In the mid-1980s, when I was a twenty-something college dropout, I met people my age or older who knew a […]
Faith, Reproductive Politics and Resistance: A Conversation with the Reverend Joan Bates Forsberg
Reverend Joan Bates Forsberg played a notable role in struggles for contraceptive access in the 1950s and 1960s and abortion […]
The Black Panthers’ and Tom Hayden’s Lessons to the White Left in an Age of Trump
I often receive inquiries from white and non-black folks about how they can get involved in anti-racist organizing, especially after […]
“Made in America”: O.J. Simpson, Race, and the Triumph of Toxic Masculinity
Black and white America could not have been further apart than on the morning of October 3, 1995 when a […]
Teaching in an Era of Black Lives Matter
One of the functions of social movements is to raise consciousness around a particular problem or issue. The Black Lives […]
So Much To be Done: The Writings of Breast Cancer Activist Barbara Brenner
When Barbara Brenner was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993, friends recommended that she read Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals. […]
Take Back the Knit: A Feminist History of Knitting in the US
On a recent plane ride, I pulled out my knitting needles to finish the scarf I was making. Normally I […]
Women, Animals, and the Poetry of Activism
“What could be more calculated to produce brutal wife-beaters than long savage cruelty toward the other animals?”1 When Edith Ward […]
Clio Flicks: A Vote for Suffragette
Full disclosure: I have been waiting for a decent film about the women’s suffrage movement for years. As a historian […]
If You’re Not a Jerk, Then I’m Not Disabled
This is my fantasy: I’m standing at the Main Street corner in my little New Jersey suburban downtown, waiting to […]
