If you’ve been on social media at all during the month of June, you’ve probably seen Marsha P. Johnson’s name […]
What Will Today’s Immigration Detention Centers Look like to Future Americans?
This piece originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2016 and is reprinted here with permission of the author. Janet Golden’s latest book is Babies […]
The Discovery of the Mental Institution – With Apologies to David J. Rothman
On February 15, 2018, President Donald Trump spoke about the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, […]
Do This One Thing: Curing Symptoms not the Disorder
This spring, as I was preparing for my wedding, recovering from what was my fourth illness of the year, and […]
Thrown Open to the Public: Medicine, Modernity, and Disabled Veterans on National Hospital Day in the Interwar Years
On May 12, 1923 hundreds of visitors poured into United States Veterans Hospital 81 for insane soldiers in the Bronx […]
Change We Need? Why the Name of the President’s Fitness Council Matters
At the end of February, President Trump renamed the council that supports American physical fitness as the President’s Council on […]
Prison Cells and Pretty Walls: Gender Coding and American Schools
A few months ago, I was scrolling through Twitter and saw a conversation about redesigning classroom spaces and a phrase […]
“Weaponized Babies”; or, Damn, Why Didn’t I Think of Using That Term?
News that Senator Tammy Duckworth brought her baby to the Senate floor for a vote thrilled some and infuriated others. […]
“Shock from Loss”: The Reality of Grief in the First World War
On October 24, 1918, fifty-eight-year-old Elizabeth was admitted to the City of London Mental Hospital by her husband.1 He stated […]
What Would Philippe Pinel Do? Old and New Understandings of Mental Illness
I was intrigued when, on February 1, 2018, I heard the journalist and author Johann Hari on Democracy Now! talking […]
