Somewhere in Missouri, Spring 2025: It’s morning, and I’m rushing to pack a stack of books, notes, and binders into […]
Law, Medicine, Women’s Authority, and the History of Troubled Births: Review of Proving Pregnancy
With Roe v Wade upended, the balance of power and authority among lawmakers, medical practitioners, and pregnant and birthing people […]
Eugenics Was Wrong Even When It Got It Right
Ann Leary’s 2022 novel The Foundling follows a young white woman, Mary Engle, who in the 1930s lands a job […]
History, Ghosts & Jokes: A Review of Ghost Church
I first went to a medium for the same reason probably everyone does: I hoped to speak to the dead. […]
Relationships Matter: Roth on H. Yumi Kim, Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan
Before professional medical care became widely available, mental illness was often viewed as a personal malady with social impacts. Mental […]
Which Foods Aren’t Disgusting? On Carla Cevasco’s Violent Appetites
It has been a privilege to read Violent Appetites, the latest installment of a debate about hangriness that unfolded at […]
Menstrual Advocacy Is Flowing and Flowering
When I was researching my first book, The Modern Period: Menstruation in Twentieth-Century America (2009), one of the most frequent […]
The Misuse of History in The Business of Birth Control
“The Business of Birth Control,” a 2021 film directed by Abby Epstein and executive produced by Ricki Lake, tells a […]
Maintenance Phase: A Podcast that Wants You to Talk about Fatness
In an episode about Angela Lansbury’s fitness book-video-combo, Positive Moves, Maintenance Phase co-host Aubrey Gordon observed that “it is really […]
The Women of The Gilded Age Are Here to Run the Show
This essay discusses the first two episodes of The Gilded Age. In what is by now a classic essay, historian […]
