In September of 1747, Rosa de Menezes went into labor in her home in the poorest quarter of Goa, the […]
If You See Something, Say Something: Imperial Origins of White Women’s Modern Racial Profiling
In 2018, confrontations between white women and people of color in the United States have become viral news bytes emblematic […]
When Pain is Political: Paulette Nardal and Black Women’s Citizenship in the French Empire
October 12 marks the 122nd anniversary of the birth of Martinican writer and intellectual Paulette Nardal. It also marks 79 […]
The Persistence of Félicité Kina: Kinship, Gender, and Everyday Resistance
In January of 1803, the sixteen-year-old Félicité-Adelaïde Kina (née Quimard) traveled from Paris to Pontarlier to protest the imprisonment of […]
Sex, Death, and Atole at the Royal Indian Hospital
Mexico City, 18th Century For the wounded, diseased, and ailing of Mexico City, just about anything was better than the […]
Locating Enslaved Black Wet Nurses in the Literature of French Slavery
“Enslaved women and their children enter the archives in little more than fragments.”1 In George Sand’s 1832 idealist novel, Indiana, […]
Lizards and the Idea of Mexico
In the summer of 1782, Don Juan de Luna, a respected elder citizen of the City of Mexico, nearly choked […]
Health Care in Colonial Peruvian Convents
Last May I had the opportunity to conduct archival research in Arequipa, Peru. I went in search of fodder for […]
Fleas, Fleas, Fleas
In September, I turned on Democracy Now! and came into a story about the mass extinction of a third of […]
The Magic Liquid that Guarantees the Life of the Infant: Breast Milk as a Superfood
“Try squirting milk on that.” I stopped keeping track of how many times someone recommended healing my newborn’s ailments with […]
