“Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, / Who is already sick and pale with grief /… / Be […]
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 […]
After a Miscarriage, What Happens to the Fetus? The History is Complicated.
This essay is part one of a two-part series on fetal remains and cultural politics. Find the second part here. […]
Marked: Birthmarks and Historical Myths of Maternal Responsibility
“You ate a lot of strawberries when you were pregnant with that baby, didn’t you?” When I was a child, […]
Can a King be Disabled? Leprosy, Power, and Colonialism in an Indonesian Sultan’s Portrait
A middle-aged, mustached man dressed in a luxuriously decorated jacket and with a thick golden chain across his chest looks […]
Miscarriage is a Crime Again
In 1650, a young, single English servant named Anne Greene miscarried into the privy and did not tell anyone. We […]
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 […]
“They say that all women have the same apprehension”: Anxiety and Isolation in Seventeenth-Century Pregnancy
On August 19th, 1620, a young noblewoman sat alone in her château in Bayon, Lorraine. She was heavily pregnant with […]
Another Year, Another Body Part
This is a story of how, as a historian of medicine, my own aging has affected my sense of my […]
It’s Wonderful How Ice Can Be So Warm
“It is a pleasure to the real lover of nature to give winter all the glory he can.” – Dorothy […]
