The Haunting of Pennhurst, which recently premiered at the 2026 Tribeca Film Festival, is a remarkable new film about disability, […]
Review of Abortion Stories: American Literature before Roe v. Wade, ed. Karen Weingarten (Penguin Classics, 2025)
Abortion Stories: 9780143138204 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022 […]
Review of Minji Lee, The Medieval Womb: Hildegard of Bingen’s Views on the Female Reproductive Body (Arc Humanities Press, 2025)
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 […]
