When I officially retired from my academic position (I’m teaching one last semester in the fall as a phased retiree) I calculated all the time I spent in meetings at work and transferred those hours over to escorting patients at an abortion clinic. I am lucky to be able to retire and do this, and… Read more →
Janet Golden
Janet Golden
Contributor
In Memoriam
Among the many things in academia that graduate school does not prepare you for is outliving your students and, in some instances, having them share their experience of dying. As I close out my academic career I think about the students I have outlived and I write in memory of them. I give them pseudonyms… Read more →
Not the Doghouse: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Archives with Snoopy!
When the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company announced in 2016 that it was laying off Snoopy, a feature of its advertising, in favor of a “clean, modern aesthetic,” I felt like I was being sent to the doghouse myself. I’m not a Met Life policyholder, I don’t own a beagle, and I know Snoopy will still… Read more →
What Will Today’s Immigration Detention Centers Look like to Future Americans?
This piece originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2016 and is reprinted here with permission of the author. Janet Golden’s latest book is Babies Made Us Modern: How Infants Brought America into the Twentieth Century. Seventy-five years ago, over 125,000 Americans (the majority of them citizens) were sent to concentration camps. Over half of those interned were children. As… Read more →
“Weaponized Babies”; or, Damn, Why Didn’t I Think of Using That Term?
News that Senator Tammy Duckworth brought her baby to the Senate floor for a vote thrilled some and infuriated others. Prior debate over whether babies belonged in the Senate sparked some great pro- and anti-baby remarks that pundits and scholars will enjoy parsing and quoting in coming days, weeks, months … or until babies on… Read more →
Empty Chairs at the Cancer Center: The Threat of ACA Repeal
I spend a lot of time in the place no one wants to be — the cancer center. Every two weeks I’m there with my husband. He is the patient; I am the partner. Sadly, it is always crowded. The chairs are filled and it is hard to find a place to sit, but eventually… Read more →
What We Need To Know About Bathrooms
Bathrooms. We are actually having a national political conversation about bathrooms, following passage of HB2 in North Carolina prohibiting local governments from passing LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination protections with special language about bathrooms. Mississippi is in the process of enacting even more repugnant legislation. I never thought I’d write a post about bathrooms, but that law in… Read more →
Women and Alcohol: Let’s Talk About the Real Problem
The CDC’s recent sexist and patronizing warning about women and alcohol managed to outrage huge numbers of people and provoke some excellent responses from commentators throughout the nation. Did the statement get released just before Super Bowl Sunday — a day when drinking spikes, followed by an increase in calls to rehab centers.? What were… Read more →