deadly Disease: Medicine and Public Health in Red Dead Redemption 2
Spoiler warning: This essay discusses major plot points about the ending of Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s dead midnight, there’s […]
Teaching Abélard and Héloïse
One of the wearying inevitabilities of 2018 was that even the most cursory glance at the news was likely to […]
Manly Firmness: It’s Not Just for the 18th Century (Unfortunately)
The references to “manly firmness” are everywhere in late-18th-century political sources. For example, Edward Dilly wrote to John Adams from […]
Femininity and Legitimacy: Policing Women and “Witches” in Post-Apartheid South Africa
One night in the late spring of 2008, in the South African town of Mondlo, an assembly of neighbors brought […]
Emigration as Epidemic: Perspectives on the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Highlands
In our digital age, the contagion metaphor is often part of the language we use regarding the exchange of information. […]
Colonial Colette: From Orientalism and Egyptian Pantomime to Polaire’s Jamaican “Slave”
I first read excerpts of Colette’s Sido in my IB French class in 2007, so when the recent biopic starring […]
Quacks, Alternative Medicine, and the U.S. Army in the First World War
During the First World War, the Surgeon General received numerous pitches for miraculous cures for sick and wounded American soldiers. […]
