I teach a course called “Women and Medicine” that explores the history of women as medical practitioners, patients, and objects […]
The Secret Ingredient is Hope: Heated Rivalry (2025), US Television & the Historical Pathologization of Gay Desire
Since debuting in North America in late November 2025, the Canadian streaming show Heated Rivalry has become a global sensation. […]
The Design of Motherhood: MAD’s Exhibition is Personal and Profound
A friend of mine, a Catholic priest, says that everyone cries at weddings, but each for their own reason. Some […]
Beauty, Knowledge, Patriarchy, Power: A Book Review of Jill Burke’s How to be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity (Pegasus Books, 2024)
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 […]
