Fibroid Awareness Month – an annual observance to educate, inform, and raise awareness about uterine fibroids is observed annually in […]
All We Want is the Facts…Or Not
“All we want is the facts, ma’am,” the fictional Los Angeles Police Sergeant Joe Friday used to say dryly on […]
The Intimacy of Exercise: Sensuality and Sexuality in Black Women’s Fitness History
Exercise is an intimate act. It requires us to be well acquainted with our bodies—how far they can stretch, how […]
The Strange Nostalgia of Childbirth
Nostalgia inflects modern childbirth. When I first became pregnant, back in August 2022, I joined a few Facebook groups dedicated […]
Life Before Conception: Gamete Personhood in the Wake of Dobbs
In a shocking 2023 Oklahoma District Court ruling, lesbian mother Kris Williams lost custody of her son, Warren, to sperm […]
Remembering the Forgotten “Black Angels”
Many historians, including myself, have told the story of New York City’s Sea View Hospital, a tuberculosis sanatorium that operated […]
“I Don’t Have Very Much Faith in Doctors”: Black Women, Reproductive Health, and Black Disability Politics
In January 2022, my Instagram feed was flooded with posts mourning Aubrion Rogers, a 30-year-old Black woman who died after […]
A Tale of Two Deaths: Chronic Illness, Race, and the Medicalization of Suicide
On a Thursday morning in 1726, French colonial officials in Pondichéry – France’s principal colonial holding on India’s southeastern coast […]
Race and Early American Medical Schools: Review of Christopher D.E. Willoughby’s Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools
In 2017, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts announced that it would stop using race as a factor […]
Maternal Grief in Black and White: Enslaved Mothers and Antislavery Literature on the Eve of War
Mrs. Tamor and her six children. Helen and her son, a child of “tender years.” Margaret Garner, an “affectionate mother” […]
