At around seven in the evening on 1 September 1743 in the French Indian colony of Pondichéry, Santouche heard screaming […]
Call in the Midwife: Gendered Medical Knowledge and Colonial Intermediaries in French India
On October 29th, 1743 at seven o’clock in the morning in the city of Pondichéry–a former French colony in South […]
“Mistreatment by Words and Blows”: Domestic Violence between Lived Realities and Colonial Meanings
The evidence of domestic violence in eighteenth-century Pondichéry – France’s former colony in South Asia – resides in what might […]
Queer Teenage Feminists on the Printed Page, 1973 to 2023
When sixteen-year-old Jane wrote into Ms. Magazine in the mid-1970s, she did so in a desperate search for hope. As […]
Fetal Remains, Knowledge, and the Making of Early Modern Monsters
In 1734, scholars at France’s Royal Academy of Medicine encountered something unique: a tiny, nearly perfect replica of a fetus […]
Circumcision Debate: Cut the Hyperbole
By Elizabeth Reis
What frustrates me about the circumcision debate is that both sides exaggerate their claims. Maybe this happens with most controversies, but I am particularly attuned to this one because I have been researching the history of circumcision in the United States. A recent article by Brian J. Morris and others in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings overstates the health benefits of circumcision and downplays the risks. They argue that the public health benefits (i.e. reducing sexually transmitted diseases) are so great that circumcision should be mandatory. Mandatory?
