Anyone tempted to make facile arguments about abortion politics, on either side of the aisle, needs to read John Christopoulos’s […]
Sister Mariana’s Spyglass: The Unreliable Ghost of Female Desire in a Convent Archive
In 1731, Sister Mariana de Jesus, a young nun at the Augustinian Convent of Santa Monica in Portuguese Goa, was […]
Oscillating and Depreciating: Early Modern Spanish Views of Unsanctioned Female Healers
Antonio asks, “Do you believe that God will burn all of the sinners forever and ever when they die?” “Si,” […]
The Rejected Ones: Indian Foundlings in Colonial Portuguese Goa
In September of 1747, Rosa de Menezes went into labor in her home in the poorest quarter of Goa, the […]
Dying Like the Savior, Dying Like the Saved
Sister Alberta Marie Hanley felt like Christ on her deathbed. Blood seeping into her eyes from a low platelet count, […]
“The Egg” in the Twenty-First Century: A Family’s Holistic Healing and Cleansing Practice
In the early 2000s, my great-aunt performed a holistic healing act on my mother with an egg. My mother, sick […]
Uncovering the Convent
I study nuns. Now, let me start by saying that I’m not Catholic; I just study nuns in the nineteenth […]
This is Not a Culture of Life, This is a Culture of Un-Death
Last week at a Vatican conference on abortion, Pope Francis “argued that children who were not expected to live long […]
Murder and Motherhood in 1950s Ireland: The Trial of Abortionist Mamie Cadden
On the evening of April 17, 1956, thirty-three-year-old Helen O. visited nurse Mamie Cadden at 17 Hume Street, Dublin, for […]
Teaching Abélard and Héloïse
One of the wearying inevitabilities of 2018 was that even the most cursory glance at the news was likely to […]
