In Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements, historians Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry […]
The Nanny State on Your Plate?
In late November, the FDA finalized new rules for calorie counts on menus. In about a year, all food establishments […]
Adventures in the Archives: The First Time
The possibility of having an “adventure in the archives” always seemed a bit far-fetched. My perceptions of academia, particularly as […]
Confessions of a Newborn Father: The Birth of the “Hands-on” Dad
By Ginny Engholm
A recent Vicks Nyquil commercial has a typical scenario for an advertisement set in a workplace. A clearly sick man — coughing, runny nose, the whole works — opens what looks like an office door a crack, pops his head in, and delivers the one line of the commercial: “Dave, I’m sorry to interrupt. I gotta take a sick day tomorrow.” While this might seem like a very traditional depiction of masculinity, a guy at the office asking his male boss for a day off, the ad subverts this narrative by revealing an adorable toddler standing up in his crib. The tagline of the ad — “Dads don’t take sick days. Dads take Nyquil” — makes the ad’s argument clear. A real man is one who is so dedicated to his real job — fatherhood — that he continues to parent through his colds and flus. While the idea of moms’ total and complete dedication to their roles as mothers has of course been part of our cultural understanding of motherhood for, well, forever, the shift in the past decade or so of depicting fathers as equal-opportunity martyrs, devoted to the care of their children, strikes many modern viewers as something new.
Tuning In for Public Health: The Promise of Televised Health Education in 1950s America
During a recent well-child check up, the nurse asked how much television my son watched. Although not common a generation […]
Not Your (Old, White) Father’s History
If you haven’t already heard, the New York Times recently interviewed retired Princeton historian of the Civil War James McPherson for the newspaper’s “By the Book” feature. McPherson is a well-respected legend in the field, yet many historians were left scratching their collective heads over his responses to such questions as “Who are the best historians writing today?” and “What are the best books about African American history?” Suffice it to say, his answers seemed very white, very male, and well, very dated.
Women in Tech from ENIAC to MOM
On September 24, as I enjoyed my second coffee of the morning and caught up on news, a photo caught […]
The Skinny on Back to School
Well, it’s that time of year again! The temperatures are dropping, the days are shortening, the leaves are beginning to […]
Adventures in the Berlin Archives
By Rachel Epp Buller
As historians, we often work with primary sources – documents about a place or records of a person’s existence. Paging through issues of a journal from a hundred years ago can feel like traveling through time, and reading personal letters now held in an archive offers not only remarkable insights but also feelings of intimacy and privilege. But, what happens when you see something that you wish you hadn’t?
On the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough?: Interpreting Mental Illness
By Mary Elene Wood
A highway patrol officer straddles a woman who lies on her back by the side of a highway. His arm lifts high into the air, then, with what looks like substantial force, he strikes her in the face with his clenched fist. He does this over and over again. Early in July, news programs around the country quickly spread the story of a California Highway Patrol officer caught on videotape violently beating Marlene Pinnock, a 51-year-old homeless, presumably mentally ill, woman, along the side of a freeway in Los Angeles. The California Highway Patrol claimed that the officer was only trying to stop the woman from walking out into traffic, yet journalists across the U.S. decried, in one writer’s words, “the lack of training given to law enforcement officers to handle such people, even though officers all too often are society’s frontline mental health care providers.”
